Letter 15

This week, I chose to write about letter 15. This letter just stuck out to me when reading because of the topics it discussed. The main part of this letter was discussing the past, present, and future and also about eternity. Screwtape talks about what living in each will bring the patient and decides that living in the future is the best way to persuade the patient. A caption that stood out to me was, "It is far better to make live in the Future. Biological necessity makes all their passions point in that direction already so that the thought about the Future inflames hope and fear." I liked this passage because it made perfect sense. Out of all the of the letters, they have all seemed to hold a fiction sort of message, but I feel as though we do live a mojority of our lives concentrated on the Future. We are constantly questioning ourselves about next week, next year and so forth. He continues talking about how the Future is least like eternity and how the present and past are not as important. Another caption that stood out to me was, "Gratitude looks to the past and love to the present; fear, avarice, and ambition look ahead. Do you agree with this statement? Do we really think this way? This was the biggest question I had of myself.

This was definetely my favorite letter that we read thus far!! :) (and i was able to understand it!!)

Letter 8

This book never ceases to amaze me. It discusses so many different topics on levels I have never even come close to thinking about. I still have some difficulty reading the letters because of the format in which they're written, but I'm starting to understand the concepts better.

This week, I chose to concentrate on Letter 8. I found this to stick out the most out of the three letters assigned. One of the ideas that I would like to expand on is on page 38, when he states, "He really does want to fill the universe with a lot of loathsome little replicas of Himself..." I found this quote to be very powerful. It describes how Wormwood feels about God giving us these troughs and peaks to overcome. The paragraph before that quote also states that "One much face the fact that all the talk about His love for men, and His service being perfect freedom, is not mere propaganda, but appaling truth." This quote ties into the other one because it talks about the expectations that God sets for us. The way I interpretted the quote was that God doesn't have to sell anything to us, we'll believe anything that we see as being acceptable. It seems that in the perspective of C.S. Lewis, God isn't making humans unique and giving them their own personalities and opinions, but He's doing what he can to make humans most like him. Is this the thruth?

I personally don't see this quote as being entirely truthful because look at the amount of crime and sin we have in this world. However, I do believe that Lewis has a very little amount of truth in the quote. The Ten Commandments give us basic guidelines in which to live our lives. Would He have made these if sin wasn't something he expected? I just believe that He forgives us of our sins, knowing ahead of time that we will make mistakes along the way and by Him forgiving us, does he hope that we will learn to forgive and love others?

I'm sure that I've rambled on about nonsense, but just thinking into it a little deeper!!
Any insight?....