Life changing Christian fiction – Screwtape Letters, CS Lewis
Life changing Christian fiction – what does it mean?
In the eighteen months prior to publishing Grace in Strange Disguise, I have immersed myself in the world of Christian fiction. There are millions of words out there. The more I’ve read, the more I’ve hungered for stories that are worth reading. I’ve read many that are well written but they don’t move me to tears. They don’t make me hunger and thirst for following Jesus. They don’t make me want to spend every day more profitably.
Sadly, life changing Christian fiction has been too rare. I want to make sure that this blog highlights some.
Screwtape Letters
This book was written in 1942 and it has been changing lives ever since, yet in a different way to most other books. For this is a book that is written more as a warning. A warning not to discount the work of Satan in our lives. A warning to let us know that when we follow Jesus we gain a determined and cunning enemy.
The book is written in the form of letters written from a senior demon, Screwtape to his nephew, Wormwood. In the letters Screwtape is mentoring Wormwood as to how to tempt his human. Much humour is used to get Lewis’ message across. Satan is real and he is out to distance any Christian from Jesus.
Favourite quotes
“It does not matter how small the sins are provided that their cumulative effect is to edge the man away from the Light and out into the Nothing. Murder is no better than cards if cards can do the trick. Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one–the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.”
“It is funny how mortals always picture us as putting things into their minds: in reality our best work is done by keeping things out.”
“The more often he feels without acting, the less he will be able ever to act, and, in the long run, the less he will be able to feel.”
“Do not be deceived, Wormwood. 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.”
“When He [God] talks of their losing their selves, He means only abandoning the clamour of self-will; once they have done that, He really gives them back all their personality, and boasts (I am afraid, sincerely) that when they are wholly His they will be more themselves than ever.”
“Prosperity knits a man to the world. He feels that he is finding his place in it, while really it is finding its place in him.”
Links to other posts of books I consider ‘life changing’
Life changing Christian Fiction: ‘A Long Highway Home’ Elizabeth Musser