Slow and Steady

                In the twelfth letter of the Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis’s diabolical character, Screwtape, instructs his nephew, wormwood on the best way to ensure that his patient will go to Hell. Screwtape write that it is better to consume the patient’s time with trivial, silly things that take his mind of God, rather than having the patient commit a “big” sin. This way, the patient will be somewhat aware that something is wrong, but he will be too uneasy to face God. Wormwood must distract his patient with unimportant things like newspaper ads and people he doesn’t enjoy talking to. By doing this, he will ensure that his patient will say the same as one of Screwtape’s: “I now see that I spent most of my life in doing neither what I ought nor what I liked.” In this way, the patient will be unaware of what is happening to him because “the safest road to Hell is the gradual one”.

                I found this reading almost disturbing. I began to think about where in my own life I might be doing Nothing. I need to be more aware of all the things that I think I’m doing that don’t have any impact on my life. There are so many times when I say “just one more game of solitaire” or “just one more TV show” and I end up wasting my whole night. As I reflect on all the time that I have wasted doing pointless things I start to think about all the things I missed out on. I’ve missed out on time with family and friends as well as valuable sleep. I think that every struggles with different things, but this seems to be my biggest problem.

                Lewis also talks about uneasiness in this letter. In some instances it can be said that it is harder to face God with our smaller, unseen sins than with our big, visible sins. Because we cannot see God, we tend to forget that he always sees us. We think that if we don’t tell God about the fact that we think badly of others he won’t know. It is so much easier to ask for forgiveness for something that we know people have seen, like the big fight we had with our sister over Christmas Break. It is the smaller sins that slowly take us down the path to Hell.