I’m currently reading It’s Really All About God: Reflections of a Muslim Atheist Jewish Christian by Samir Selmanovic. Selmanovic’s life story includes growing up a cultural Muslim and philosophical atheist in Croatia before converting to Christianity as a young adult.
Often as I read this book, I find myself nodding, smiling, tearing up, reading passages to my husband, or exclaiming, “I’ve got to buy this book!”
Here’s a thought from the book to mull over: “Both faith and doubt are opposites of certainty and therefore part of the same whole.”
And another to help me feel sane, said by his friend Rabbi Lawrence Kushner: “If you are not doubting the existence of God every two weeks, you are theologically comatose!”
Julia Bloom 
Consider, (for educational purposes of course 😉 what one demon may have said to another:
Humans are amphibians, half spirit and half animal. The Enemy’s determination to produce such a revolting hybrid
was one of the things that determined our father to withdraw his support from Him.
As spirits they belong to the eternal world but as animals they inhabit time. This means that while their spirits can be directed to an eternal object, their bodies, passions and imaginations are in continual change. For to be in time means to change.
Their nearest approach to constancy therefore is undulation, the repeated return to a level to which they fall back,a series of troughs, and peaks….
It may surprise you, as inexperienced as you are, that in his efforts to get permenant possession of a soul the enemy relies on the troughs even more than on the peaks. Some of his special favorites have
gone through longer and deeper troughs than anyone else…
To us, a human is primarily food. Our aim is the absorption of it’s will into ours. The increase of our own area of selfhood at it’s expense. But the obedience that The Enemy demands is quite a different thing. One must face the fact that all the talk about His love for men, and His service being perfect in freedom is not as one would gladly
believe merely propaganda, it is an appalling truth.
He really does want to fill the universe with a lot of loathe-some
little replicas of Himself. Creatures who’s life on it’s miniature
scale will be qualitatively like His own, not because He has absorbed them but because their wills freely conform to His. We want cattle
that can finally become food, He wants servants who can finally
become sons.
Thanks, Sawboy. Will you please cite the source of this eloquence? 🙂 I’m pretty sure I know but not everyone does, and it’s good manners, don’t you think?
Ok… Lew is. Or maybe Lew isn’t? “The earth is the Lords and so is everything in it.” I suspect this includes ip as well, no matter what the lawyers say.
One time, I gave a talk for my church, and would quote the Bible but didn’t include references. My pastor didn’t like that, and suggested I put in the references. This seemed unnecessary, since we live in such a Googling/Postmodern age. I think my attitude was wrong, because I was thinking, “if you don’t know if it’s from the bible, perhaps you have a ‘dust on the holy word’ issue.” I was even using the heavily copyrighted and guarded NIV!
Also, published works >50 years old should be public domain. This was changed because evil corporate America (Disney) influenced (paid) our public servants (politicians) to change laws in their favor. All for stinkin’ Mickey… I mean stinkin’ Money…
Thanks. You were quoting C.S. Lewis’ Screwtape Letters, I believe. I’m not concerned about copyright laws; I generally agree with your sentiments about our culture’s overly-touchy ideas about intellectual property. I think, especially in music but in other genres as well, this has become a creativity-killer. Now we have to be so careful about who we quote and how much we quote and how we use what we quote, whereas lots of really good stuff in previous centuries was put out in more of a folk tradition, one not concerned with references and citations and royalties. People were more free to build on the good stuff others had put out before them, to collaborate across time and space.
But, I always like to know where something comes from, if possible, so that I can find it in its context, or read more from that author, if it interests me. I just thought other readers of your comment might appreciate having that information too.
Saw on, boy!