On Developing Church Participation For Evil Ends
Author’s Note: The speaker in this piece is Screwtape, a C.S. Lewis character who is one of the Devil’s minions. He is instructing another demon (Wormwood) on how to trick believers by leading them into unacceptable practices.
“Surely you know that if a man can’t be cured of churchgoing, the next best thing is to send him all over the neighborhood looking for the church that ‘suits’ him until he becomes a taster or connoisseur of churches.
The reasons are obvious. In the first place the parochial organization should always be attacked, because, being a unity of place and not of likings (preferences), it brings people of different classes and psychology together in the kind of unity the Enemy (Jesus) desires.
The congregational principle, on the other hand, makes each church into a kind of club, and finally, if all goes well, into a coterie or faction. In the second place, the search for a ‘suitable’ church makes the man a critic where the Enemy wants him to be a pupil. What He wants of the layman in church is an attitude which may, indeed, be critical in the sense of rejecting what is false or unhelpful, but which is wholly uncritical in the sense that it does not appraise—does not waste time in thinking about what it rejects, but lays itself open in uncommenting, humble receptivity to any nourishment that is going. (You see how groveling, how unspiritual, how irredeemably vulgar He is!)
This attitude, especially during sermons, creates the condition (most hostile to our whole policy) in which platitudes can become really audible to a human soul. There is hardly any sermon, or any book, which may not be dangerous to us if it is received in this temper.”
Is this not the same technique used to justify sectarian violence between religious sects. It seems to work just fine for the Devil in these circumstances that rationalize the terrorism, murder, hate and fear that kills the innocents while it imperils regional and world peace.
This attitude is no less dangerous to us in our daily lives and worship. When we choose criticism over humble acceptance and judgement over teach-ability, we fall for the Devils’s tricks. And the price we pay can ruin our lives.
Today, let us seek unity, peace and communion with our brothers and sisters as well as our faith. Then we can see the truth through the lies and deceptions of the adversary and its tricks.
Being taught,
Z gardener
Good Morning Garden 
Leave a comment