Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer
Sep. 10th, 2018 07:14 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerLast summer, I read C. S. Lewis’s Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer and took some notes, intending to turn them into a post. Then they languished for a year, and I no longer remember the book that went with them well enough to write a review post… but I still think these quotes are good material for thinking with, so I thought I’d share them here.
I am often, I believe, praying for others when I should be doing things for them. It’s so much easier to pray for a bore than go and see him. And the other is like unto it. Suppose I pray that you may be given grace to withstand your besetting sin (short list of candidates for this post will be forwarded on demand). Well, all the work has to be done by God and you. If I pray against my own besetting sin there will be work for me. One sometimes fights shy of admitting an act to be a sin for this very reason.
I think this is true not only of praying for others but talking about them (in a concerned way, not a mean gossip way) or thinking about them or feeling really bad for them. Often we expend energy doing that when what we ought to be doing is making them a pan of lasagna.
Many modern psychologists tell us always to distrust this vague feeling of guilt, as something purely pathological. And if they had stopped at that, I might believe them. But when they go on, as some do, to apply the same treatment to all guilt-feelings whatever, to suggest that one’s feeling about a particular unkind act or a particular insincerity is also and equally untrustworthy – I can’t help thinking they are talking nonsense. One sees this the moment one looks at other people. I have talked to some who felt guilt when they jolly well ought to have felt it; they have behaved like brutes and know it. I’ve also met others who felt guilty and weren’t guilty by any standard I can apply. And thirdly, I’ve met people who were guilty and didn’t seem to feel guilt. And isn’t this what we should expect? People can be malades imaginaires who are well and think they are ill; and others, especially consumptives, are ill and think they are well; and thirdly – far the largest class – people are ill and know they are ill. It would be very odd if there were any region in which all mistakes were in one direction.
And I think, sometimes, the same person can inhabit multiple categories at once: they can know they are guilty in some things but be blind to their guilt in others. Adolf Eichmann felt really guilty about the one time he slapped a Jewish functionary in the face, but he clearly didn’t comprehend his guilt in any larger sense.
That, by the way, explains the feebleness of all those watered versions of Christianity that leave out all the darker elements and try to establish a religion of pure consolation. No real belief in the watered versions can last. Bemused and besotted as we are, we still dimly know at heart that nothing which is at all times and in every way agreeable to us can have objective reality. It is the very nature of the real that it should have sharp corners and rough edges, that it should be resistant, should be itself. Dream furniture is the only kind on which you never stub your toes or bang your knee.
I feel that this explains the problem with a lot of self-help books, whether they are nominally Christian or not.
In fact we should never ask of anything “Is it real?,” for everything is real. The proper question is “A real what?,” e.g., a real snake or a real delirium tremens?
I am often, I believe, praying for others when I should be doing things for them. It’s so much easier to pray for a bore than go and see him. And the other is like unto it. Suppose I pray that you may be given grace to withstand your besetting sin (short list of candidates for this post will be forwarded on demand). Well, all the work has to be done by God and you. If I pray against my own besetting sin there will be work for me. One sometimes fights shy of admitting an act to be a sin for this very reason.
I think this is true not only of praying for others but talking about them (in a concerned way, not a mean gossip way) or thinking about them or feeling really bad for them. Often we expend energy doing that when what we ought to be doing is making them a pan of lasagna.
Many modern psychologists tell us always to distrust this vague feeling of guilt, as something purely pathological. And if they had stopped at that, I might believe them. But when they go on, as some do, to apply the same treatment to all guilt-feelings whatever, to suggest that one’s feeling about a particular unkind act or a particular insincerity is also and equally untrustworthy – I can’t help thinking they are talking nonsense. One sees this the moment one looks at other people. I have talked to some who felt guilt when they jolly well ought to have felt it; they have behaved like brutes and know it. I’ve also met others who felt guilty and weren’t guilty by any standard I can apply. And thirdly, I’ve met people who were guilty and didn’t seem to feel guilt. And isn’t this what we should expect? People can be malades imaginaires who are well and think they are ill; and others, especially consumptives, are ill and think they are well; and thirdly – far the largest class – people are ill and know they are ill. It would be very odd if there were any region in which all mistakes were in one direction.
And I think, sometimes, the same person can inhabit multiple categories at once: they can know they are guilty in some things but be blind to their guilt in others. Adolf Eichmann felt really guilty about the one time he slapped a Jewish functionary in the face, but he clearly didn’t comprehend his guilt in any larger sense.
That, by the way, explains the feebleness of all those watered versions of Christianity that leave out all the darker elements and try to establish a religion of pure consolation. No real belief in the watered versions can last. Bemused and besotted as we are, we still dimly know at heart that nothing which is at all times and in every way agreeable to us can have objective reality. It is the very nature of the real that it should have sharp corners and rough edges, that it should be resistant, should be itself. Dream furniture is the only kind on which you never stub your toes or bang your knee.
I feel that this explains the problem with a lot of self-help books, whether they are nominally Christian or not.
In fact we should never ask of anything “Is it real?,” for everything is real. The proper question is “A real what?,” e.g., a real snake or a real delirium tremens?
no subject
Date: 2018-09-10 11:35 am (UTC)And yes, too, to the fact that reality makes hard demands on us. (That's my recasting of the one about the watered versions of Christianity.)
That last one expresses its point in a way I'd never thought of, and I love it.
no subject
Date: 2018-09-11 12:40 am (UTC)But of course people have a very different reaction to abstractions versus an actual person right there in front of them - which is part of Hannah Arendt's point, of course.
I love the last quote too.
no subject
Date: 2018-09-11 02:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-09-11 02:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-09-11 12:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-09-11 12:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-09-10 01:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-09-11 12:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-09-10 02:21 pm (UTC)Or post something like "thoughts and prayers" on Twitter!
no subject
Date: 2018-09-11 12:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-09-10 04:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-09-11 12:36 am (UTC)