Against Our Ancient Foe

I have gone through a strange thing this weekend... all tied up in a packaging of conversation, Hurricane Florence, delicious food, and letting myself fall asleep without finishing a routine.

So much strangeness. But it is all perfect, the perfectest strangeness.

I won't go into what exactly happened. Maybe I will later.

Because of what has happened, I've been brought back to something that I've thought on intermittently in the past: the spiritual fight, against Satan, that C.S. Lewis delves into a bit in The Screwtape Letters. I have a great deal of anger, and I realised more concretely that my anger should be directed at Satan... that it is fitting to direct it at him. He is the one who has done that which I am angry at.

So throughout these past two or three days, I thought of the last part of the first verse of A Mighty Fortress Is Our God. Then, now, I looked it up, and I want to post it here, because all of it is rather pertinent to what I'm going through recently. It seems that one does not always realise what a hymn is saying until somehow things in one's life relate to the hymn.

A mighty fortress is our God,
A bulwark never failing:
Our helper He, amid the flood
Of mortal ills prevailing.
For still our ancient foe
Doth seek to work his woe;
His craft and power are great,
And armed with cruel hate,
On earth is not his equal.

Did we in our own strength confide,
Our striving would be losing;
Were not the right Man on our side,
The Man of God's own choosing.
Dost ask who that may be?
Christ Jesus, it is he;
Lord Sabbaoth is his name,
From age to age the same,
And He must win the battle.

And though this world, with devils filled,
Should threaten to undo us,
We will not fear, for God hath willed
His truth to triumph through us.
The Prince of Darkness grim,—
We tremble not for him;
His rage we can endure,
For lo! His doom is sure,—
One little word shall fell him.

That word above all earthly powers—
No thanks to them—abideth;
The Spirit and the gifts are ours
Through him who with us sideth.
Let goods and kindred go,
This mortal life also:
The body they may kill:
God's truth abideth still,
His kingdom is for ever.

So right now, I have been thinking particularly about Satan's 'craft and power', how he keeps me from doing things, by keeping me from caring about anything. And when I was steeling myself to do what I intended to do this weekend, all the doubts and half-truths came creeping in, telling me why I should not do the thing, why it won't work, and revealing that (indeed) I had no idea how I was going to do it, and I couldn't even focus well enough to figure out how: my brain is a fog.

And so, I fought. Satan will not have me... I will try to fight the influence, to let God fill me with the intention to do what is right. I have not let God do that. I have not followed my conscience, and done what I knew I ought to do. May God's glory flow in, in richness.

'In your hearts enthrone him, there let him subdue 

all that is not holy, all that is not true'

(from the hymn At the Name of Jesus Every Knee Shall Bow)

From Niceness to Humility

(This may somewhat reiterate what has been said in a previous post. Bear with me if it does.)


It seems a bit of an obsession these days to equate being nice with moral goodness. What is seen as a good way to treat someone is whatever least encumbers or inconveniences someone, with the constant refrain of 'if it doesn't hurt anyone, it's fine.' What it ends up being, I think, is serving our wants and pleasures in the present with no true consideration of the bigger picture. The bigger picture to people is a matter of how someone feels. The premise for this, I think, might be the recent idea that it is most important to build up and maintain a healthy self-esteem. It could potentially destroy a student's self-esteem to tell them that they can't have an A for a paper they wrote very poorly. Especially when it is not a matter of an achievement not achieved, people still seem to find it more difficult to tell someone plainly that they need to put in more work; they did poorly.

We've been gradually losing the ability to tell the difference between what is right and what is wrong in the murky waters of being 'nice'. The constant refrain is to be tolerant to others, and true tolerance has been lost in the notion that if you disagree publicly with what someone else thinks or is doing, you are intolerant. You cannot disagree politely; you cannot disagree at all. Conflict of any sort, even healthy conflict with the possibility of problem-solving, is seen as wrong.

Firm parenting is also falling by the wayside. Even those of us who do believe in moral absolutes fall prey to this philosophy; it is creeping into many conservative circles, even. There is no defense against it, because most of us who still have a sense of truth have not learned why we should believe in truth.

A lot of people in the West have been turned into at least minor versions of codependents. Maybe it's going too far, and I certainly may focus a bit too much on the negative, but I think that our society is being transformed into a codependent society, out of the ashes of a society that believed in personal responsibility and true virtue and charity.

To some extent I think that the gravitation towards this 'being nice' is because it is much easier than standing against the flow for some conviction. There is social pressure to be 'tolerant', and most people have no energy nor time to consciously avoid that pressure (or at least one would not do it unless one thought it was worth it).

It's also a really convenient way to see things, as it allows one to validate one's selfish idea that one is the centre of the universe: that one deserves validation and boosting of self esteem.

It seems to me it's a vicious cycle of various ways in which our society and we ourselves reinforce this idea that viewing oneself positively is the way to go; it'll be psychologically better for us in the long run, because thinking positively about yourself is obviously what alleviates worry... or so we tell ourselves.

Wait a moment. Do we really need to boost ourselves up to be healthy? Does boosting ourselves really result in happiness?

Having to concern oneself with oneself is, I think, a result of our worry and need for control. Keeping up the façade of a perfect self by trying to have positive things to think about oneself is exhausting. It is keeping up the façade to ourselves that is most exhausting, and perhaps it is impossible not to do that if you are trying to keep a perfect exterior. Besides that secretly, we want to think well of ourselves, even those of us who self-deprecate as if our lives depended on it. But the solution is not for people to think any differently about themselves, for in ourselves we do not know ourselves better. We know ourselves by looking upward (to God), and thus also outward, engaging the world. If we stop concerning ourselves with ourselves, we will learn to see ourselves through our plain eyes, not through rose-coloured or mud-spattered glasses.

Here is C.S. Lewis, from Mere Christianity, painting a picture of humility-

'Do not imagine that if you meet a really humble man he will be what most people call "humble" nowadays: he will not be a sort of greasy, smarmy person, who is always telling you that, of course, he is nobody. Probably all you will think about him is that he seemed a cheerful, intelligent chap who took a real interest in what you said to him. If you do dislike him it will be because you feel a little envious of anyone who seems to enjoy life so easily. He will not be thinking about humility: he will not be thinking about himself at all.
      If anyone would like to acquire humility, I can, I think, tell him the first step. The first step is to realise that one is proud. And a biggish step, too. At least, nothing whatever can be done before it. If you think you are not conceited, it means you are very conceited indeed.'

We should not boost each other up into any lies and vices of our human hearts (like the notion that we're sparkly, rainbow-maned unicorns). We must not feed each other the lie that what matters about a person is how normal or special they are. It is completely unnecessary. It's futile to mind your value in relation to others. Truth is much more important, and in the long term, more fruitful.

Man or Rabbit?

The essay Man or Rabbit? by C. S. Lewis struck me when I read it, though the ideas in it were already familiar. I met it reading through God in the Dock, a book full of essays by Lewis which I am still ploughing through gradually.

The essay responds to the question, 'Can't you lead a good life without believing in Christianity?' Though I am not of the mind of those to whom he is responding, I still naturally struggle with giving myself wholly to God (and I always will, till death, doubtless), and this brings some truths relating to that right down to earth for me.

Without further ado, if you wish to read it, here Man or Rabbit? is.

(If the link stops working, and you drop a comment, I will fix it.)