4 thoughts on “The Screwtape Letters | Letter Nine”
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“Talk to him about ‘moderation in all things.’ If you can once get home to the point of thinking that ‘religion is all very well up to a point’,you can feel quite happy about his soul. A moderated religion is as good for us as no religion at all-and more amusing”. (Pg 46). Screwtape is looking to keep us stagnant in our learning of the enemy’s ways. We are kept in “good enough” category and Screwtape has more ability to show others that the enemy’s ways are weak and ineffective.
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Whether the “desponding type” you tend to see the worst in a situation or or the “wishful thinking type” where everything is sunshine and rainbows, One has you never seeing the good God is doing through all aspects of life and you can blame him and resent him when life is messy or painful. The other temperament can cause you to have a false idea of what it means to follow Jesus. I have met Christians that think that when they made the choice to follow Jesus life would turn out to be perfect, that is not at all what Jesus promised. What can come out of the sunshine and rainbows temperament is the Prosperity Gospel.
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When we are in a despondent state we are more easily tempted. If we are a more hopeful person but find ourselves in a trough we can be manipulated to believe that it is to be expected and that our period of spiritual fervor was just a phase and not meant to be sustained. Your attitude can be one of losing interest. What I got from this is that it is so easy to become complacent about our faith and lose the joy of our earlier awakening.
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The enemy finds what sinful acts we like to engage and exploit them to keep us away from a relationship with Jesus. He uses the modern world to keep us worldly and adapts accordingly. If we aren’t reading the Bible, we won’t know what is truth.
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