Screwtape Letters

I was reading once again in C.S. Lewis' The Screwtape Letters and I came across a bit on temptation that I wanted to share with you. It deals with a certain ploy of the demons to prolong our lives, thereby making us more likely to give in to their temptations, especially temptations of worldliness. (Remember the letters are written from a senior level devil--Screwtape--to a junior grade devil--Wormwood.)

"The truth is that the Enemy [God], having oddly destined these mere animals [humans] to life in His own eternal world, has guarded them pretty effectively from the danger of feeling at home anywhere else. That is why we must often wish long life to our patients; seventy years is not a day too much for the difficult task of unravelling their souls from Heaven and building up a firm attachment to the Earth....But, if only he [Wormwood's 'patient'] can be kept alive, you have time itself for your ally. The long, dull, monotonous years of middle-aged prosperity or middle-aged adversity are excellent campaigning weather. You see, it is so hard for these creatures [humans] to persevere. The routine of adversity, the gradual decay of youthful loves and youthful hopes, the quiet despair (hardly felt as pain) of ever overcoming the chronic temptations with which we have again and again defeated them, the drabness which we create in their lives, and the inarticulate resentment with which we teach them to respond to it--all this provides admirable opportunities of wearing out a soul by attrition. If, on the other hand, the middle years prove prosperous, our position is even stronger. Prosperity knits a man to the World. He feels that he is 'finding his place in it,' while it is finding its place in him. His increasing reputation, his widening circle of acquaintances, his sense of importance, the growing pressure of absorbing and agreeable work, build up in him a sense of being really at home on Earth, which is just what we want. You will notice that the young are generally less unwilling to die than the middle-aged and the old."

I have found both of Lewis' insights to be spot on. We humans do struggle persevering. We struggle with discouragement when our lives fall short of our hopes and dreams or when we feel as though time has passed us by OR we struggle with prosperity and success when things go as planned or even better. Either way it is worldliness! It is being too attached and focused upon this world! And all the while God has made us for another world! We need to live with an "other-worldliness."