Pretty Cageful (Screwtape)

I still have my eyes glued to C.S. Lewis' book, "Screwtape Letters". I am taking it slow digesting his writings and finding relations between his thoughts and the Scriptures. It's really amazing when you read something, the Word of God pops in your mind a resemblance, a parallel.

"'These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me." Matthew 15:8 (niv) This is called "lip-service". We say what we "have to" say. It's not from the heart. When we worship God, all the "heartless" do is simply babble. I can see people with the heart of God who loves Him, serves Him, diligently works hard bringing Him the glory in the church and out in the world.

"Thus you nullify the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down. And you do many things like that." Mark 7:13 (niv) When we follow traditions, most of the time it's about religion, not relationships. God is interested in a relationship with us through our obedience to His commands in the Word.

In the "Screwtape", Screwtape wrote to Wormwood,

"Once you have made the World an end, and faith a means, you have almost won your man, and it makes very little difference what kind of worldly end he is pursuing. Provided that meetings, pamphlets, policies, movements, causes, and crusades, matter more to him than prayers and sacraments and charity, he is ours - and the more "religious" (on those terms) the more securely ours. I could show you a pretty cageful down here."

"Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it." Matthew 7:13 (niv)

You know, Satan is out to win your soul. He works extremely hard pressuring you and me into "religion" instead of "relationships". When Jesus quoted that "..many enter through it..", that explains why C.S. Lewis wrote thinking of Satan's mind, "..a pretty cageful down here.." Surely, he has multitudes of lost and rebellious souls in his den while only a faithful few in Heaven.