He would look at all the funny looking people in church and concentrate on them instead of what he was supposed to hear. Lewis writes, “Provided that any of those neighbors sing out of tune, or have boots that squeak, or double chins, or odd clothes, the patient will quite easily believe that their religion must therefore be somehow ridiculous”. I think that this book teaches how Satan can use things that were meant for good, like the church, to attack us spiritually. Prayer is another thing that Screwtape says is a means of attack. A person may perceive a certain image of what God is, like a trinket or something they have seen that reminds them of God.
We are not allowed to choose what we like to worship and rejected what we do not like. We cannot just worship God for what he has done but also for what he will do. The ideal state of worship is to be close to Isaiah like he was in chapter six of that book of the Bible. When we are lost we need to seek (and hope to find) the holiness of God and become aware of our sin in order to truly worship. Instead of going through the motions at church, we need to truly focus on what we are worshiping.
Jonathan Edwards was a Puritan minister during the time of the first Great Awakening. In his sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an angry God,” he tries to keep the congregation on the right path away from sinning so they have a better chance of getting into heaven. In his sermon he uses rhetorical devices like anaphora, simile and metaphor to create a frustrated tone and frighten his congregation into obeying the word of God. In his sermon he uses anaphora to frighten his congregation into obeying God’s word. In paragraph three he uses anaphora three times to persuade the congregation to stay on the right path.
But instead of adopting this concept, the congregation sees the veil as a mental and physical barrier separating them from the minister. They are frightened by not knowing exactly where the minister is looking with his veil on; a paranoid sense of being watched irrationally replaces their once pleasant thoughts of Mr. Hooper. Do they fear the veil
In this same song, “Well, see what you want to see, you should see it all”, refers to Christians only seeing the good in God and only credit him when great things happening without acknowledging the bad things, such as disease and natural disaster, as being His fault. Religion puts blinders on people. In, “Parting of the Sensory”, the lyrics say, “We put all our chips in all the right spots but still lost” , which is another example of people praying and doing everything that the Christianity religion tells them is right but still are plagued with bad things in life. Another song representing this same idea is, “3rd Planet”, which says, “Your heart felt good , it was dripping pitch and made of wood. And your hands and knees felt
However it does not end there, in Act 4 a further change occurs in the behaviour of Reverend John Hale. Hale begins to visit those who will not confess and persuades them to lie to save themselves. He turns completely against the Puritan rules and persuades people to do something that they know, to be good Christians, they must not do. When he tells Elizabeth to persuade Proctor to lie he puts forward his main argument: “God damns a liar less than he that throws his life away for pride.” This point in “The Crucible” shows how just how Hale has changed from the cold strict scholar, to the worried man looking only for what he believes to be right. Eventually Elizabeth persuades Proctor to confess and Hale encourages Danforth to speed up the process of the confession: “(quickly to Danforth) Let him sign it,let him sign it” showing that Hale wants to get it over with to prevent Proctor from getting too annoyed.
For Edwards this included his view on religion. He believed that “There is nothing between you and Hell but the air; it is only the power and the mere pleasure of God that holds you up.” (41) He wanted to convince to repent, to be reborn in Christ. Last but not least, he wanted to save sinners from a decent into Hell’s fury. The moral of his sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” was therefore that if sin is committed, a persons tie with God is broken and they will fall into the hands of Hell. Edward’s diction and tone gives his listeners and readers an eerie feeling, a fear for sin, and an awakening for the wrath of God about to come.
Oscar Cruz Jr. Cruz 1 BG Guttierez ENGL 2327 23 February, 2012 Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God In the story Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God in holds a sermon on how your life should be led to with several techniques he tries to grab your attention with his grace and how you would go to heaven. Not everybody believes in god but in my point of view I believe that with the will of the lord everything is possible. Jonathan Edwards throughout the readings tried to scare the readers on how god can do things to people or grasp their life in any part of their time. It shouldn’t be understood in that way because in the bible I reads that god will come for you at the time he is ready. There is no need to be scared to go to heaven because heaven is a better and more peaceful place.
He eventually concluded that God's love was not a prize or a reward to be earned or won, but a gift to be accepted. Luther further concluded that until man stops trying to achieve God's favor through his own achievements he cannot truly understand God's grace. Luther also had the idea that one did not need a priest to talk to God, he believed that one could pray and repent without the help of anyone else. This was the idea for which Luther became famous. In 1517, Luther was involved in a controversy which involved indulgences.
The moment when you realize that you can only get strength from God is when you will find the faith that Lewis mentions in this chapter. In order to get to this bankruptcy we have to fall multiple times and keep failing, then we will find the faith that we need. When we find that spot that we need to put all our trust in Him. We need to trust what God tells us, we need to follow His directions, and we do things not to get saved but because he has already began the saving within us. We don’t do things for a reward in heaven but we do them because the sign of Heaven is already inside of us.