Category Archives: C.S. Lewis

C.S. Lewis, critique group, Fifty Thousand Screaming People, Life Group lessons, reading, Screwtape's Good Advice, Writing

The July Report

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This was my first month for posting goals, so this report will be specific as to how I did on those goals. I’m posting this on the 30th because the 31st, right now, looks to be a day I won’t have time to post on.

Here are the goals I set on July 1st, and what I did toward them.

  • Type final edits on The Screwtape Letters study guide proposal; mail to the editor by July 3. I’m happy to say I accomplished this, mailing the proposal on July 2. Still waiting for an answer.
  • Complete proposal on In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People; edit; mail to agent by July 10. This will include work on the first 30 pages of the book, which are to be included. I finished this, but not until last night, July 29, a few minutes before midnight Central Time. While I wish I had finished it sooner, I think the extra time I took made both the proposal and the sample chapters better. Now the waiting begins.
  • Begin work on proposal on the Elijah and Elisha small group study guide. By the end of the month I would like to see the proposal essentially complete, and the weekly study sheets I prepared for Life Group expanded into chapters. If I can have it ready to mail to the editor by then, fine, but I’ll be satisfied mailing it in August. Alas, I did NOT finish this, and barely began it. I started looking at it only yesterday, and accomplished very little. This one will take some work, as I have to convert two page student handouts into sample chapters.
  • Attend critique group twice. At the first one present the synopsis for In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People; at the second present the concept for the Documenting America newspaper column, including marketing letter and one or two sample columns. I attended both critique group sessions, but at the second one, rather than taking “Documenting America” I opted for two more chapters of FTSP. Given that no one had seen these, I thought it best someone critique them before I turned them in with the proposal.
  • Finish organizing the scattered piles of paper about the house. Actually, I’d be satisfied to simply bring improved organization to this, even if I don’t finish it. At least I want to have all papers of all works in progress filed together, and drafts of all poems put in their assigned places. I did mostly accomplish this. Many, many things are in a proper place, logically filed and easily retrievable. I have some more to go, especially the poetry, but I feel much better about this. I can let the rest slide a month while I work on other things.
  • Organize the business end of writing, including establishing a mileage log so I can get rid of the scraps. As with the last item, this is mostly accomplished. I probably have 20 percent yet to be finished.
  • Continue to post to this blog, at least 10 posts this month, and preferably 15 to 18. Yes! I have been faithful to this blog, reaching my goal for posts–and none of them fluff posts, either.
  • Begin outlining the next life group lesson I’ll teach, and prepare it in a way it can become a small group study guide. I did this, and have the lesson series mostly planned (but not studied or written). However, based on what the class chose to do as the next lesson to be taught by the other teacher, I will have to choose another topic. I chose it, and began planning it. I’m not as far along as I’d like, but I have a good start.

Miscellaneous items accomplished include: reading for research and pleasure (but, as I learn more and more, a writer never reads only for pleasure); reading about ten blogs of writers, agents, or editors; a few poem critiques on Absolute Write; reading about promotion for writers.

So, all in all a productive, satisfying month for writing.

book reviews, C.S. Lewis

Book Review: THE SCREWTAPE LETTERS

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I first read The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis in 1975, and kept the small paperback copy I had of it until my daughter ran off with it (since returned). As a young man just starting my Christian walk, this book had a profound effect on me. Still, the years gave no opportunity for me to read it again until recently. I suggested to the co-teacher of our adult Sunday School class that this would be a good book to study. I found a study guide from Progeny Press, and we began the study last October, finishing up just today. While C.S. Lewis is sometimes very dense in his writing, everyone today said they were glad we did the study, that they got much out of it.

Now, much further into my Christian life, The Screwtape Letters has once again had a profound effect on me. I love the way Lewis puts himself into the voice of one of Satan’s helpers, the senior demon Screwtape, who is corresponding with his nephew Wormword. Wormwood is just beginning his career as a tempter, and has been assigned to a young man in England, about the time that World War 2 is beginning. We never do learn who Wormwood is tempting; his is simply identified as “the Patient”. But we learn much about him, as early in the book he becomes an adult convert to Christianity (reported by Wormwood and commented on by Screwtape in Letter 2). Screwtape tells Wormwood, “There is no need to despair; hundreds of these adult converts have been reclaimed after a brief sojourn in the Enemy’s [meaning God] camp and are not with us.”

Throughout the rest of the book, Screwtape coaches Wormwood in the art of temptation, while Wormwood, in letters that we don’t see, reports to Screwtape about what he is doing to tempt the patient and what the result is. The result is a wonderful insight into human nature, our relationship with God, and what temptation and sin are all about. When the patient’s rocky relationship with his mother does not improve after his conversion, Screwtape tells Wormwood, “It is…impossible to prevent his praying for his mother, but we have means of rendering the prayers innocuous. Make sure that they are always “spiritual,” that he is always concerned with the state of her soul and never with her rheumatism.” When the patient acquires a new set of friends, Screwtape says they “are just the sort of people we want him to know–rich, smart, superficially intellectual, and brightly sceptical about everything in the world.” When the patient meets and falls in love with a Christian woman who would be a perfect helpmate to him, Screwtape says of her, “a two-faced little cheat…who looks as if she’d faint at the sight of blood, and then dies with a smile…filthy, insipid little prude…she makes me want to vomit!”

With many such statements, Lewis keeps us entertained, while at the same time helping us to understand ourselves. In Letter 25 he talked about similarity and change, and has Screwtape tell how the world below has caused human (“two-legged vermin”) to have a horror of “the same old thing”. Humans want change, and the tempters should give it to them. But Screwtape warns Wormwood how God provides for change in a positive way. “The horror of the Same Old Thing is one of the most valuable passions we have produced in the human heart–an endless source of heresies in religion, folly in counsel, infidelity in marriage, and inconsistency in friendship…The humans…need change, [so] the Enenmy…has made change pleasurable to them….He has balanced the love of change in them by a love of permanence. He has contrived to gratify both tastes together in the very world He has made, by that union of change and permanence which we call Rhythm.” Wonder, wonderful stuff.

The main theme which seemed to stand out to me, in a way it didn’t 33 years ago, was that Screwtape advised Wormwood to direct the man into a state of confusion. Confusion is what drives people to Satan. Unsaid was that order drives people to God: orderly habits, orderly thinking, orderly praying, etc.

If you haven’t read The Screwtape Letters, I urge you to do so. Don’t just read it: study it, meditate on it, reflection on Lewis’s genius, and grow because of it.