MY life, MY Time MY Education...(PART 2 read April 6th blog first)

The demon Screwtape continues on Page 97

“The sense of ownership in general is always to be encouraged. The humans are always putting up claims to ownership which sound equally funny in Heaven and in Hell, and we must keep them doing so. Much of the modern resistance to chastity comes from men’s belief that they ‘own’ their bodies—those vast and perilous estates, pulsating with the energy that made the worlds, in which they find themselves without their consent and from which they are ejected at the pleasure of Another! It is as if a royal child whom his father has placed, for love’s sake, in titular command of some great province, >>page 98 under the real rule of wise counselors, should come to fancy he really owns the cities, the forests, and the corn, in the same way as he owns the bricks on the nursery floor.

“We produce this sense of ownership not only by pride but by confusion. We teach them not to notice the different senses of the possessive pronoun—the finely graded differences that run from ‘my boots’ through ‘my dog,’ ‘my servant,’ ‘my wife,’ ‘my father,’ ‘my master,’ and ‘my country,’ to ‘my God.’ They can be taught to reduce all these senses to that of ‘my boots,’ the ‘my’ of ownership. Even in the nursery a child can be taught to mean by ‘my Teddy bear, ‘ not the old imagine recipient of affection to whom it stands in a special relations (for that is what the Enemy will teach them to mean if we are not careful), but ‘the bear I can pull to pieces if I like.’ And at the other end of the scale, we have taught men to say ‘my God’ in a sense not really very different from ‘my boots,’ meaning ‘the God on whom I have a claim for my distinguished services and whom I exploit from the pulpit—the God I have done a corner in.’

And all the time the joke is that the word ‘mine’ in its fully possessive sense cannot be uttered by a human being about anything. In the long run either Our father [the Devil] or the Enemy [God] will say ‘mine’ of each thing that exists, and specially of each man. They will find out in the end, never fear, to whom their time, their souls, and their bodies really belong—certainly not to them, whatever happens. At present the Enemy [God] says ‘mine’ of everything on the >>page 99 pedantic, legalistic ground that He made it. Our Father hopes in the end to say ‘mine’ of all things on the more realistic and dynamic ground of conquest.

Your affectionate uncle

SCREWTAPE”

These thoughts helped me see my own shortcomings and the enemy’s schemes. At first as I read this I thought that God was just using this reading to ‘polish’ what He did in me last Spring in regards to my unhealthy cultural American value of being time and objective-oriented rather than relationship-oriented. Meaning, I’m always looking at the clock, always managing, frustrated at any kind of tardiness or me not being very early to meetings. I was so time-oriented that I would often miss the

PERSON

and what was going on with them and what God was doing with them right there. I was thinking about how much time I had left to study, or if I would have time to be able to write, or that it was time for me to eat, or I needed to have time to get to a meeting or time to plan for one. I realized how bad it was last year as God began to show me how I saw people as objectives on a to-do-list rather than PEOPLE who God loves just because, and that putting them on a mental to-do-list was NOT

respecting,and loving them

And

it

was

sin.

So I give all that background because I really went through a huge paradigm shift last year and thought that God, through this C.S. Lewis reading, was just re-affirming and polishing that change in me. But then I realized that He was actually showing me and encouraging the deeper work He currently is doing in me in regards to ‘my’ time with how much I study for school. The last two months have been extremely hard as I try to be obedient to His voice in regards to what I do with the time (‘my’ time I often say, now through this reading I’m realizing it isn’t MY time) I’ve been given. “How much should I study? I’ve got a test, and research papers, I better study for 5-8 hours on Saturday.” I’ll make plans like this a week in advance like I used to do but over the last two months God has been challenging me and ‘my’ plans and ‘my time management’. It is scary. It is risky. What if I do bad in school because I didn’t study enough? Oh all the fears arise. As someone who has been a straight A student in college (just one B first semester, which I hated) the thought of getting lower than Bs—even that used to disgust me—is scary.

This reading gave me a much needed perspective shift that I thought was already in place, but even as I’m writing when I say ‘my time’ I realize it is a perspective shift still much needed in me. It is not MY time. It is HIS time. So the question I’ve been asking myself is “Lord what do You want me to do with my time?” The question has had an honest motive and I think the Lord is pleased but I think He is helping me through this reading see that the question can change slightly but make a major difference in the way I see life, time management, and school:

“Father, what do You want to do with me with our time?”

I think Our is the right pronoun. At first I wanted to put down ‘Your’ time but recently my request to God has been to be united to Him and know Him relationally as a spouse and there is this union and partnership that happens with that. At the same time I know that the Scriptures have these theme guiding words, “Not my will but Yours be done,” and “Your Kingdom come Your will be done.” I WANT THAT. And I think that is what I’ve been asking for even when I said, “Lord what do You want to do with MY time?” and I think it is true when I say, “What do You want to do with OUR time?” I’ll have to chew on that.