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.
4 comments:
I really liked your blog, and I completely agree with all of your comments. I definitely agree with the fact that people, including myself, are often swayed from their true self in order to fit in with others. I struggle with this a lot, so it was very comforting to hear that God loves us no matter what.
I agree sometimes people lose themselves while trying to impress or imatate others.Instead of admiring others, if we just take the time out to admire ourselves, we would find a lot better qualities. God wants us to love ourselves as we love him. We have to remember he made us all different with unique qualities.
I can really relate to your post. I feel that most of the time I would like to tell people that I am not influenced or affected by other people but most of the time it has the most affect on me. I also found it interesting how you talked about having strong oppinions and how it keeps you seperate from a crowd. I think that God wants us to be unique and different from one another yet follow in his ways while doing so.
I agree Stephen, it is very comforting to know that God really likes us. He wants us to be ourselves and doesn't want us to change in order to fit a certain fad or clique. And I agree with you too that it is quite easy to forget ourselves and what we enjoy in order to please someone else. It's scary to look back and realize that this happens everyday. We are influenced by others and by the media, even though God would rather us stay as we are. I think it is a monumental challenge to all of us to be ourselves, because we so want to fit in and be loved. But in reality, God already likes us for who we are. That's interesting to thing about...
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