The Dawn Treader

"You will say that these are very small sins; and doubtless, like all young tempters, you are anxious to be able to report spectacular wickedness. But do remember, the only thing that matters is the extent to which you separate the man from the Enemy. It does not matter how small the sins are provided that their cumulative effect is to edge the man away from the Light and out into the Nothing. Murder is no better than cards if cards can do the trick. Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one—the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts."

~ Screwtape Letters

I like how C.S. Lewis draws our attention away from the spectacular to the mundane.  "Murder is no better than cards if cards can do the trick."

The fact is, whatever draws our attention away from the Light into the Nothing (Lewis' expression for hell), is deadly.  Most Christians, including myself, struggle more with drift than anything else.  We get gradually lulled into the trivial, slowly but surely taking our eyes of the Real.  We then begin to develop what Lewis calls a "vague cloud of half-conscious guilt."  In other words, a dim uneasiness within us grows and lets us know that all is not well spiritually, but it is often not powerful enough to awaken us to repentance.  That is what is so deadly about it.  The spectacular sins are the ones which often awaken our spiritual sensibilities and get us back on our knees before God, where we ought to be.  The little sins, often in the form of simple but unhealthy habits, are the ones that can wreak such havoc over a lifetime.

Do you have an dim uneasiness growing within you?

I really appreciate the musical talent as well as the heart of U2. Even more so after trying to learn to play their tunes. The philosophers and I are learning this tune.  I have the joy of playing Adam Clayton's hooky bass line.  Fun ... and hard.

"You begin to see the point? Thanks to processes which we set at work in them centuries ago, they find it all but impossible to believe in the unfamiliar while the familiar is before their eyes. Keep pressing home on him the ordinariness of things. Above all, do not attempt to use science (I mean, the real sciences) as a defense against Christianity. They will positively encourage him to think about realities he can't touch and see. There have been sad cases among the modern physicists. If he must dabble in science, keep him on economics and sociology; don't let him get away from that invaluable "real life". But the best of all is to let him read no science but to give him a grand general idea that he knows it all and that everything he happens to have picked up in casual talk and reading is "the results of modem investigation". Do remember you are there to fuddle him. From the way some of you young fiends talk, anyone would suppose it was our job to teach!"

~ Uncle Screwtape, Letter one of the Screwtape Letters

It is amazing how many Christians think that the main opponent to Christianity is atheism ... scientists in lab coats who have uncovered all the answers to how things work and how we got there, leaving no room for God in the process.

The problem is not atheists ... or scientists who have filled in all the gaps in our knowledge, which of course, they haven't.  The problem is not even the great questions of life like suffering ... the problem is the ordinary.  The problem is the familiar.  As Uncle Screwtape puts it so succinctly, "it is all but impossible to believe in the unfamiliar while the familiar is before our eyes".

We substitute "real life" ... real with a lowercase "r" ... for Real life.  In other words, we distract ourselves with the ordinary ... we busy ourselves with the mundane ... and never take time to reflect on or see what is really real and truly true.

Instead, we keep our heads down and keep on pedaling as fast as we can ... focusing on the trivial while the extraordinary goes unnoticed.

The enemy is the ordinary ... and our tendency to be obsessed by it.