May 11, 2003: Brute Force Obedience

At one point in C. S. Lewis' great novel The Screwtape Letters, the demon Wormwood believes that he has cause to rejoice. The new Christian whom he has been trying to tempt away from the faith is going through a period of spiritual dryness. Wormword boasts to his uncle Screwtape of his hope that "the patient's religious phase is dying away."

Screwtape writes back to rebuke Wormwood's confidence, explaining how God ("our Enemy") uses those dry periods to make a believer even stronger. He writes:

[God] leaves the creature to stand up on its own legs - to carry out from the will alone duties which have lost all relish. It is during such trough periods, much more than during the peak periods, that it is growing into the sort of creature He wants it to be. Hence the prayers offered in the state of dryness are those which please Him best...Do not be deceived, Wormwood. Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy's will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.

“And still obeys.” Sometimes I think the best obedience is that which we offer to God when there is no love or good cheer or spiritual energy to motivate it. It is like the widow's mite in Mark 12:42 - a small sum, but noted by our Lord for its greatness because it came from poverty. Recall that Jesus said, "Blessed are the poor in spirit" (Matthew 5:3). A broken-hearted, consistent self-discipline has a sweetness and a power that robust zeal can never match.

Often I have counseled with people who felt that they were sunk deep in a spiritual trough. My advice to them is neither earth-shaking nor profound: sometimes you just have to trudge through it. Read your Bible even if you find that it is giving you no help, say your prayers even when they seem pointless, give thanks to God even when you would rather just complain. Maybe the day will come when you can submit to God with gladness. Till then, submit to him out of duty. As the Bible says in Galatians 6:9: "Let us not grow weary in well-doing. For in due season we shall reap, if we faint not."