This is a post from my previous blog:
I am currently reading The Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis. You're probably aware of the premise of the book, but in case you aren't, it's about a demon named Screwtape who corresponds via letters with his nephew, another demon, named Wormwood about Wormwood's charge—the person that Wormwood has been assigned to tempt.
This book is a fabulous treatise about human nature and how easily our motivations can be warped to lead us astray. In one of the letters, Screwtape writes this to Wormwood:
"And since we cannot deceive the whole human race all the time, it is most important thus to cut every generation off from all others; for where learning makes a free commerce between the ages there is always the danger that the characteristic errors of one may be corrected by the characteristic truths of another. But thanks be to Our Father and Historic Point of View, great scholars are now as little nourished by the past as the most ignorant mechanic who holds that "history is bunk.'"
I know that this is fiction and C. S. Lewis himself said in the preface that, "Readers are advised to remember that the devil is a liar. Not everything that Screwtape says should be assumed to be true even from his own angle." Even with that warning, I can't help but think Screwtape has a point in the passage above.
In our entertainment-driven society, people seem less interested in staying connected to previous generations than we once were. I fear that we've become so self-absorbed that we fail to see the relevance of what generations before us had to say. Or worse, we believe that we're more enlightened than they were. Either way, we've turned our backs on what they had to say and consequently, we've detached ourselves from them.
And in the process we've given up the chance to "be corrected by the characteristic truths of another." If you think I'm right, buy a book this week that was written more than 40 years ago and read it. Or forgo your favorite television program one night and watch a documentary on the History Channel or A & E. Or talk to an elderly relative and begin to record your family history. Do anything that will connect you to a previous generation.
