Letter 22 ......Finding Perfect Love

Screwtape begins this letter angrily, as the patient has found true love. The worst kind ever.

This girl is a Christian, a demure yet humorous, quiet, virginal, bread and butter Christian. The type that faints at the sight of blood, but dies with a smile.

Screwtape goes on to accuse God of being a hedonist (one who is centered on pleasure). Screwtape claims that fasting, vigils, stakes and crosses are a facade for what God really wants for us~which is pleasure.

Screwtape goes on to explain that everything has to be twisted before it can be used by them.

Here are some questions to discuss:
Describe the girl the patient falls in love with:

What does god really want for us?

Why does everything have to be twisted before the devil can use it?

Describe the women's family? Why do you think people change once they emerge from there?

What sounds do we hear in Heaven?

What sounds are heard in Hell and are filling the earth today?

Why is Screwtape transformed into a centipede?

Letter 21.....Who owns it anyway?

In this letter, Screwtape encourages Wormwood to attack the patient's peevishness. Now my vocabulary is not very large, so I had to look up the meaning of peevishness to fully understand the meaning. If anyone else needs help, here is the definition:
peevishness:
1 : querulous in temperament or mood : fretful
2 : perversely obstinate (a peevish child)
3 : marked by ill temper
What trespasses make us angry? Someone taking too much of our time? Someone overstepping their boundaries? Screwtape focuses on time throughout much of this letter. He points out that man assumes all things belong to him, including time and his body. I must admit, I never looked at my day as belonging to God. I actually thought I could give my time to Him. I do look at my body as mine since I occupy it. But, this letter points out how foolish we are. We did not create time or one ounce of our body (well, maybe we contributed to the fat and muscle tone). We just occupy both. How different we might behave if we thought we were working for someone else in this time and body.

Here are some discussion ?'s for today:

Who owns time?

Does this change how we should use it?

Who owns our bodies?

How would you feel if someone mistreated a gift you gave them?

Letter 20...Beauty and the Beast

In this letter, Screwtape discusses with his nephew the type of woman he would like to encourage the patient to "fall in Love" with. He goes on to disclose how the devils have been working for decades, using popular artists, dressmakers, actresses and advertisers to sell a certain type of woman that will appeal to a man's vanity. How true this is today.

Here are some questions to discuss with your students:
1. Why are attempts to forcibly end a man's chastity always unsuccesful?

2. Who does the devil enlist to help him influence man's definition of the "perfect" woman?

3. What type of woman according to the letter is pleasing to God? I will go ahead and answer that here, as it may be hard to discern in the letter: one who is charitable, readily obedient to marriage, coloured all through with the golden light of reverance and naturalness.

Letter 18....Falling in Love

This letter confused me a little. It almost seemed as if Lewis was suggesting marriage have nothing to do with love, which I heartily disagreed with. Was I confused by the worldly view of love today? I looked up marriage in my handy, dandy concordance, and there really wasn't much scripture about prerequisites to marriage. So, I remain confused. On to the letter:

This letter discusses falling in love. Screwtape points out that God wants either abstinence from us or complete monogamy in marriage. Screwtape discloses that the devils have made monogamy (staying with just one person) very difficult. The devils have done this by promoting the idea of "falling in love." He (Screwtape) explains that falling in love is a short term excitement that he wants humans to think should last forever. If that feeling of excitement doesn't last forever (which it won't) then a marriage should end.

I think the first point C.S. Lewis is trying to make in this letter is that the expectation that a long term relationship will have the giddiness of falling in love is not possible. That God describes marriage as "one flesh." God did not say marriage was a happy married couple or a couple that married because they fell in love, at least not in the way we define falling in love today. God created marriage so man and women could help each other, so they would not be lonely. Marriage does include love, but not the giddy kind of love we expect today, it has more of the enduring steadfast love. By expecting the excitement of new love to last throughout a lifetime will only produce disappointment.

The devils in this letter explain that they can use the idea of "falling in love" to tempt man to do many things. We will see exactly how this is done in the following letters.

Letter 17...Gluttony

This letter is about gluttony. What is gluttony? Gluttony is
1. Eating before the time of meal in order to satisfy the palate.
2. Seeking delicacies and better quality of food to gratify the "sense of taste."
3. Seeking after sauces and seasonings for the enjoyment of the palate.
4. Exceeding the necessary amount of food.
5. Taking food with too much eagerness, even when eating the proper amount, and even if the food is not luxurious.

So, while you may have thought gluttony was just overeating, it can also mean being too particular, eating just to eat or just focusing too much on food.

I never realized the true definition of gluttony included "Seeking delicacies, sauces and seasinings." I must admit, I fall into this category. We are vegetarians, and therefore, must be "priggish" when eating out with friends by refusing meat. I could easily turn vegetarianism into a large part of my day. Planning meals, going to this store for this and that store for that. Cooking detailed recipes to provide my family with sumptuous meals. Yep, it happens.

My husband has become spoiled by all this attention to diet and cooking. Sometimes after I've prepared a laborious meal he will exclaim, "Hmm, this needs something else, some sort of spice." Do you think it would be OK if I hit him with the gluttony stick?

Anyways, here's the questions for this letter:

How can focusing on food interfere with your life?

In what ways according to the letter are women made to be gluttonous?

In what ways are men to be made gluttonous?

Letter 16....Church shopping anyone?

One word that may help you understand this letter better is coterie: an intimate and often exclusive group of persons with a unifying common interest or purpose.

In this letter, Screwtape is alarmed that the patient has been loyal to one church.

What does he suggest Wormwood do about this situation?

What 2 reasons according to Screwtape is "church shopping" better than belonging to one church?

What does Screwtape suggest can be done between "party churches" to cause disruption?

Letter 15.....Live for the Present

Before we get started, here are a few words defined to help you understand the letter:

This topic actually came up in my Sunday school class this weekend. I've been amazed at how many times I've been able to apply what I've learned from these letters to my life throughout the past couple weeks and how much I've grown as a Christian.
We are studying Revelations, when the class began to argue over Millenium theory. Do Methodists prescribe to premellenialism, post mellenialism or amellenialism (Excuse the spelling, I'm too lazy to look it up)? Aagh, my mind screamed, just the topic to divide the class. Wouldn't Screwtape be happy. I happen to know one man in my class is very much a Revelations scholar. Stuck trying to figure out the future. I mentioned perhaps we should not put so much energy into trying to know the past (creationism) and trying to define the future, as we really need to focus on how we're living now.

Avarice: excessive desire for wealth or gain (hhmm, not much avarice in the world today, she says flippantly).

Philological: Study of literature or language.

Complacency: self satisfaction accompanied by unawareness of actual dangers or deficiency.

In this letter, Wormwood notes a lull in the war and wonders how he should take advantage of this lull. Should he use "Stupid confidence," or anxiety about the future? This question brings about a discussion of time. Time is defined as the past, present and future.

What is so bad about living in the past?

Why would the devils want us to avoid living in the present?

Which virtues look to the future?

How should we look to the past, present and future?

***Search for quotes about "living in the present" on google. Post your favorite quote here, remember to note the author.***