General Revelation

“Even if we contrive to keep them ignorant of explicit religion, the incalculable winds of fantasy and music and poetry—the mere face of a girl, the song of a bird, or the sight of a horizon—are always blowing our whole structure away,” (SL 156) comments Screwtape.

In my book, someone once wrote “temptation of the devil” in the margins next to this section, which distracted me deeply for that is not what comes to my mind as I reflect on this passage. Instead, my mind connected this sentence to a previous one, which reads, “the truth is that the Enemy, having oddly destined these mere animals to life in His own eternal world, has guarded them pretty effectively from the danger of feeling at home anywhere else,” (SL 156).

To me what is guarding Christians (and maybe even non-Christians) from falling into the devils’ traps are those simple things—the mere face of a girl, the song of a bird, or the sight of a horizon—or the snow we recently had, which can be called General Revelation.

In my church, this idea means that God reveals himself to all humanity through nature. In doing so, God provides glimpse of himself to keep his children focused on him and to remind the devil that he is not in control, hence the “incalculable winds.” One thing about General Revelation needs to be clear; it does not mean to say that hurricanes, tornadoes and other natural disasters are revealing God’s wrath on the world for that is too literal of a translation. Instead, General Revelation means to reflect on the simple nature of things that reflect attributes of God such as he is the creator, without him, nothing would exist and he has total control.

I realize that just as Screwtape mentions that the youth go off on tangents, this subject also directs away from the main point of letter 28. Yet, I felt it was interesting to throw this idea out there in case anyone was having a fit about the snow because even the snow can reveal to us how awesome our creator is; we cannot make all those intricate snowflakes nor do we often realize that the snow provides spring moisture and kills off pests for a more comfortable spring. 