I've had a copy of "The Screwtape Letters" sitting by my bed for about 2 months, and I figure that now is as good a time as any to read it. I feel very fortunate to have the ability to read good books at work. It's been good for me. I feel like all I ever write about now are books and how they make me think. I'm not sure yet if that's a good thing or a bad thing.
I just want to copy out a chunk of one of the letters and leave it at that because it is something that is good that too many people don't know or chose to forget.
"But you now see that the Irresistible and the Indisputable are the two weapons which the very nature of His scheme forbids him to use. Merely to override a human will (as His felt presence in any but the faintest and most mitigated degree would certainly do) would be for Him useless. He cannot ravish. He can only woo. For His ignoble idea is to eat the cake and have it; the creatures are to be one with Him, but yet themselves.; merely to cancel them, or assimilate them, will not serve. He is prepared to do a little overriding at the beginning. He will set them off with communications of His presence which, though faint, seem great to them, with emotional sweetness, and easy conquest over temptation. But He never allows this state of affairs to last long. Sooner or later He withdraws, in not in fact, t least from their conscious experience, all those supports and incentives. he leaves the creature to stand up on its own legs - to carry out from the will alone the duties that have lost all relish. It is during such trough periods, much more than during the peak periods, that it is growing into the sort of creature that He wants it to be. Hence the prayers offered in this state of dryness are those which please Him best... 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."
