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3R Thursday: The Safest Road to Hell
Rumination
From The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis (Letter XII) (discussing a Christian’s proclivity to neglect his prayers):
Reflection
Uncle Screwtape hit hard with this letter.
By neglecting our prayers, “anything or nothing is sufficient to attract [our] wandering attention.”
How true is that?
It’s not that “good” things get in the way of our prayers.
Date night with our wife
Play time with our kids
Ruminating with our parents
Working on our craft
It’s anything—even “a column of advertisements from yesterday’s paper”—or the endless barrage of
posts
tweets
blogs
newsletters
podcasts
recipes
hacks
tips
tricks
that keep us distracted from meaningful time with the God of the Universe—our Savior, Redeemer, and King.
1 O Lord, my heart is not lifted up;
my eyes are not raised too high;
I do not occupy myself with things
too great and too marvelous for me.
2 But I have calmed and quieted my soul,
like a weaned child with its mother;
like a weaned child is my soul within me.
3 O Israel, hope in the Lord
from this time forth and forevermore.
As our prayers go, so goes the activities that we “ought” to do and “like” to do.
Family devotion
Leading our wives in prayer
Bible study
Discipleship
Deep reading and writing
Hard work
Taking dominion over the garden
The activities are quietly replaced with ~nothing~ and “Nothing is very strong.”
Have you ever been in a Scrolling Trance—the “Nothing” of our time?
And then suddenly snapped out of it? Wondering where you were for that brief period of time? Lost in your own world, engrossed with the content you were consuming via pixels and computing power?
Yeah, me neither…
Aggregate that one instance over the last 10 years and Nothing really adds up.
Forecast that phenomenon over the next 10 years and Nothing becomes “very strong.”
Computing power gets faster.
Content becomes more engrossing.
Porn becomes more sinister.
Advertisers become better at keeping our eyes affixed to our screens.
C.S. Lewis’ observation of Nothing is worth sharing again:
And Nothing is very strong: strong enough to steal away a man’s best years—not in sweet sins but in a dreary flickering of the mind over it knows not what and knows not why, in the gratification of curiosities so feeble that the man is only half aware of them, in drumming of fingers and kicking of heels, in whistling tunes that he does not like, or in the long, dim labyrinth of reveries that have not even lust or ambition to give them a relish, but which, once chance association has started them, the creature is too weak and fuddled to shake off.
There is no “spectacular wickedness” here.
Only the Scrolling Trance—the Nothing of our time.
We just need incremental separation from God for the devils-in-training to be successful.
Indeed, the safest road to Hell is the gradual one—the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.
Praise God we have a Savior who conquered the grave and provides everlasting life!
The Safest Road to Hell is through incremental separation from God. The Only Road to Heaven is through Jesus Christ (John 14).
1 Oh sing to the Lord a new song;
sing to the Lord, all the earth!
2 Sing to the Lord, bless his name;
tell of his salvation from day to day.
3 Declare his glory among the nations,
his marvelous works among all the peoples!
4 For great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised;
he is to be feared above all gods.
5 For all the gods of the peoples are worthless idols,
but the Lord made the heavens.
6 Splendor and majesty are before him;
strength and beauty are in his sanctuary.
Reading
What is New Covenant Theology? An Introduction by A. Blake White
The Law of Christ: A Theological Proposal by A. Blake White
The Common Law by Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.