Notable and Quotable

Posted by Kendall Harmon

Do what you will, there is going to be some benevolence, as well as some malice, in your patient's soul. The great thing is to direct the malice to his immediate neighbours whom he meets every day and to thrust his benevolence out to the remote circumference, to people he does not know. The malice thus becomes wholly real and the benevolence largely imaginary. There is no good at all in inflaming his hatred of Germans if, at the same time, a pernicious habit of charity is growing up between him and his mother, his employer, and the man he meets in the train. Think of your man as a series of concentric circles, his will being the innermost, his intellect coming next, and finally his fantasy. You can hardly hope, at once, to exclude from all the circles everything that smells of the Enemy: but you must keep on shoving all the virtues outward till they are finally located in the circle of fantasy, and all the desirable qualities inward into the Will. It is only in so far as they reach the will and are there embodied in habits that the virtues are really fatal to us.

--C.S. Lewis, Screwtape Letters, letter VI

Filed under: * Theology • Pastoral Theology

4 Comments
Posted March 16, 2010 at 7:55 am [Printer Friendly] [Print w/ comments]



1. Raised as an Atheist wrote:

My adult Sunday School class is going through the Screwtape Letters.  It’s my first time through this fascinating and thought-provoking book.  This quote captured the class’s attention and energy as we discussed this letter.  Like many parents, I am trying hard to encourage virtuous habits in my often-recalcitrant children.  Their resistance only makes Screwtape’s words echo in my head all the louder.

March 16, 9:10 am | [comment link]
2. Milton wrote:

It is only in so far as they reach the will and are there embodied in habits that the virtues are really fatal to us.

Deeds must match words.

“Be not a hearer only of the word, but a doer as well.”

March 16, 9:13 am | [comment link]
3. CBH wrote:

The Screwtape letters are a wonderful a source of reflection during every Lenten Season.  If we look at all our venial sins as just little sins that are part of our personality and do not confess them and turn from them, they will eventually become our own mortal sins.  Our church has distanced ourselves from Confession.  For those of us in our later years that is a serious concern.  All of those little venial sins which have become our personality’s besetting sins - all deeply embedded in our Pride – must be searched out, confessed, conquered in penitence as we prepare for that great hope of seeing our Lord face to face.  This is not a season to feel so swell about ourselves and a wonderful time to take care of business so that we may be clean to sit with our Lord on Maunday Thursday, to weep on Good Friday, and to welcome Him on Easter morning with understanding JOY.

March 16, 9:34 am | [comment link]
4. New Reformation Advocate wrote:

Thanks, Kendall, and a loud Amen to #1.

That choice part about malice that’s directed to our neighbors nearby being wholly real and benevolence that merely projected outward far away being largely imaginary is vintage C. S. Lewis.  So true.  So powerful, and convicting.

David Handy+

March 16, 3:15 pm | [comment link]
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