P
Peter_J
Guest
Dear Anglicans,
For your own safety and that of your computer, I suggest sitting and putting down your coffee cup, because I want to praise one of your number.
(Just thought I should start with a little dramatic flare.) I mean C.S. Lewis, for this passage from The Screwtape Letters:
“The use of fashions in thought is to distract men from their real dangers. We direct the fashionable outcry of each generation against those vices of which it is in the least danger, and fix its approval on the virtue that is nearest the vice which we are trying to make endemic. The game is to have them all running around with fire extinguishers whenever there’s a flood; and all crowding to that side of the boat which is already nearly gone under. Thus we make it fashionable to expose the dangers of enthusiasm at the very moment when they are all really becoming worldly and lukewarm. A century later, when we are really making them all Byronic and drunk with emotion, the fashionable outcry is directed against the mere understanding of mere intellectual Christianity. Cruel ages are put on their guard against sentimentality; feckless and idle ones, against respectability; lecherous ones, against puritanism; and whenever all men are really hastening to be slaves or tyrants, we make liberalism the prime bogey.”
Now this may be a little bit of a stretch, but I want to compare this with John 8 (I have to get one scripture in to make our Protestants brothers listen, right?
) where the people were carrying, not fire extinguishers obviously, but stones:
The scribes and Pharisees brought to Him a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before them and said, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such a woman. So what do You say?”
They said this to test Him, in order to have a basis for accusing Him. But Jesus bent down and began to write on the ground with His finger.
When they continued to question Him, He straightened up and said to them, “Whoever is without sin among you, let him be the first to cast a stone at her.”
See the connection with people “running around with fire extinguishers whenever there’s a flood”? They focused their righteousness against a criminal to whom the law showed absolutely no leniency, not against e.g. men who divorced their wives with no penalty at all (Mark 10:4-5, “Moses permitted a man to write a certificate of divorce and send her away.” “It was because your hearts were hard that Moses wrote you this law,” Jesus replied.)
For your own safety and that of your computer, I suggest sitting and putting down your coffee cup, because I want to praise one of your number.
(Just thought I should start with a little dramatic flare.) I mean C.S. Lewis, for this passage from The Screwtape Letters:
“The use of fashions in thought is to distract men from their real dangers. We direct the fashionable outcry of each generation against those vices of which it is in the least danger, and fix its approval on the virtue that is nearest the vice which we are trying to make endemic. The game is to have them all running around with fire extinguishers whenever there’s a flood; and all crowding to that side of the boat which is already nearly gone under. Thus we make it fashionable to expose the dangers of enthusiasm at the very moment when they are all really becoming worldly and lukewarm. A century later, when we are really making them all Byronic and drunk with emotion, the fashionable outcry is directed against the mere understanding of mere intellectual Christianity. Cruel ages are put on their guard against sentimentality; feckless and idle ones, against respectability; lecherous ones, against puritanism; and whenever all men are really hastening to be slaves or tyrants, we make liberalism the prime bogey.”
Now this may be a little bit of a stretch, but I want to compare this with John 8 (I have to get one scripture in to make our Protestants brothers listen, right?
) where the people were carrying, not fire extinguishers obviously, but stones:The scribes and Pharisees brought to Him a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before them and said, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such a woman. So what do You say?”
They said this to test Him, in order to have a basis for accusing Him. But Jesus bent down and began to write on the ground with His finger.
When they continued to question Him, He straightened up and said to them, “Whoever is without sin among you, let him be the first to cast a stone at her.”
See the connection with people “running around with fire extinguishers whenever there’s a flood”? They focused their righteousness against a criminal to whom the law showed absolutely no leniency, not against e.g. men who divorced their wives with no penalty at all (Mark 10:4-5, “Moses permitted a man to write a certificate of divorce and send her away.” “It was because your hearts were hard that Moses wrote you this law,” Jesus replied.)
I’ve read much of Lewis’ writings, excepting his professional college papers, and I cannot make any connection to his words and yours. I hope you aren’t implying what I think you are–sorry to be vague, but I don’t want to excite anyone over my assumptions. So, in the interest of clarity and charity, could you please explain what connection you see in your examples? They seem to have escaped me–at least I hope they have if what I suspect you’re trying to say is what you’re trying to say. 