Deleted Scenes: Malachi 2:17-3:6 Rugged faith

Our staff is currently reading through “The Screwtape Letters” by C.S. Lewis. If you haven’t read it or heard about it, it’s a book Lewis wrote in 1941 that has one of the more unique formats you’ll come across. It’s written as a series of letters from a senior demon, Screwtape, to his apprentice and nephew demon, Wormwood. Obviously, it's fictional. I don’t know if we have any evidence that demons have nephews. The idea of the book, as a work of Christian fiction, is to give us the enemy’s playbook so that we are better equipped to follow Jesus faithfully. In 2 Corinthians 2:11, Paul talks about not being outwitted by Satan, “for we are not unaware of his schemes”. Unfortunately, my sense is that many believers today are unaware of his schemes. That’s why I think The Screwtape Letters is such an important and helpful book once you wrap your head around the point of the book.

There was a line from our reading this past week that really connected with what we talked about from Malachi on Sunday. Wormwood, the junior demon, is very excited because his “patient” (a new believer) is losing some of his initial excitement about Christian faith. Wormwood has hopes that his patient will become disenchanted with faith, will see it as just another phase, and leave it behind. Screwtape cautions him against this, because “the Enemy” (God) often uses the troughs of life to form His people even more than the peaks. You see, God wants to enable us to stand and to grow strong, and the troughs are where His people grow into the kinds of creatures God wants us to be. The letter (letter 8) concludes with this great line: “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.”

Remember, that’s from the perspective of a demon. A human is never more out of their grasp when everything has been stripped away and yet they still obey the Lord. I love that. It’s so rugged, so hard-core, so resolute. The prophet Habakkuk came to that same point. After hearing about the impending destruction of his people at the hands of a violent, idolatrous nation, and being told that this was God’s doing, this is how Habakkuk concluded: “though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior.” (3:17-18) Rugged faith. Again, I love that.

Connecting this back to Malachi, the people of Judah at the time had largely given up. They had become so disillusioned about the injustices they perceived that they had concluded that God was in fact unrighteous and a fan of evil, or that He was simply checked out and absent. That’s what we saw in Malachi 2:17. We contrasted that with something like Psalm 73, where the Psalmist struggles with some of the same questions and confesses he had nearly given up. However, the Psalmist had entered the temple, sought the Lord, and committed himself to worship even in the midst of the questions- and gained new perspective in the process.

Struggling with big questions and experiencing crises of faith is not something we generally encourage. That’s because those have the potential of resulting in a complete loss of faith. However, when we commit ourselves to faith and obedience and seek the Lord in the midst of those questions, they become some of God’s greatest means of transforming, growing, and purifying us. That’s a significant part of my own testimony (a story for another day). Demons shudder when our faith becomes rugged. Where are you at with this? What would it look like for you to grow in this way?