Nothing Is Strong
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“The Christians describe the Enemy as one ‘without whom Nothing is strong.’ And Nothing is very strong: strong enough to steal away a man’s best years not in sweet sins but in a dreary flickering of the mind over it knows not what and knows not why, in the gratification of curiosities so feeble that the man is only half aware of them.” (Screwtape to Wormwood, Letter XII)
In his comments on this quote from C. S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters, Walter Hooper explains that the phrase, “without whom Nothing is strong” was appropriated by Lewis from the Collect for the Fourth Sunday in Trinity found in The Book of Common Prayer. Hooper writes, “Note the two possible ways of interpreting ‘nothing is strong’: (1) There is nothing that is strong; (2) Nothingness itself is (evilly) strong. For Hell, a negativity itself is positive.” What Hooper offers in his commentary on the double entendre carried by this phrase is insightful, for it captures the true spirit of Lewis’s pointed insight revealed through Screwtape as he counsels his nephew Wormwood concerning one especially useful strategy to employ in the effort to keep his Christian charge away from a true life of piety and devotion while moving him ever closer to an eternal existence in Hell. The strategy? Keep the Christian focused on nothing of lasting significance. If the Christian can be diverted headlong into explicit sin, all the better; but short of such an outcome, Hell’s power also reaches to the depths of the believer’s soul if Worwood “can make him do nothing at all for long periods…keep him up late at night, not roistering, but staring at a dead fire in a cold room. All the healthy and outgoing activities which we want him to avoid can be inhibited and nothing given in return, so that at last he may say [as one of Screwtape’s charges did on upon arriving in Hell], ‘I now see that I spent most of my life in doing neither what I ought nor what I liked.’”
Friends, I fear this same strategy is enjoying great success today among many in the Christian ranks and especially among apologists. How easy it is to spend enormous amounts of time, precious time, flitting from this curiosity to that topic and have nothing to show in return. Sure, the curiosities and topics may be interesting and even relevant to some broader Christian cause, but ours is an era awash in a sea of information in which we may swim and swim without ever coming ashore. We forget that the vast waters of apologetic content available to us are not an end in themselves but only the means. Sadly, we often swim in circles as we flail about, inebriated by curiosity-run-wild in undisciplined minds. We do so to our own peril and at the expense of any genuine and lasting effectiveness in conducting our mission as ambassadors for the Christ who would plead to the world through us to be reconciled to God. The enemy of our souls is not bothered in the least by an apologist who knows a little bit about a lot of things but never focuses on anything. He prefers we stay an inch deep and a mile wide as we buy into the pernicious idea that we have to know a little something about everything before we can do anything of importance in defending the gospel and sharing our faith. When this happens to us, nothing is strong.
I share this concern not as a dour critic but as one who has sometimes been all too willing to follow along Screwtape’s proposed path of “doing nothing at all for long periods…staring at a dead fire in a cold room.” I may not actually spend my time looking at a dead fire, but I can easily give away minutes, hours, even days to perusing a social media feed or binge watching the latest Netflix series. All the while my primary calling lays quietly to the side and my time dwindles away until nothing is left. When that happens, the enemy wins another battle and grows bolder in his attempts to win the war.
My solution? First, I call myself to repentance for allowing nothingness to become strong. Second, I resolve to heed Scripture’s call to “redeem the time” (Eph. 5:16) by disciplining my mind and guarding my moments so that God’s purposes for me receive my best thoughts, time, and energy. Third, I commit to build a holy boundary around my life that keeps out those distractions that the enemy loves, even if it means “unplugging” from certain seemingly essential media and other pursuits. Fourth, and finally, I resolve do all in my power to become the nagging threat to the darkness that I am redeemed to be by the power of Christ within my soul. There is, after all, nothing more important than that.
Dr. Thomas J. Gentry (aka., TJ Gentry) serves as the pastor of First Christian Church of West Frankfort, Illinois, the Executive Editor of MoralApologetics.com, and Executive VP of Bellator Christi Ministries. Dr. Gentry is a world-class scholar holding 5 doctorate degrees and 6 masters degrees. Additionally, he is a prolific writer as he has published 7 books including Pulpit Apologist, Absent from the Body, Present with the Lord, and You Shall Be My Witnesses: Reflections on Sharing the Gospel. Be on the lookout for two additional books that he will soon publish. In addition to his impressive resume, Dr. Gentry proudly served his country as an officer in the United States Army and serves as a martial arts instructor.
