Resisting the Prowling Lion – 40 Days with Screwtape

Day 30 – Tuesday after 5th Sunday of Lent

To Read:

From The Screwtape Letters:

Screwtape, a senior demon, is offering advice to Wormwood his nephew, an apprentice demon.  The language he uses is ‘upside down’ referring to God as ‘the Enemy’ and the devil as ‘Our Father Below’.

MY DEAR WORMWOOD

The sense of ownership in general is always to be encouraged.   The humans are always putting up claims to ownership which sound equally funny in Heaven and in Hell and we must keep them doing so.   Much of the modern resistance to chastity comes from men’s belief that they ‘own’ their bodies – those vast and perilous estates, pulsating with the energy that made the worlds, in which they find themselves without their consent and from which they are ejected at the pleasure of Another!   It is as if a royal child whom his father has placed, for love’s sake, in titular command of some great province, under the real rule of wise counsellors, should come to fancy he really owns the cities, the forests, and the corn, in the same way as he owns the bricks on the nursery floor.

We produce this sense of ownership not only by pride but by confusion.   We teach them not to notice the different senses of the possessive pronoun – the finely graded differences that run from ‘my boots’ through ‘my dog’, ‘my servant’, ‘my wife’, ‘my father’, ‘my master’ and ‘my country’, to ‘my God’.   They can be taught to reduce all these senses to that of ‘my boots’, the ‘my’ of ownership.   Even in the nursery a child can be taught to mean by ‘my Teddy-bear’ not the old-imagined recipient of affection to whom it stands in a special relation (for that is what the Enemy will teach them to mean if we are not careful) but ‘the bear I can pull to pieces if I like’.   And at the other end of the scale, we have taught men to say ‘My God’ in a sense not really very different from ‘My boots’, meaning ‘The God on whom I have a claim for my distinguished services and whom I exploit from the pulpit – the God I have done a corner in’.

And all the time the joke is that the word ‘Mine’ in its fully possessive sense cannot be uttered by a human being about anything.   In the long run either Our Father or the Enemy will say ‘Mine’ of each thing that exists, and specially of each man.   They will find out in the end, never fear, to whom their time, their souls, and their bodies really belong – certainly not to them, whatever happens.   At present the Enemy says ‘Mine’ of everything on the pedantic, legalistic ground that He made it:  Our Father hopes in the end to say ‘Mine’ of all things on the more realistic and dynamic ground of conquest.

Your affectionate uncle


SCREWTAPE

To Reflect:

Screwtape is eternally correct; the word ‘Mine!’ can only ever be ultimately uttered by God or the devil.  If we think we can ‘own’ anything we start the road downhill to the one who wants to devour his possessions instead of handing over our possessions (and our very life) to God and find ourselves set free on the journey heavenward.

Whenever I have felt lost, isolated, and confused one scripture verse holds me and helps me forward.  I first encountered this in the music of The Fisherfolk who sang;

Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. (Isaiah 43.1)

‘You are mine!’

I know that one of the reasons why this means so much to me was due to the struggle I had with names at Boarding School.  Going to a Military school we were called not by name but by our locker numbers instead – for someone to use your name was a special moment.  But, on the other hand, having an unusual surname – after all not many people reading these words will know anyone else surnamed Dotchin – led to a series of aberrations and variations of my name which drove me to anger, frustration and, quite often, tears.  I know that this was not just my experience but that of many others as well.  I suspect things remain the same amongst adolescents the world over…

However as I grew into a deeper knowledge of the One who Loves me Best I found that to be called by my name by Him brought freedom and joy.   This has had a deep effect on me and, to the frustration of Registrars when I complete Marriage Certificates, I now name myself simply ‘Andrew’ and long to hear God whispering my name, looking to the day when I will be held forever close to his bosom.

To want to own things, to chase after them and label them as ‘mine’ means I remain in a contest (a war even) with those around me.  ‘Ownership’ commits me to a daily struggle to grab hold of things, wrest control of events from others, and ultimately possess my desires. And in so doing I forget that I am as much possessed by my possessions as I think I own them.

To learn to be owned by God, to rest in the knowledge of God’s care and guidance for my good (though the path is full of challenges and works against my basest desires) is to discover freedom and joy.  I have learnt that when I give myself over to being ‘His’ I finally discover what it is to be ‘me’.

A Psalm To Ponder:

To the beauty and bounty of your creation and grace, we have responded, O God, with desecration and greed.  We have presumed upon the constant renewal of your gifts.  Give us patient hearts and the will to cherish the earth, that we may know you again as our redeeming Creator, bringing good from our wastes and sorrows.  AMEN.     (Jim Cotter)