{"id":7231,"date":"2021-08-31T19:15:04","date_gmt":"2021-08-31T09:15:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/?p=7231"},"modified":"2021-08-31T19:15:06","modified_gmt":"2021-08-31T09:15:06","slug":"solomons-gift-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/solomons-gift-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Solomon&#8217;s Gift"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;\" class=\"sharethis-inline-share-buttons\" ><\/div>\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center\"><strong>Solomon&#8217;s Gift &#8211; Discernment<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Story<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p>My dear Wormwood, <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I was delighted to hear from Triptweeze that your patient\nhas made some very desirable new acquaintances and that you seem to have used\nthis event in a really promising manner. I gather that the middle-aged married\ncouple who called at his office are just the sort of people we want him to know\n\u2013 rich, smart, superficially intellectual, and brightly sceptical about\neverything in the world. I gather they are even vaguely pacifist, not on moral\ngrounds but from an ingrained habit of belittling anything that concerns the\ngreat mass of their fellow men and from a dash of purely fashionable and\nliterary communism. This is excellent. And you seem to have made good use of\nall his social, sexual and intellectual vanity. Tell me more. Did he commit himself\ndeeply? I don\u2019t mean in words. There is a subtle play of looks and tones and\nlaughs by which a mortal can imply that he is of the same party as those to\nwhom he is speaking. That is the kind of betrayal you should especially\nencourage, because the man does not fully realise it himself; and by the time\nhe does you will made withdrawal difficult\u2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Your affectionate uncle, <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Screwtape. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Question<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>C.S. Lewis composed the famous fictional work, <em>Screwtape Letters, <\/em>as a conversation between an experienced demon, Screwtape and his nephew, Wormwood. This particular interaction is an attempt to skew the \u201cpatient\u2019s\u201d discernment. What can we do to ensure our discernment is not hindered by those around us?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Solomon&#8217;s Gift &#8211; Discernment Story My dear Wormwood, I was delighted to hear from Triptweeze that your patient has made some very desirable new acquaintances and that you seem to have used this event in a really promising manner. I gather that the middle-aged married couple who called at his office are just the sort &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/solomons-gift-2\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Solomon&#8217;s Gift&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":7230,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[357],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7231","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-small-groups"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7231","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7231"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7231\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7233,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7231\/revisions\/7233"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7230"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}