I first read C. S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters over forty years ago and have read it several times since. It is easily one of my favorite of Lewis’s works. I even tried my hand at a couple of ersatz letters. I would have guessed that I had learned all that Screwtape had to teach me. But in my devotional reading, this quote slapped me across the face:
“The Christians describe the Enemy as one ‘without whom Nothing is strong’. And Nothing is very strong: strong enough to steal away a man’s best years not in sweet sins but in a dreary flickering of the mind over it knows not what and knows not why, in the gratification of curiosities so feeble that the man is only half aware of them, in drumming of fingers and kicking of heels, in whistling tunes that he does not like, or in the long, dim labyrinth of reveries that have not even lust or ambition to give them a relish, but which, once chance association has started them, the creature is too weak and fuddled to shake off. “1
When I review my journals, I see that I often lament “lost days,” when I cannot understand where the day went. It is gone, but I did knock anything off my to-do list, and I didn’t spend my time reading, writing, or attempting to learn an instrument (all things I tell myself I should be enjoying in my retirement). The time is gone, with nothing to show for it. That is eerily akin to Screwtape’s reminiscence that occurs immediately before the quote above. Talking about the deadly (to us) lure of “nothing,” he says, “…so that at least he may say, as one of my own patients said on his arrival down here, ‘I now see that I spent most of my life in doing neither what I ought nor what I liked.’”2 Ouch. Am I spending my life doing neither what I ought nor what I like? Am I spending my time in the gratification of curiosities so feeble that I am only half aware of them?
I certainly am guilty of wasting enormous amounts of time doing nothing. I spend many days doing nothing that has any importance higher than amusing myself or satisfying idle curiosity. Given Lewis’s warnings via Screwtape, I know that I am not the only one, and this is not a new phenomenon. But the temptation to do nothing is very much easier to fall into today. Nearly everyone has a small, internet-connected computer in their back pocket or bag. Games, videos, newsfeeds, and social media are all literally in our hands nearly all of our waking hours. Mindless distraction has never been more accessible. Take that convenience, and add to it social media algorithms designed to keep us engaged and coming back for more, albeit more of nothing, and it is little wonder that we spend our days doing nothing.
Giving in to the temptation to do nothing is easier now than before, but the temptation itself is not new. What was once the domain of the “idle rich” has become home for us all. If we go back three or four generations, we would find that almost no one was seriously tempted to do nothing. Our increased leisure time, coupled with the prevalence of mass media, and now, social media and the immediacy of the internet, make this temptation very real for us. But I wonder if there isn’t something more in play; I wonder if the dominant narratives in Western Christianity (especially evangelical protestant Christianity) could be helping us to amuse ourselves to death.
Jesus came to bring us abundant life (John 10:10). Certainly, he does not bring us physical life; we already have that. Jesus saving the world (John 3:17) means we can share in the very life of the Trinity. But we tend to think of our salvation in very narrow terms. Taken broadly, salvation means we can live the new life, the Christ life, life in God’s kingdom, and we don’t have to wait until we die. That new, abundant, kingdom life is available to us today. But many take a very narrow slice of salvation and deem it the entire pie. Salvation is reduced to “avoid eternal punishment.” Coupled with that narrow view of salvation is a law-and-order, crime-and-punishment view of God.
We tacitly believe that God’s intent is to catch us doing something wrong, for which we will be punished perhaps now, but certainly in the afterlife. Most Christians, when pressed on the point, would say, “Not at all. I know that Jesus death on the cross means my sins are forgiven.” That is a true statement, but it is not how we act. We struggle to make sure we remain in God’s good graces. We live with an angry God ever before our eyes. Our goal is to avoid doing wrong. We focus on sins of commission (doing the things we should not do), and with our focus on staying out of trouble, we rarely think about sins of omission (not doing the things we should do). Are we lulled to sleep, believing that by doing no wrong we are somehow doing good?
We’ve become focused on what not to do and neglect what we should do. Studiously avoiding evil, we neglect good. There is art and beauty to appreciate and to create. There are people to love and relationships to foster. There are good books to read and to write. The hungry go unfed, and the unhoused remain on the streets. We should be seeking justice, not just avoiding punishment.
We are children of a good God who loves us and wants to be known by us, yet we spend our days doing nothing. We tell ourselves we have no time to pray, or read, or appreciate the beauty of creation. We are too “busy” to be about the business of God’s kingdom. But when we are honest, we can see that we are often busy doing nothing. We are offered the joy of knowing God and being known by him, not only after we die, but today. We are offered the kingdom, and we choose instead to spend our time doing nothing, seemingly unaware of what we are giving up. To borrow again from Lewis:
We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.3
Lewis wrote before we were awash in ways to do nothing. But instead of being pleased by things that at least promise temporal, albeit fleeting, happiness, we spend our time doing nothing. What will it take to wake us up?
- Lewis, C. S.. The Screwtape Letters (p. 60). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition. ↩︎
- Ibid ↩︎
- Lewis, C. S.. Weight of Glory (Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis) (p. 26). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition. ↩︎
Photo by ROBIN WORRALL on Unsplash
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