1990 January/February issue Part 3

Prayer and Feelings

   Our adversary the devil has many tricks to keep us from praying effectively. C.S. Lewis gives us a glimpse at some of them in his Screwtape Letters, in which an older demon is instructing a younger one in a few of those tricks:
   “Whenever they are attending to the enemy [i.e., God] Himself we are defeated. But there are some ways of preventing them of doing so. The simplest is to turn their gaze away from Him towards themselves. Keep them watching their own minds and trying to produce feelings there by the action of their own wills. When they meant to ask Him for charity, let them, instead, start trying to manufacture charitable feelings for themselves and not notice that this is what they are doing. When they meant to pray for courage, let them really be trying to feel brave. When they say they are praying for forgiveness, let them be trying to feel forgiven. Teach them to estimate the value of each prayer by their success in producing the desired feelings; and never let them suspect how much success or failure of that kind depends on whether they are well or ill, fresh or tired, at the moment” (The Screwtape Letters, pp. 19-21).