Seeking God Knows What

I’ve been reading C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters, which, for those of you who do not know, is a series of letters written by a “higher up” (Screwtape) in the Devil/Satan’s world to his nephew (Wormwood) about Wormwood’s efforts to secure the damnation of his “patient”. PH asked if I had read it during my appointment with him on Thursday. Apparently, he had unearthed his copy and read it over his vacation. I said I had borrowed my parents’ copy and started it twice but never finished. He suggested I read it. So I found it in the stack of books on my bedside table and have been reading a few of the letters each day.

I came across this section in the 8th letter and it seems very apt for the place I am in right now.

“Now it may surprise you to learn that in His efforts to get permanent possession of a soul, He relies on the troughs even more than the peaks; some of His special favourites have gone through longer and deeper troughs than anyone else. The reason is this. To us a human is primarily food; our aim is the absorption of its will into ours, the increase of our own area of selfhood at its expense. But the obedience which the Enemy demands of men is quite a different thing. One must face the fact that all the talk about His love for men,a nd His service being perfect freedom, is not (as one would gladly believe) mere propaganda, but an appalling truth. He really does want to fill the universe with a lot of loathsome little replicas of Himself- creatures whose life, on a miniature scale, will be qualitatively like His own, not because He has absorbed them but because their wills freely conform to His. We want cattle who can finally become food. He wants servants who can finally become sons. We want to suck in, He wants to give out. We are empty and would be filled; He is full and flows over. Our war aim is a world in which Our Father Below has drawn all other beings into himself: the Enemy wants a world full of beings united to Him but still distict.”

I want to say more on this but Widget just woke up from her nap and we are going to get some lunch