Last time it was noted that letter twenty-seven is divided between two interrelated topics. It was also noted that the connecting point between the two is man’s innate inability to see and fully understand God’s perspective. We saw that Screwtape and his ilk use our inability to see things as God does to hoodwink us into ignoring truth. The beast would obscure truth under a weight of seemingly relevant questions that make little sense without having that same truth as the actual foundation for them. The result of such a trick is twofold: we fail to recognize what should be life-changing ideas and events; we cut ourselves off from gaining wisdom because we end up lacking understanding of our past. Put another way, if we do not know where we have been, we cannot know where we are going.
Our inability to see things as God sees them also allows Screwtape and his ilk to attack our relationship with God at a vital juncture: prayer. Once again, this attack is twofold. Christ gave us a sample prayer recorded in Matthew six and Luke eleven. Today we call it The Lord’s Prayer. In it, Christ teaches us to glorify God and at the same time to pray for our daily needs. The prayer is in balance because it both acknowledges God for who He is, and at the same time assures us we have the right to come to God on any and every matter we encounter in our daily lives. The prayer amply demonstrates that we are to pray for both our spiritual and physical needs. Praise and petition are in balance.
Screwtape would have us avoid the first, altogether. Praising God is not really something he would like any of us to do. The second aspect, prayer for daily needs, comes under direct attack. The first way is to regard it, somehow, as something less worthy of God’s attention than praise. In other words, petitioning our Father is made to seem hardly spiritual, as if we are reducing Him to the genie Whose lamp is rubbed in order for us to get things. Screwtape and his crew love this because it creates an artificial imbalance in our perceptions that is totally unlike the reality The Lord’s Prayer exemplifies. That imbalance can eventually shut down our conversation with God, which shuts down the vitality of our relationship to Him. Both praise and petition cease.
As is usual with Screwtape, the second attack is more subtle, occurring when our prayers are actually answered. Remember that God created the natural world, set up the rules by which it exists, and continually sustains it. So when we pray for our daily needs, God can fulfill those needs by operating through the natural world, as well as by a miraculous intervention.
Consider this old joke. A man is trapped on the roof of his house as flood waters continue to rise. A man in a rowboat comes by and offers the trapped man a ride to safety. But the man on the roof refuses, saying that he trusts in God to rescue him. Later, as the flood waters continue to rise, a helicopter hovers over the roof, and the crew offers to send a basket down for the man to enter and be drawn up into the helicopter for a ride to safety. Again the man refuses, claiming that God will rescue him. Finally, the flood waters overtake the roof, and the man drowns. Upon seeing God, the man asks Him why He let him drown. God replies, “My son, I sent the boat, and the helicopter. But you refused to see My hand in them. Since you have the free will to decide your course, I had to honor it, even if it meant you were going to drown.”
Screwtape’s distortion is this. If we petition the Lord to grant us something, whether small or vital, and we do not receive the answer we want, we are tempted to think God either does not exist, or that He does not care about us. We cancel our relationship with Him. If we petition the Lord and get the answer we want, but God works through the natural to fulfill it, we are tempted again to think that God either does not exist, or that He doesn’t care enough to do something directly or miraculously to fulfill it. In either case, we try to make God fit into a box of our design rather than seeing things from His perspective. Then prayer of any kind ceases to be important to us, squelching our relationship to Him.
Paul the apostle wrote, “Pray without ceasing. In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.” (1 Thessalonians 5:17-18) So even when distractions to prayer come up, pray anyway. We must lay those distractions before God, as we do all other needs. Let Him deal with them rather than trying to do so in our own strength. Give God the glory. All else will follow.
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