Screwtape reveals Hell’s intentions for human marriage: 마귀가 드러낸 지옥의 결혼관

[soso]

Screwtape reveals Hell’s intentions for human marriage: 마귀가 드러낸 지옥의 결혼관

[The Enemy’s demand on humans] takes the form of a dilemma;

either complete abstinence or unmitigated monogamy. 

Ever since our Father’s first great victory, we have rendered [the former] [very difficult to them]. 

The latter, for the last few centuries, we have been closing up /as a way of escape. 

We have done this /through the poets and novelists /by persuading the humans

/that [a curious, and usually shortlived, experience //which they call ‘being in love’] is the only respectable ground for marriage;

that marriage can, and ought to, render [this excitement] [permanent];

and that [a marriage //which does not do so] is no longer binding.

This idea is our parody of an idea that came from the Enemy. 

The whole philosophy of Hell rests /on recognition of the axiom //that one thing is not another thing,

and, specially, that one self is not another self. 

My good is my good and your good is yours. 

[What one gains] another loses. 

Even an inanimate object is [what it is by excluding all other objects from the space () it occupies;

if it expands, it does so by thrusting other objects aside or by absorbing them. 

A self does the same. 

With beasts the absorption takes the form of eating; 

for us, it means the sucking of will and freedom /out of a weaker self /into a stronger. 

‘To be’ means ‘to be in competition’.

From The Screwtape Letters
Compiled in A Year with C.S. Lewis