Reading C.S. Lewis

Hi Friends,

This week I've been reading Mere Christianity and Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis. Great stuff! So, I thought it would fun to share a few of my favorite quotes from my reading this week. Here ya go:

1) From Screwtape Letters (remember this is the demon Screwtape talking to his nephew Wormword): "We want him [Wormwood's 'patient' that they are trying to lure from his faith] to be in the maximum uncertainty, so that his mind will be filled with contradictory pictures of the future, every one of which arouses hope or fear. There is nothing like suspense and anxiety for barricading a human's mind against the Enemy [i.e., God]. He wants men to be concerned with what they do; our business is to keep them thinking about what will happen to them.

2) Also from Screwtape Letters, Screwtape's instruction to his nephew, Wormwood: "You must bring him [the 'patient'] in which he can pacts self-examination for an hour without discovering any of those facts about himself which are perfectly clear to anyone who has ever lived in the same house with him or worked in the same office."

3) From Mere Christianity: "We must not be surprised if we are in for a rough time. When a man turns to Christ and seems to be getting on pretty well (in the sense that some of his bad habits are now corrected) he often feels that it would now be natural if things went fairly smoothly. When troubles come along -- illnesses, money troubles, new kinds of temptation - he is disappointed. These things, he feels, might have been necessary to rouse him and make him repent in his bad old days; but why now? Because God is forcing him on, or up, to a higher level: putting him into situations where he will have to be very much braver, or more patient, or more loving, than he ever dreamed of being before. It seems to us all unnecessary: but that is because we have not yet had the slightest notion of the tremendous thing He means to make of us."

4) Along the same lines form Mere Christianity: "If we let Him - for we can prevent Him, if we choose - He will make the feeblest and filthiest of us into a ... dazzling, radiant, immortal creature, pulsating all through with such energy and joy and wisdom and love as we cannot now imagine, a bright stainless mirror which reflects back to God perfectly (though, of course, on a smaller scale) His own boundless power and delight and goodness. The process will be long and in parts very panful, but that is what we are in for. Nothing less. He meant what He said."

Do you have a favorite C.S. Lewis quote?