The Screwtape Letters: A Memorable quote—

Rest assured, my love for you and your love for me are as like as two peas.  I have always desired you, as you (pitiful fool) desired me.  The difference is that I am the stronger.  I think they will give you to me now; or a bit of you.  Love you?  Why, yes.  As dainty a morsel as ever I grew fat on. – C.S. Lewis

I become increasingly convinced of the idea that evil is not the absence of good; rather it’s the perversion of it.  And evil has a funny way of perverting what we call love – how many of us, in the name of love, manipulate and control others for our own purposes? 

With every boy who pressures a girl to give up her sacred virginity; with every girl who manipulates a boy into slavery; with every mentor tries to mold his pupils after his own image; with every parent who tries to live out their failed dreams thru his children; with every missionary who obliterates indigenous culture in the name of ‘superior-gospel-influenced culture; with every westerner w/ their materialistic ideals patronizes his third world counterparts; with every social revolutionaries who sells hollow promise of social utopia…list goes on and on.

Bottomline – we control, manipulate and hurt so many people in the name of love.  I must truly guard against this kind of perversion.  And the way to guard myself from this awful perversion is to never to exclude the ingredient that makes true love – humility, i.e. self-forgetfulness!