Today's Reading
On time
[The demon Screwtape writes:]
The humans live in time but our Enemy destines them to eternity.
He
therefore, I believe, wants them to attend chiefly to two things:
to
eternity itself, and to that point of time //which they call the Present.
For the Present is the point //at which time touches eternity.
Of the
present moment, and of it only, humans have an experience /analogous to
the experience //which our Enemy has of reality as a whole; in it alone
freedom and actuality are offered them.
* analogous; comparable in certain respects, typically in a way that makes clearer the nature of the things compared.
He would therefore have them
continually concerned either with eternity (which means being concerned
with Him)
or with the Present—either meditating on their eternal union
with, or separation from, Himself,
or else obeying the present voice of
conscience, bearing the present cross, receiving the present grace,
giving thanks for the present pleasure.
* concerned either meditating~
Our business is to get
them away from the eternal, and from the Present.
With this in view, we
sometimes tempt a human (say a widow or a scholar) to live in the Past.
But this is of limited value, for they have some real knowledge of the
past and it has a determinate nature and, to that extent, resembles
eternity.
It is far better to make them live in the Future.
(아직 오지도 않은 미래에 산다는건 시간/인생허비를 의미하므로 마귀에게만 유리함)
Biological
necessity makes all their passions point in that direction already,
so
that [thought about the Future] inflames hope and fear.
Also, it is
unknown to them, so that in making them think about it we make them
think of unrealities.
미래는 미지라 미지를 생각함으로 비현실을 생각하게 만든다
(허나 미래역시 현실이지만 단지 우리가 생각하는 그런 미래는 아니기에 비현실로 부각될 뿐이다)
In a word, the Future is, of all things, the thing
least like eternity.
달리 말하면 미래란 영원과는 아주 무관한 일로 된다
It is the most completely temporal part of
time
미래란 가장 완벽한 임시/일시적인 시간의 한 부분이 되는건
—for the Past is frozen and no longer flows, 과거시간은 얼어붙어 더이상 흐르지 않고
and the Present is all
lit up with eternal rays.현제만이 영원한 빛으로 빛나게 된다
즉 현제만이 영원한것 처럼 부각되어 순간에만 집착하여 살므로 영원을 잊게되니
영원자체이신 하나님을 잊게된다는 의미로 들린다
From The Screwtape Letters
Compiled in Words to Live By
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. Words to Live By: A Guide for the Merely Christian. Copyright © 2007 by C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers.