The eighth chapter of The Screwtape Letters is a song of faith. I believe it would read the most ridiculous to one who does not practice faith and especially one who wouldn’t go where the intellect fails to process and produce clear and concise meaning. But if you are a fool, like me, it brings tears to the eyes.
Let’s start with the synopsis: It appears that Wormwood has “great hopes that the patient’s religious phase is dying away.” Screwtape, as always, is upset that Wormwood is letting down his guard. He offers his junior devil a theory he calls “the law of Undulation.” It is like the waxing and waning of the moon, except it is in regard of the changing phases of human interest. It’s similar to Lewis’ stages of enchantment. Here’s how he puts it:
“As spirits they (humans) belong to the eternal world, but as animals they inhabit time. This means that while their spirit can be directed to an eternal object, their bodies, passions, and imaginations are in continual change, for to be in time means to change. Their nearest approach to constancy, therefore, is undulation––the repeated return to a level from which they repeatedly fall back, a series of troughs and peaks. If you had watched your patient carefully you would have seen this undulation in every department of his life––his interest in his work, his affection for his friends, his physical appetites, all go up and down. As long as he lives on earth periods of emotional and bodily richness and liveliness will alternate with periods of numbness and poverty.” 37-8
The spirit is outside of time and the body is within time. Ok, I am the choir and ready to belt a fat hallelujah! Two pairs to consider here: a) body/time and b) sprit/time. Let’s talk about the former since it feels a touch familiar. I mean who would disagree with the phrase “for to be in time means to change”? Putting flesh on bones, let’s consider one’s relationship with the sun: you’ve seen it so often that you stop seeing it. But let it rain for three days and you start thinking, “oh sunny sun, where art though?” And when it finally appears, it feels like you are experiencing it for the first time. I suppose the law of undulation applies to this blog of mine as well. When I started blogging, it was almost an everyday event. Now it is a miracle if I can publish something once a month. What’s my point? That one keeps returning to the same feelings through different experiences is observable! I suppose the good news is that this sequence of beginnings, mid-points, endings, challenges turning easy-peasy, and repeat! is quite a normal experience to be expected. The question, I suppose, is what does one do with the knowledge of the law of undulation? Can one manipulate time, and I don’t mean control it, or can one only be manipulated by time?
With everything that’s going on in the world there is every reason to not practice faith, or love, or kindness, or read a book O_o . . . However, with everything that’s happening in the world, there is every reason to practice faith, love, kindness and making time to read a book. For instance, the questions and fears that turn me from God at one point are the same questions and fears that turned me toward God. I thought this was particular but soon realized it wasn’t uncommon. In daily living, the same reasons why I came to like something/someone may become the same reasons to dislike the thing/person and vice versa. It turns out what pulls one to something/someone can eventually pull one away from them. So recently when someone said to me, how can you believe in God with the way the world is? I had some idea of where they were coming from because I had lived in that place too. And because they weren’t really looking for an answer––not that I have any––they were just poking fun at me and basically patting themselves on the back for being wise enough to not fall for an old scam like God, I just laughed along with them for I feel no obligation to explain my belief to anyone. Thus I find the following observation by Lewis to be worth meditating on, too: “Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy’s will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys” 40.
It’s been some years now that I started to take God seriously and I see now that the landscape from whence my current faith sprung is the exact landscape that Lewis describes in the above quote: “no longer desiring, but still intending, to do the will of the Perfect Whole.” I could not see him, but I could not believe he wasn’t there. I wanted to believe he didn’t exist, but I could not convince myself. Was I forsaken, perhaps. But it seems to me that The Source of life does not forsake, it is that which springs from The Source that becomes blind to The Source. Where am I in my faith these days? Between you and me, I am terribly afraid that I will forget my Maker. That I will wake up one day and think myself too intelligent to drink the God Kool-Aid––Ah, the horrific things sick people do in the name of God! So, I am grateful for experiences like this recent one: I was walking down the middle of the street and a snake fell about three feet from me and as it headed in my direction, I could run rather than freeze in place. It was my first time seeing a snake at a close range. And I am not one who is unafraid of the heel-biter. Did I go on my knees to say my thanks when I could pray, of course! Mock me if you want. But you don’t survive your worst fear, unexpectedly, and not want to burst out a “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me . . .”
The day changes: dawn, sunrise, morning, afternoon, sunset, evening, etc. The human changes: infancy, teenage years, early adulthood, old age, etc. A face changes: smiles, frowns, looks surprised, shocked, embarrassed, etc. That faith also changes should not surprise the one who is fighting to not be carried by the tide of time, automatically. It seems that to find God, there must be a genuine will to see God. As Lewis puts it: “He cannot ‘tempt’ to virtue as we do to vice. He wants them to learn to walk and must therefore take away His hand; and if only the will to walk is really there He is pleased even with their stumbles.
Did you arrive at walking without having stumbled several times? And what if in stumbling one develops the muscles that allow humility and empathy. But then in my opinion, God is a spiritual journey one goes on in life––a very personal experience. Hence if others bring you to God, others can bring you away from God. Thus one must go to God alone; one must find God with their own efforts. God is your mountain to climb, alone, with your own bare hands and feet.
J. A. Odartey
+ Lewis, C. S. The Screwtape Letters: Letters from a Senior to a Junior Devil. London: William Collins, 2016. Print.
