Screwtape Letter Reflection Essay Sample

We are made Perfectly imperfect. No matter how much we judge our own self-worth we are still made in God’s image and likeness. However, we still find ways to ignore our flaws that prevent us from growing closer to God. In my own conduct sometimes, I find myself ignoring God’s call to be with him an answer his calling. I always come up with other things to keep me occupied instead of prayer or reflection or reasons to not attend mass. Yet I still in the back of my mind find it odd that others call themselves dedicated Catholics when they don’t attend mass frequently. I know how important it is to show dedication to the mass, but there have been so many Sundays that I simply have just not placed God as my top priority. I choose to ignore this not because I’m ashamed of going to mass, but rather that I don’t want to admit that there was no real reason why I wasn’t there. Another thing about my character that I choose to avoid is confessing my sins confession. Confession to me is more than just a compilation of my past sins. It’s an anxiety filled judgement session where I feel like I’m being put under a microscope and being punished for every one of my sins. Confession is supposed to offer peace of mind and a clear conscience. Instead, confession makes me worry about how, much I have disappointed Gid. Therefore, I avoid it at every cost. I’m ashamed of it, and I want to be better at it, but it’s so hard for me to not feel so judged by God. So even though I may be perturbed when I hear that other people don’t go to mass often, or secretly wince when I realize when my last confession was, I still choose to ignore and avoid these things about myself. 

The devil has many secret evil tactics of getting us to turn away from God. One of the most popular being to make us worry about the future. Making us worry about the “what ifs?” that distract us from the present gifts God has given us. When we focus on the future, we start questioning God more and more and we start to get anxious over things we have not seen or experienced yet. We question if what God has in store for us is truly the best thing for us. If we don’t focus on what is being presented to us in the moment, we never enjoy the gifts life brings. We sit worrying about a future that we can’t see or know until it happens. God is thee always but speaking to us in the present all the time. We can’t accept God’s present invitations, we can’t see the wonderful gifts he’s offering us, and we miss the spiritual opportunities the present offers us when we focus all our attention on the future. We are so worried about things that could potentially happen to, that we have no guarantee of. We have no trust in God when we try to see into our future instead of enjoying the present. Trying to see change the outcome of what God knows is best for us does no good in our present relationship with him. We must know him now, otherwise it won’t matter what we do later because our relationship will be too weak.    That’s why if we stay grounded in now, the future will simply just be. 

My character is something that I constantly worry about. Not worry in the sense that I’m worried I’m a bad person. I worry about my character getting tarnished or twisted by others. It only takes one rude comment about someone’s hair, or a complicated sentence being taken the wrong way to leave a permanent mark on my reputation. I’m very vocal around my friends about the fact that I don’t like to bring up anyone’s name in a conversation if they are going to be talking bad about them. This is an even more tempting task over social media where anything you say behind a screen can be shared and saved forever. This moral of mine has certainly not settled nicely with everyone I express it to. I get ridiculed for not wanting to be bring someone down. It’s twisted to me how someone can judge me for not wanting to hurt someone else intentionally. It seems like human nature to not want to hurt others. Doing it when they aren’t around or behind a screen just adds to that guilt. I’m a very observant person. I will always choose to listen to someone 100 times before I ever interject or voice what I’m thinking. Hearing my friends who I know are great people, bring others down like they don’t have feelings hurts my soul deeper than I expect it to every time it happens. When I’m talking with friends over social media and they begin to talk badly about someone, I always tell them I’d rather them not talk badly about someone when I know how easily stuff like those spreads and hurts others. Face to face I can easily change the subject or just flat out say that what they are saying is just not right.  Every time I get a few rude comments about how it’s dumb that I care about stuff like that, but it’s important to me. I have been on the receiving end of the conversation seeing what people are saying about me. It hurts to know that with all those people seeing what others are saying, not one of them even tried to stop it. As tempting and easy it is to talk bad about someone, it is never worth it to imagine how terrible they would feel knowing that’s what someone thinks about them. So as difficult as it may be, I will continue to voice my morals to friends when it comes to talking about other people. It helps me spiritually to know that I’m preventing someone from ever hearing those things about themselves.