Letter 4

To be completely candid, I find Screwtape’s comments on prayer in Letter 4 to be personally relevant. Focusing prayer is very difficult for me. Perhaps it’s because I’ve watched too much television and developed ADD from playing too much Super Mario Bros. More likely, it’s probably because I haven’t devoted myself to actually praying as much as I probably should have. I certainly have embraced Screwtape’s suggestion of making prayer “spontaneous, inward, informal, and unregularized.”

Whatever the cause, my prayer life is probably one which Screwtape would rejoice over. I can rarely identify with the experience Screwtape describes saying that “once thoughts and images have been flung aside...and the man trusts himself to the real, external, invisible presence there with him in the room…the incalculable may occur.”

Often times I’ve heard people say that prayer is primarily helpful because it makes the person praying into a more humble, spiritual, or selfless person. I’m sure prayer does these things, but it’s clear that Screwtape is more concerned about prayer provoking “the Enemy” to action.

I think C.S. Lewis is using Screwtape’s warning to advance his apparent belief that prayer is actually affective in actually accomplishes something. According to Lewis, when people pray and God often actually responds. God doesn’t just listen to prayer, God uses prayer as a means to undo evil’s grip on the world. That would be pretty awe-inspiring if it’s true.

Just think. According to Screwtape, “whenever there is prayer, there is danger of his immediate action.”

Accordingly, if you were to get down on your knees and pray, trusting yourself to God, the maker of the universe will actually not only listen to you, but may act immediately in light of your prayer.

That’s an astonishing claim--a claim that isn’t too far off Bible stories. In Genesis, Abraham pleads for the lives of everyone in Sodom, ultimately getting God to change God’s mind. Likewise in Exodus 32, Moses pleads for the lives of the Hebrews on the foot of Mt. Sinai and God relents from God’s actions.

I don’t know how a God who claims to be sovereign can also change plans in light of requests made by God’s own creatures, but there are millions of people wiser than me, from all walks of life and different faith traditions (Christian and non-Christian) who have found this to be true. There are intelligent men and women who have theories, attempting to break through this paradox and make it less mysterious. I’m not sure any of them are really successful in explaining it--though If someone claimed to fully explain the works of God, than I’d have to doubt them since no finite being could fully explain the infinite.

So, if God wants to listen to my prayers and somehow (while cloaked in mystery) act in light of them, I’m humbled. I’m also resolved to give more attention to spiritual actions like prayer for others who are in greater need than I am.

Letter 1

I wonder what it would be like to be in a world without propaganda. Imagine a world where filmmakers, pundits, novelists, and preachers were telling stories without any spin. Imagine if everyone from politicians to parents just told things like it really is, instead of their perception of things.

Screwtape points out how we are surrounded with a flood of philosophies, e.g., materialism, skepticism, pragmatism…blaah! Who cares! There are so many and they all lead to different conclusions and ways of seeing reality.

Perhaps that is why people today seem to be like Screwtape describes. There are so many ways of thinking, many of which we’ve unconsciously have “dancing about together” inside our heads, that we had to stop thinking of them “as primarily ‘true’ or ‘false’.

I have to wonder if C.S. Lewis, through Screwtape, is onto something when he says, “Above all, do not attempt to use science (I mean, the real sciences) as a defense against Christianity.” Philosophers can have great insight into the world and truth, but at the end of the day philosophers’ arguments just have to make sense. Scientists, however, have to not only make sense, their ideas about reality have to be testable in the physical realm. Perhaps the best way to find the truth isn’t to think about it and write a paper on the results, but to actually live it out in the physical world.

Maybe—just maybe—that is why the God of the Old Testament, who never had a fully physical body within creation never said, “I am the truth” but Jesus, who believed himself to be the incarnation of that God, could say those very words. Perhaps Jesus’ experience in the physical realm gave him the right to say that not only is he promoting the ideas, he’s living them out in reality and testing them. And if his ideas do turn out to be true, than perhaps he’s not just another pundit, but a real (and rare) straight-talker.