Tuesday 6 October 2015

PROGRAMMED TO DEATH

PROGRAMMED TO DEATH

They worship me in vain;
their teachings are but rules taught by men. —Matthew 15:9

How easily Satan must have thought he could snuff out the light of God’s kingdom in the world once Jesus had ascended to the Father! Only 120 followers remained, and they were huddled away in fear. Though the Day of Pentecost must have been a setback for him, he soon responded with a new strategy—bring in a heavy dose of persecution to extinguish the flame.
But it didn’t work. Centuries of persecution followed, first by the religious leaders in Judea and later by the Roman emperors, but the church continued to thrive and expand. People discov- ered the power of the Risen Lord and at great cost surrendered their lives to him.
Sometime late in the third century Satan must have called a conclave. Hades I, he might have called it. Since persecution had failed so miserably, this diabolical council needed to develop a new strategy to undermine the life of the church. The solution it produced has done far more to render the church powerless than any persecution ever has.
The objectives were clear: The plan would have to diffuse the self-sacrificing love that carried the church through conflict, distract it from intimacy with God, and devalue the importance of the individual believer. And, since the church had already prevailed over direct assaults, the plan needed to be so deceptive that it could not be recognized as coming from hell.
A few suggestions were offered, but they were so weak that they didn’t even invite discussion. After a painfully long silence, someone, perhaps Screwtape,1 came up with a very simple idea: “Trying to keep it small hasn’t worked—let’s make it big!”
All the other devils gasped, thinking that old Screwtape had finally bolted his sanity. “Make it big? What do you think we’ve been working so hard to prevent?”
“Hear me out, colleagues. We can kill it with its own success. What would happen if the church suddenly became accept- able?”
“Lots of people would go to it, you idiot.”
“But what would all those people do to it?” Screwtape replied with a smirk, then sat back as he watched their minds churn. One-by-one the others began to see the brilliance of his scheme.
“Many would come just for social reasons. They would quickly dilute those who are really in God’s clutches.”
“And imagine all the programs and activities they would have to plan to keep those people happy. Nothing chokes out intimacy as well as busyness.”
“A crowd like that would have opinions so diverse and disrup- tive that the power of the gospel would be compromised in just a few short years.”
“The church would eventually become a machine, chewing up individuals instead of loving them. Programs would take over where personal ministries now flourish. And everyone knows how easy it is to kill a program.”
“Hear! Hear!” they all yelled.
“They couldn’t possibly teach all the followers to walk with God personally, so they would soon substitute rules and guide- lines for his ever-present voice.”
“The machine would have to be run by professionals. The others would become nothing more than spectators and bill-payers.”
“And that leadership would waste most of its time tied up in administration, which we know benefits almost no one.”
“Who would have time for individuals? They would have to try to disciple people by regulations, and the cracks in that are so wide we could go on vacation.”
“And best of all,” Screwtape spoke up again, “they wouldn’t even know what had happened to them. They would think themselves successful beyond their wildest dreams. They would be pillars in the community and stand before huge crowds. We would let them keep all their Christian terms, but we would sub- stitute our own meanings. It’s foolproof!”
“But size alone won’t do that, Screwtape,” Satan himself finally said. “They could still teach all those people what it really means to follow God and they could still love people one-by-one no matter how big it got.”
“True, O Wicked One,” Screwtape waggled his index finger, “but do you think they would? Do you think they would risk losing all those people or would resist the corruption that such power and influence would give them?”
Satan smiled in whatever ecstasy hell allows. “Of course not!” He slammed his fist on the table, “Let’s do it!”
C. S. Lewis, author of The Screwtape Letters.

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