reading group - Screwtape Letters

Benisse

Benisse

Perelandrian
Staff member
Royal Guard
I am part of a weekly reading group that has just started Lewis' Screwtape Letters. We go through about 3 letters an evening on Thursdays from 7-9pm (we eat together too :p). If any of you would like to join us we are in the southern Los Angeles county area and you can pm me for more info. Bring your own Book; and be prepared to have a lot of fun in the discussions!

Alternatively if you would be interested in reading through the Letters together on the Forum, here is a schedule for posting any thoughts or comments about the assigned letters for the week to this thread:
Letters [Post your comments during the week starting: x]
1-3 [2/5/2012]
4-6 [2/12]
7-9 [2/19]
10-12 [2/26]
13-15 [3/4]
16-18 [3/11]
19-21 [3/18]
22-24 [3/25]
25-27 [4/1]
28-31 [4/8 Happy Easter!]

If you want to be in the online group you can drop in and out. I know sometimes real life gets pretty busy and that is okay. This schedule will let you know where we are when you are able to join us again.
 
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Okay today Letters 1-3 are open for discussion...

I have always loved Lewis' character names, but they seem especially brilliant here with Wormwood the junior devil, the Enemy (aka God), Our Father Below, Uncle Screwtape, Glubose, etc.

Letter 1:
Screwtape would have us ignoring Universal issues and just focusing on the "stream of immediate sense experiences," to dwell in the physical "real life" realm of our senses with no attention to the spiritual beyond. He shared how he kept a human from listening to God once by distracting him with hunger pangs, to stop his reflections on Truth and spiritual realities by sending him off to get lunch. But I am prone to such distractions too, as in the story about Mary and Martha in Luke 10:38-42. The two dear sisters were hosting Jesus, and Martha was bustling about and stressing to get everything ready:

But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, Lord, don't you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me! (Luke 10:40)

Alas too often I identify with Martha, hitting the ground running from the time I awake with this or that appointment or this goal or that project crowding in on my attention. So my Bible reading and prayer time get put off for later, later, later... in contrast to Mary who chose first to sit and listen to Jesus, choosing the best rather than the urgent.

So Jesus' reply to Martha is his word to me too:

Martha, Martha, the Lord answered, you are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her. (Luke 10:41-42)

my prayer: Lord, may I choose Your best today in my choices for how I spend my time. May I choose You, every day.

I'll post about letters 2 & 3 later this week.
 
Nice, I hadn't thought about that particular passage in light of the Mary/Martha story.

What I thought about, reading this, was how exactly true it is that we allow "ordinariness" to displace ... God/Everything/Hugeness/Infinity. The person Screwtape describes was trembling on the verge of discovering there's a whole invisible spirit world, of accepting that there might indeed be a real Person Jesus who wanted and loved him ... but when he got to the "real world" of his lunch and his newspaper, all that disappeared.

The idea that the "real world" is the dressing and eating and working, whereas the spiritual world can't be "real." How silly we are sometimes, to define what's real simply by what we can touch or eat!
 
I've done my reading. :D

Benisse, I'd never thought of how that letter compared so well to the Mary and Martha story in the Bible. What a great example!

One thing that I thought was neat was in letter #3, about the mother and her son, and how they had double standards. (The son would think the worst of his mother, and assume that she meant to irritate him by certain mannerisms, while it never would occur to him that he might be irritating her with some of his own.) It would be a lot easier to work through conflict if people could get past that obstacle.
 
That is a very good point! And one that hit home with me because when we were newlyweds and would argue, mu husband would INSIST that I pay attention only to his words, and not the way in which he said them ... so he would say something innocuous in a biting way and then pretend not to understand why that would upset me ... We humans are such basket cases sometimes!
 
Letter 2

Screwtape makes some astute observations about churchiness -- the desirability of keeping our focus on judging the other folks around us in order to sabotage our ability to connect with God as well as learn and serve one another. One of the keys to this diabolical tactic is to encourage judging one another, no matter if our critical opinions are accurate or not.

This strategy is directly in contrast to John 4:23:
Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshippers the Father seeks.

When we gather together as a church body our primary job is spiritual, to worship God in spirit and in truth. Our vertical relationship with the Father is paramount in worship rather than focusing on what others are doing or not doing...
 
One thing that I thought was really interesting was the part about prayer- how our prayers can become rote and lose their meaning if we focus more on the habitual, physical positions , particular words, etc. instead of focusing on WHO we are praying to.
 
I liked Screwtape's revelation, though, that we're taught to pray on our knees, for a reason -- that because we are physical creatures with bodies, what we do with our bodies impacts how we pray. I never pray on my knees, unless we kneel in church. I wonder if there is some virtue in it? The concept made sense to me, but I never have tried that very much, not since I was a small child kneeling next to my bed for night-time prayers.

I also thought it was interesting that he wants Wormwood to keep the patient's focus on the other people in church and how ordinary they all are -- even annoying -- and yet not consider what a wonder it is that such folks can be saved, as he is saved.
 
Newbie here. I've read and re-read Screwtape I-don't-know-how-many-times. I especially appreciate Screwtape's discussion in Chapter 2 of the letdown that comes after mountain-top experience.

He fumes, "The Enemy takes this risk because He has a curious fantasy of making all these disgusting little human vermin into what He calls His 'free' lovers and servants--'sons' is the word He uses, with His inveterate love of degradingthe whole spiritual world by unnatural liaisons with the two-loegged animals."

I'm unable to be a "son," but I know I'm God's "daughter"--because He said so.
 
Welcome Enpy! I didnt see you post before.

Interestingly, the significance of our being called 'sons' of God in the Bible is that the term used is for a first-born son, an elevated position -- the one destined to inherit all. Somehow, miraculously, God puts each of us, boys and girls, in that elevated position of his most beloved. :)

OK, I read way past what we are discussing -- I think we still need to go over Chapter Three. And I don't know if Benisse will be checking in much because her surgery is coming right up. So, everyone please feel free to post about chapter 3, and I will too, when I have the book in front of me.
 
Welcome Enpy -- Thanks so much for joining us :)
I know I should be up to Letter vi but I am just now getting to #iii & iv--

It's interesting but with my real life being so complicated right now, I have fallen for some of Screwtape's tricks -- rushed ritual prayers instead of times of really connecting with God, and rather shallow canned prayer requests on the fly rather than really seeking God's goodness and will for those around me and for the real challenges they face (or for myself). Oops!!

I guess I need to be more like Martin Luther, who said that when he was Really Extra busy he would spend an extra hour or so in prayer... or at least I need to be living more in a constant open attitude of prayerful dependence on God, that "real nakedness of the soul" mentioned at the end of Letter iv...

And thank you Inky for understanding when surgery next week gets me more behind. A friend of mine from another prayer group I am in had a very similar case history to mine, i.e., 2 unrelated cancers 21 years apart. So I am having the same procedures as she had, and she said the first week she couldn't do much of anything at all. So if I am scarce, that will be why. Thanks for carrying on... I'm really enjoying this book and appreciate getting to go through it with you even for a little bit.
 
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I can't be certain, but I suspect that Enpy is actually a good lady whom I have met in real life. And Benisse: yes, "mechanical" praying, though probably still better than no praying at all, IS a trap to be avoided.

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NOW AVAILABLE!! For those who have shown interest in my past music ministry, somebody has made a YouTube video of a song I wrote the words for! Lead vocal is Kevin S. Johnson, but I'm singing on there too. Recorded in 1976.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8fOzBbBHvQ&feature=youtu.be
 
Thanks for kicking this up CF -- I am afraid I let the reading group fall through the cracks while Benisse has been recovering! I will try to get back to it and post some thoughts soon. Anyone else still reading?
 
I finished the book a while ago. I loved it! :D I enjoyed it even more than I expected, and can't believe it took me this long to get around to reading such a great book.
 
Congrats D -- glad you liked the book. Okay, I'm recovered enough to be able to read and think at the same time. :rolleyes: So I will start posting some reflections to this thread again although I am way behind schedule... Tonight I'll rejoin the real live Screwtape Letters group I'm in and then write up some notes soon.
 
Great, thanks -- I finished the book, too, but I didn't make any notes to post, so I will have to go back and look at the chapters again ... Glad you're feeling much better, Benisse!
 
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