For those not familiar (or formerly familiar) with C.S. Lewis' Screwtape Letters, the words are those of a senior devil instructing his young nephew on the arts and crafts of tempting humans:
"The real trouble about the set [of friends] your patient [human being tempted] is living in is that it is merely Christian. They all have individual interests, of course, but the bond remains mere Christianity. What we [devils] want, if men become Christians at all, is to keep them in the state of mind I call "Christianity and." You know - Christianity and the Crisis, Christianity and the New Psychology, Christianity and the New Order, Christianity and Faith Healing, Christianity and Psychical Research, Christianity and Vegetarianism, Christianity and Spelling Reform. If they must be Christians let them at least be Christians with a difference. Substitute for the faith itself some Fashion with a Christian coloring. Work on their horror of the Same Old Thing."
As we anticipate the regularity of the Lord's Day tomorrow, let us be thankful for that particular Same Old Thing, realizing we stnd in a two thousand-year-old tradition with roots even several thousand years deeper!
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