Letter 13

Letter 13 struck me as particularly interesting out of the letters that were assigned for this week. I never thought about how holding on to one's own opinions makes them closer to God. Obviously there are many people who hold strong opinions and do not have a relationship God; however doing so allows a person to keep an individualist characteristic about themselves keeping them from getting sucked in to the crowd. This crowd is typically full of people without morals and who do not care about how their actions portray themselves or affect others.
It is comforting to hear that God really likes us. God allows us to be ourselves and wants each person to be unique and enjoy their life. When Screwtape talks about this he makes it sound as if getting people to abandon the things that define them is a difficult task. The scary thing is that it really is not that difficult. People like to say that they are not influenced by others, but that is far from the truth. Just about everything a person does comes from the observation of others. This makes it hard for a person to tell where they end and peer pressure starts.

Letter 9

There are some very interesting ideas in the ninth letter, which are finally becoming visible to me with a better understanding of the concept of the book. They are talking about the patient experiencing a period they refer to as a trough which I could not figure out. I knew what a trough was from which horses drink, but I had not understood the first time I read through how they were applying this to a human life. The exploitation that Screwtape talks about this is scary. It makes sense that when a person is down and out, not feeling themselves, or experiencing a rough time in life, that they would be susceptible to corruption. Two things that he talks about using against humans are sex and drinking. Two things that should be good experiences, beautiful and just plain fun respectively. People can take them too far though. Sex should be reserved for love, not abused and used to try to make you feel better. Alcohol is in a way similar, that is should be used for celebrating and joyous occasions with others, but can be extremely destructive if used in situations of anguish and despair. Additionally two quotes that I particularly liked and I think speak a lot for the path our existence is taking are; “You have only got to keep him out of the way of experienced Christians (an easy task now-adays) … and “and don’t forget the blessed word ‘Adolescent.’”