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XianDominSJ -> RE: The Screwtape Letters (11/17/2007 3:59:14 AM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: twelveroundsfan
...did anyone else find C.S. Lewis's The Screwtape Letters to be an excellent illustration of the morbidity of Christianity itself?
Was the book, its Hellish setting, or Christianity itself morbid? I guess it all depends on how you view Hell. From the Christian viewpoint, it’s is a mixed bag—morbid (as you put it) in some ways, but bittersweetly comforting in others. On the one hand, it’s a dreadful destination and the passages that describe it (e.g., Mark 9:48) could certainly be considered “morbid.” On the other hand, it’s not wrong to take comfort in God’s justice either. In fact, part of the reason for the commands against revenge is precisely because Christians are to trust in God’s justice in eternity. When I look around and see victimization, exploitation, manipulative people and other misery humans inflict on one another, I can take a measure of comfort in knowing the God is just and will repay those who do not turn from those things and accept forgiveness. Bottom line is this: When a Christian delights in Heaven, it’s with the knowledge that we’re there by mercy and grace (not because we are righteous or “good enough”) and when we contemplate Hell, it’s tempered with the knowledge that, as sinner ourselves, we’re deserving of the same. Should Christians get “as much pleasure from imagining the sinners in hell as from imagining the saints in heaven” (as you state)? In short, no, because God has “no pleasure in the death of the wicked.” Hell, in that respect, is a just, necessary end for those who choose it.
quote:
ORIGINAL: twelveroundsfan
I got the impression that Lewis, like certain early Church fathers, got at least as much pleasure from imagining the sinners in hell as from imagining the saints in heaven.
C.S. Lewis did not, in any of his writings, delight in the notion of anyone going to Hell. His goal was merely to give fictional insight into how demon forces work against Christians so they could recognize some of those same things inside and outside of themselves.
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