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154. What If You Had to Fake Being Genetically Modified? | Enhanced with Candace Kade
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Please Return to the Lands of Luxury
“Jon Tilton explores complex topics like memory loss, personal and societal responsibility in this light sci-fi story.”
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Lorehaven helps Christian fans explore fantastical stories for Christ’s glory: fantasy, science fiction, and beyond. Articles, the library, reviews, podcasts, gifts, and the Lorehaven Guild community help fans discern and enjoy the best Christian-made fantastical stories, applying their meanings to the real world Jesus Christ calls us to serve. Subscribe free to get any updates you choose and to access the Lorehaven Guild.
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‘The Screwtape Letters’ Quotes about Christian Social Activism

“If we can keep men asking … ‘Is this the way that History is going?’ they will neglect the relevant questions.”
E. Stephen Burnett on Feb 14, 2019
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Pretty much all of C. S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters is ridiculously quotable.

Yet these Screwtape Letters quotes uniquely apply to Christians who want to do good works in the world.

As usual, with long-paragraph book quotes, I’ve occasionally added extra paragraph breaks.

The Screwtape Letters

Do what you will, there is going to be some benevolence, as well as some malice, in your patient’s soul. The great thing is to direct the malice to his immediate neighbours whom he meets every day and to thrust his benevolence out to the remote circumference, to people he does not know. The malice thus becomes wholly real and the benevolence largely imaginary.

The Screwtape Letters

The Enemy [God] loves platitudes. Of a proposed course of action He wants men, so far as I can see, to ask very simple questions; is it righteous? is it prudent? is it possible?

Now if we can keep men asking ‘Is it in accordance with the general movement of our time? Is it progressive or reactionary? Is this the way that History is going?’ they will neglect the relevant questions. . . .

As a result, while their minds are buzzing in this vacuum, we have the better chance to slip in and bend them to the action we have decided on.

The Screwtape Letters

We direct the fashionable outcry of each generation against those vices of which it is in the least danger, and fix its approval on the virtue that is nearest the vice which we are trying to make endemic.

The game is to have them all running around with fire extinguishers whenever there’s a flood; and all crowding to that side of the boat which is already gunwale under.

If I find more Screwtape Letters quotes about Christian social action, I’ll add them.

E. Stephen Burnett
E. Stephen Burnett creates sci-fi and fantasy novels as well as nonfiction, exploring fantastical stories for God’s glory as publisher of Lorehaven.com and cohost of the Fantastical Truth podcast. As the oldest of six, he enjoys connecting with his homeschool roots by speaking at conferences for Christian families and creators. Stephen is coauthor of The Pop Culture Parent: Helping Kids Engage Their World for Christ from New Growth Press (2020, with Ted Turnau and Dr. Jared Moore). Stephen and his wife, Lacy, live in the Austin area, where they help with foster parenting and serve as members of Southern Hills Baptist Church.
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Lorehaven helps Christian fans explore fantastical stories for Christ’s glory: fantasy, science fiction, and beyond. Articles, the library, reviews, podcasts, gifts, and the Lorehaven Guild community help fans discern and enjoy the best Christian-made fantastical stories, applying their meanings to the real world Jesus Christ calls us to serve. Subscribe free to get any updates you choose and to access the Lorehaven Guild.
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