Today's Reading
Screwtape shows Wormwood [how to transform a minor trespass into a major sin]:
4
Here is your chance.
While [the Enemy], by means of sexual love and of
some very agreeable people far advanced in His service, is drawing the
young barbarian up to levels () he could never otherwise have reached, you
must make him feel that he is finding his own level
—that these people
are “his sort” and that, coming among them, he has come home.
When he
turns /from them /to other society he will find it dull; partly because
almost any society within his reach is, in fact, much less entertaining,
but still more because he will miss the enchantment of the young woman.
You must teach him to mistake his contrast between the circle //that
delights and the circle //that bores him
/for the contrast between
Christians and unbelievers.
* to mistake his contrast~ /for the contrast between
Christians and unbelievers.
He must be made to feel (he'd better not put
it into words) “how different we Christians are”;
and by “we
Christians” he must really, but unknowingly, mean “my set”;
and by “my
set” he must mean not “The people who, in their charity and humility,
have accepted me”,
but “The people with whom I associate /by right”.
* by right; properly; justly ⇒ by rights you should be in bed
Success
here depends on confusing him.
3
If you try to make him explicitly and
professedly proud of being a Christian, you will probably fail;
the
Enemy’s warnings are too well known.
If, on the other hand, you let the
idea of ‘we Christians’ drop out altogether and merely make him
complacent about ‘his set’,
you will produce not true spiritual pride but mere social vanity //which, by comparison, is a trumpery, puny little
sin.
3
* complacent; showing smug or uncritical satisfaction with oneself or one's achievements.
* trumpery; showy but worthless.
* puny; unimportant; insignificant; petty or minor:
[What you want] is to keep a sly self-congratulation /mixing with all
his thoughts and never allow him to raise the question
‘What, precisely,
am I congratulating myself about?’
3
동격; the question = ‘What, precisely,
am I congratulating myself about?’
* I congratulating myself about (what)?
[The idea of belonging to an inner
ring], of being in a secret, is very sweet to him.
Play on that nerve.
* play on ; 3. Fig. to exploit something—including a word—for some purpose; to develop something for some purpose.
* nerve; 2. a person's mental state, in particular the extent to which they are agitated or worried.
Teach him, using the influence of this girl /when she is silliest, to
adopt an air of amusement /at the things () the unbelievers say.
[Some
theories //which he may meet in modern Christian circles] may here prove
helpful;
theories, I mean, that place the hope of society /in some inner
ring of ‘clerks’, some trained minority of theocrats.
*theocracy. 1. a system of government in which
God or a deity is held to be the civil ruler; thearchy.
2. a system of
government by priests; hagiarchy. 3. a state under such a form of rule.
It is no affair of
yours [whether those theories are true or false];
the great thing is to
make Christianity a mystery religion //in which he feels himself one of
the initiates가입자.
* initiate; 명 a person who has been initiated into an organization or activity, typically recently.
동 admit (someone) into a secret or obscure society or group, typically with a ritual.
From The Screwtape Letters
Compiled in A Year with C.S. Lewis
The Screwtape Letters.
Copyright © 1942, C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. Copyright restored © 1996 C. S.
Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of
HarperCollins Publishers. A Year With C.S. Lewis: Daily Readings from His Classic Works. Copyright © 2003 by C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers.