I ran across a C.S. Lewis quote in one of my Psych. books. The chapter was called "Nice People and Evildoers". The author used the quote where Screwtape tells Wormwood that "The safest road to hell is the gradual one." The author states that by "succumbing to just a little temptation begins to erode the conscience, making the next evil act possible." This may help us to understand why people can do truly horrible things.
One classic experiment that we learned about was the Stanley Milgram obedience experiments. A person (the learner) was hooked up to a machine in a separate room while the "teacher" was pushing the buttons in an adjacent room. The teacher was instructed to ask the learner questions and if they got them wrong, they were to press a button to give them a shock. The more questions they got wrong, the higher the voltage of the shocks. Even though the learners were screaming (they were not actually getting shocked) in the next room, Milgram found that 65% of the adult male subjects fully obeyed instructions and went as high as the machine would go. They did not like the task, but obedience prevailed over their moral conscience.
This is just one way of showing how our temptations can come about by a step-by-step process. If we succumb to one sin, we think that it is okay to do another.
One classic experiment that we learned about was the Stanley Milgram obedience experiments. A person (the learner) was hooked up to a machine in a separate room while the "teacher" was pushing the buttons in an adjacent room. The teacher was instructed to ask the learner questions and if they got them wrong, they were to press a button to give them a shock. The more questions they got wrong, the higher the voltage of the shocks. Even though the learners were screaming (they were not actually getting shocked) in the next room, Milgram found that 65% of the adult male subjects fully obeyed instructions and went as high as the machine would go. They did not like the task, but obedience prevailed over their moral conscience.
This is just one way of showing how our temptations can come about by a step-by-step process. If we succumb to one sin, we think that it is okay to do another.
posted by Gena at 9:27 PM
2 Comments:
While agree with what you say, there is another side to that study. Part of what Milgram was trying to see, is how the presence of authority and the victim effect the performance of the "teacher". The study found that the closer the authority, the higher the voltage. The study also found that the farther the victim, the higher the voltage.
In the end, I do agree with the idea of "succumbing to just a little temptation begins to erode the conscience, making the next evil act possible."
To go off of this comment, certainly the "Screwtape Letters" show us how Satan wants to gradual drift humankind away from God and the salvific grace he wishes to bestow upon human kind.
After awhile you begin to not even know the difference, as has been mentioned. This is extremely dangerous. To use an example, put a frog in a boiling pot of water, and, what does the frog do? It jumps out.
Now, instead, put the frog in lukewarm water in gradually turn up the temperature. What happens? The frog doesn't realize the gradual change, and he ends up dieing.
We are like the frog in the fact that, we are described in the scriptures as sheep. Sheep are, in principle, ignorant like frogs. We must be on the look-out for the devil's schemes.
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