I wanna talk to you today about living with uncertainty and facing fear and what it means to have hope and a single little word set. So here we go. We’re looking at this wonderful book by CS Lewis, screw tape letters. He’s talking from the perspective of an older tempter to his nephew devil tempter on how to use life to keep people distant from God. Uh, and this is what he writes, why dear one would, I’m delighted to hear that your patient’s age and profession make it possible, but by no means certain that he will be called up for military service. This was written during the second world war. We want him to be in the maximum uncertainty so that his mind will be filled with contradictory pictures of the future. Every one of which arouses hope or fear there is nothing like suspense and anxiety for barricading, a human’s mind against the enemy.
That is God, do you have any suspense in your life? Do you have any anxiety going on in your life? It will try to crowd God out of our minds. How does it do that? Lose goes on. He wants men to be concerned with what they do our business is to keep them thinking about what will happen to them. This is a profound distinction. What I do of course will determine who I will become. And that really is under my control. What happens to me is not under my control and it has nothing to do with who I become. It’s actually just the raw material about that. God wants me to focus on who I’m becoming and what I do. The devil wants me to focus on what’s happening to me. And is it what I want or not?
All the screw tape goes on your patient will of course have picked up the notion that he must submit with patients to the enemy’s. Will you picked that up too? What the enemy means by this is primarily that he should accept with patients the tribulation, which has actually been dealt out to him, the present anxiety and suspense. It is about this, that he is to say, that will be done. And for the daily task of bearing this, that the daily bread will be provided. It is your business, the business of the tempter to see that the patient never thinks of the present fear as his appointed cross, but only of the things he is afraid of, let him regard them as his crosses. Let him forget that since they are incompatible, they cannot all happen to him. And let him try to practice fortitude and patience to them all in advance for real resignation, at the same moment to a dozen different and hypothetical fades is almost impossible.
And the enemy does not greatly assist those who are trying to attain it resignation to present and actual suffering. Even where that suffering consists of fear is far easier and is usually helped by this direct action. In other words, if today, what I say is my cross for today is my uncertainty about tomorrow. God helped me live today in the uncertainty of today, God will be with me, but my temptation will be to think of 12 different things that could happen tomorrow and try to figure out how to manage every one of them. And that is a fruitless exhausting fear inducing road. Old screw tape goes on an important spiritual law is here involved. I’ve explained that you can weaken his prayers by diverting his attention from the enemy himself to his own states of mind about the enemy. On the other hand, fear becomes easier to master when the patient’s mind is diverted from the thing feared to the fear itself, considered a present and undesirable state of his own mind.
And when he regards the fear as his appointed cross, he will inevitably think of it as a state of mind. One can therefore formulate the general rule in all activities of mind, which favor our cause, encourage the patient to be unselfconscious and to concentrate on the object. In other words, be overwhelmed by the fear and don’t have the thought, oh, this is me being afraid. We’ve been talking about mindfulness over the last several weeks. Mindfulness awareness is nothing new. A long, long time ago. Lewis wrote this 80 years ago. The distinction, remember we talked about if I’m remembering my second grade teacher that’s memory, if I’m aware that I’m remembering my second grade teacher, that’s mindfulness, that distinction between being engrossed or focused on a thought versus being aware. This is me having that thought. This is me having that feeling and giving some space and some power and some calmness to deal with it that has been recognized by wise people about the human condition for a long, long time.
One can formulate this rule. Then in all activities that lead us away from God, screw tapes as encouraged the patient to be unselfconscious focused on the object, but in all activities favorable to the enemy, bend his mind back on itself, let an insult or a woman’s body. So fix his attention outward that he does not reflect. I am now entering into the state called anger or the state called lust. Cuz as soon as I think about that, this is me being angry or this is me experiencing lust. Then there’s a kind of space and they kind of freedom for God to come in and act with me and help me to deal with this. I, I no longer identify myself with this negative sin or temptation contrary wise, screw tape says, let the reflection, my feelings are now growing more devout or more charitable. So fix his attention inward that he no longer looks beyond himself to see our enemy.
That is God or his own neighbors. In other words, uh, if I’m highly aware of negative emotions, anger, lust, greed, it gives me the strength and space to deal with them. On the other hand, we want to be unselfconscious when it comes to virtue so that I’m not thinking, look how humble I am or look how generous I am. I am simply growing in this because it becomes the natural thing to do. And this is especially true when it comes to living in uncertainty and fear. And so here’s a verse from scripture. This is from Peter who knew a lot about fear and dealing with uncertainty.
This is what Peter says. Therefore, with minds that are alert and fully sober. In other words that have this kind of deep awareness set your hope on the grace to be brought to you when Jesus Christ is revealed at is coming as obedient, children do not conform to the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance. That’s just selfishness, ego, pride, anger, and so on. But just as he who called you is holy. So be holy in all you do for where it is written. Be holy, I am holy. In other words, focus, not on what’s going to happen to you, but what it is that I do, the person that I’m becoming, there’s a very interesting little word that Peter uses set and it has to do with directing my inner focus or attention or awareness or spirit. When Paul writes to the church at Colossi, he says, therefore, since Christ has died, set your mind on things above where Christ is seated at the right hand with a father, set your heart on things above not earthly things.
And by things above he doesn’t mean some things, you know, far away in a place called heaven where you will go after you die. It’s not there. And then it’s here and now God’s presence that which can uplift me and inspire me. And I am to do this, particularly when I live with uncertainty set your hope. It it’s like the difference between a thermometer and a thermostat, a thermometer registers the temperature, a thermostat sets the temperature and we’re invited now by God when it comes to our mind in our heart and our hope not to allow that to be established by the circumstances around us, where we don’t know what’s gonna happen, but actually to set them, to focus them with our thoughts and our wills on God. And uh, one writer that I know Robert Roberts talks about the logic, what we might think about as the logic of hope in this way, that it always involves, uh, our desire for something.
And then our belief that the thing that we desire might happen now, if we really want something, so our desire is high, but we don’t think we’re gonna get it high desire and low belief that it’s gonna come results in despair. Uh, it might be going to see the giants game or the Giant’s gonna win. I really want ’em to, but I think that they probably won’t. Um, then that leads to despair. So one of the common ways people deal with this is to say, I’ll just try to ratchet down my desire. I will try to make myself not want it so much. Not to want that promotion, not to want that outcome, low desire and low belief results in resignation. I just resign myself, but, uh, Paul does not call God the God of all resignation. He calls him the God of all hope, high belief and high desire leads us to hope.
But now we are to set this hope. We’re not to set it on any circumstance. We’re not to set it on any particular outcome. And this is very helpful to me and I need it because I’m living in a season where, uh, it’s not like wanting somebody to win a baseball game. The circumstances, the outcomes that lie before me in, before you are often about as high stakes, as seems possible for people that I dearly love and I cannot control them. And therefore I cannot set my hope on a particular human outcome or circumstances, even though I want it very much. I must place that hope in the context of a much greater hope that there is a God who is the father of Jesus and his grace will be revealed and all be, will be redeemed. And his love will be present for me. And for those that I love beyond life beyond death, I set my hope therefore today, whatever it is that you’re walking through, don’t be consumed by thinking about what’s going to happen to you, but rather what will I, what will you do today to live with patient endurance, to accept the uncertainty and the fear and the difficulty in the pain in the hope we set our hope that one day he will come and he will redeem all that is going wrong and I will endure it with patient, uh, submission
And great hope until that day live in hope today. I’ll see you tomorrow.