Khari’s Reviews > The Screwtape Letters > Status Update

The point that got me was the idea of we think that any reason for getting married other than 'being in love' is somehow cynical. The idea of sticking together for children is cynical. That looking for an economical, intellectual, and sexual partner is somehow mercenary, instead of just going with the one that you 'love'.

It struck me because it's true. Love marriages are treated as 'better' than arranged ones.

The discussion of marriage and its associated beliefs was rather depressing, we have this view that it was 'different' back then 'easier' or 'more wholesome'.
Nope. They had the same issues we do. This book was written 80 years ago, but it talks about how we can be made to think that 'being in love' is most important, if after 20 years of marriage, we are no longer 'in love' then it must be time to end the marriage.

Well, reading this makes me realize that there really isn't anything new under the sun.

In the prior chapter, Screwtape gave an excellent precis of the idea that all people interact only through competition and through the use of other people in order to gain something for themselves. While he never used the word 'power' it was an excellent summary of Foucault...12 years before he started publishing.

Screwtape: "Fear, avarice, lust and ambition look ahead. Do not think lust an exception. When the present pleasure arrives, the sin (which alone interests us) is already over. The pleasure is just part of the process which we regret and would exclude if we could do so without losing the sin; it is the part contributed by [God], and...experienced in [the] present. The sin, which is our contribution, looked forward."

Screwtape: "Even of his sins the Enemy does not want him to think too much: once they are repented, the sooner the man turns his attention outward, the better the Enemy is pleased."

"All virtues are less formidable...once the man is aware that he has them."

Well, piffle, that's almost the same thing I wrote in my review of Bonhoeffer. And here I thought I had come up with the idea on my own. This is both the good thing and the bad thing of reading good books when you are young, their thought seeps into you, even if you don't recognize it until you see it again.

Screwtape: "No amount of piety in his imagination and affections will harm us if we can keep it out of his will...active habits are strengthened by repetition but passive ones are weakened. The more 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."

Screwtape: "You should always try to make the patient abandon the food or books he really likes in favor of the 'best' people, the 'right' food, the 'important' books."

"The safest road to Hell is the gradual one-the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts."