MY HUMILITY CAN BEAT THE HELL OUT OF YOUR HUMILITY! | 2006-01-20
In The Screwtape Letters, the Senior Demon Screwtape advises his novice Tempter nephew, Screwtape, that he can damn people by making them PROUD of their humility.
Since the beginning of Christianity, people have tried to prove they are more Christian than Christ by Suffering. And, indeed a lot of them did suffer more than Christ did.
I keep saying that the fatal error is not being silly. It is believing that your silliness is the opposite of silliness:
1) Nobody is more destructively dumb than the dumb man who thinkgs he is smart;
2) No one is more disastrous than the professor who thinks that HIS bigotry is the opposite of real bigotry;
3) And so forth.
After the Age of Martyrs, when Christianity was the established religion, a lot of ascetics tried, as one historian put it, "To take Heaven by storm." They tortured themselves for decades.
In trying to suffer more than Christ, they forgot a simple point:
You are NOT Christ.
The sufferings of the Son of God are not in the same category with self-torture.
No, I don't think they are damned for their mistake. A lot of self-righteous people hand out damnation as a matter of course. If Christ could forgive his tormenters from the cross, I think he got certain amount of ironic humor out of the human attempt to mimic him.
The man who could call Peter a rock had a sense of irony.
Jesus told us not fear the Judgement.
As long as you do not think that your bigotry is righteousness, there is nothing to worry about.