Today's Reading
Screwtape expands /on developing church participation for evil ends:
Surely
you know that if a man can’t be cured of churchgoing,
the next best
thing is to send him /all over the neighbourhood /looking for the church
that ‘suits’ him
/until he becomes a taster or connoisseur of churches.
The
reasons are obvious. In the first place the parochial organisation
should always be attacked,
because, being a unity of place and not of
likings,
it brings people of different classes and psychology together
in the kind of unity the Enemy desires.
The congregational principle, on
the other hand, makes each church into a kind of club,
and finally, if
all goes well, into a coterie or faction.
In the second place, the
search for a ‘suitable’ church makes the man a critic /where the Enemy
wants him to be a pupil.
[What He wants of the layman in church] is an
attitude //which may, indeed, be critical in the sense of rejecting what
is false or unhelpful, but which is wholly uncritical /in the sense that
it does not appraise
—does not waste time /in thinking about what it
rejects, but lays itself open in uncommenting, humble receptivity /to any
nourishment //that is going.
(You see how grovelling, how unspiritual,
how irredeemably vulgar He is!)
This attitude, especially during
sermons, creates the condition (most hostile to our whole policy)
in
which platitudes can become really audible to a human soul.
* Platitude 진부한 말/것 a flat, dull, or trite remark, especially one uttered as if it were fresh or profound.
There is
hardly any sermon, or any book, which may not be dangerous to us if it
is received in this temper.
만약에 이런 마음 상태 즉 평가하기 보다는 영혼에 영양이 될걸 찾아 받으려는 겸손한 마음상태로 받는다면
어떤 설교나 책이든 마귀들에게 위험하지 않은것은 없다
설교가 시시하다고 평가하는 마음자세가 아니고
그 시시하다 보이는 설교에서 내게 유익한 것을 찾아 받으려는 마음자세는 마귀를 대적하는 자세다
* us = devils
* Temper ; a particular state of mind or feelings.
이 글은 마귀들끼리 할 수 있는 말들이라
우리에게 적용하려면 그 반대의 상황을 생각해 보아야 한다
the condition which is most hostile to our whole policy 마귀들의 철칙에 가장 적대적인 조건
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.
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