[GCFL-discuss] FW: Old Wife Joke

[gcfl-discuss at gcfl.net]

A few days ago, the joke service sent out a funny story about a wife
looking at herself in the mirror and feeling old. Her husband's response
appears to have led directly to the announcement of his memorial
services.

I had a thought about how he should have responded. It might have saved
his life and pleased his wife, but it would not be quite suitable for a
family discussion group.

But I did run across some remarks in C.S. Lewis's THE SCREWTAPE LETTERS
that provide some good perspective on the wife's fears. Lewis was the
subject of the movie Shadowlands, about his marriage late in life to an
American who remarked "So we're both lapsed atheists?" Its a funny and
inspiring movie. His future wife's son was a great fan of Lewis's child
novel series, The Chronicles of Narnia. I heard that some publisher is
trying to come up with a version of the stories which has the obvious
Christian content secularized. A cartoonist pointed out that this is sort
of like Moby Dick with the whales removed.

The Screwtape Letters are written by a middle level executive in the
bureaucracy of hell, to his nephew, a junion tempter assigned to some
poor soul in England. In a backhanded way, through the words of
Screwtape, Lewis relates Christian values to modern life, and criticizes
the superficiality of the church. On the subject of women and their
bodies, as it relates to securing souls for "Our Father Below", Screwtape
advises his nephew:

It is the business of our great masters in every age to produce a general
misdirection of what might be called sexual taste. This they do by
working through the small circle of popular artists, dressmakers,
actresses and advertisers who determine the fashionable type. The aim is
to guide members of each sex away from those members of the other with
whom spiritually helpful, happy and fertile marriages are most likely.

The age of jazz has succeeded the age of the waltz, and we now teach men
to like women whose bodies are scarcely distinguishable from those of
boys. Since this is a kind of beauty even more transitory than most, we
thus aggravate the female's chronic horror of growing old (with many
excellent results). We have engineered a great increase in the license
which society allows to the representation of the apparent nude (not the
real nude). It is all a fake of course. As a result, we are more and more
directing th desires of men to something which does not exist -- making
the role of the eye in sexuality more important, and making its demands
more impossible. What follows you can easily guess!"

Of course a shorter way to say this might be "If the husband had just
given her a big hug instead of looking her over, he would be alive today.
But I am really impressed with the way Lewis puts it.

Siarlys


________________________________________________________________
Juno Platinum $9.95. Juno SpeedBand $14.95.
Sign up for Juno Today at http://www.juno.com!
Look for special offers at Best Buy stores.