In re-reading The Screwtape Letters, this passage gave me pause:
(Screwtape is teaching Wormwood about “Nothing”) 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.
C.S. Lewis
The Screwtape Letters
It is a reminder to me to be diligent, to not get bogged down in dodging the big sins to the point of missing the slow layering of the little ones. Chew gently and thoughtfully as you work this around your molars.
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2 comments:
Funny you should post this - I'm re-reading Lewis' "The Great Divorce". If you haven't read this little gem yet, I highly recommend it.
Lewis echoes this idea of the "gentle slope, soft underfoot" with the following passage:
I do not think that all who choose wrong roads perish; but their rescue consists in being put back on the right road. A wrong sum can be put right: but only by going back till you find the error and working it afresh from that point, never by simply going on. Evil can be undone, but it cannot "develop" into good. Time does not heal it. The spell must be unwound bit by bit, "with backward mutters of disserving power"-or else not.
And the unwinding is not a pretty process.
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