Oxford Christians Paper

Same thing. If you like editing, could you just look at a paragraph and rip it to shreds? I would greatly appreciate it. I can also email it to you if you would like to access it in Word form.
Prompt:
This essay should explore a common theme or problem across three of the works (by three different writers) we have read. Your approach can be from any angle, but you must cite textual evidence in MLA style to support your argument. No outside sources are to be used. Make sure you have a clear thesis, coherent body paragraphs with integrity, and a thoughtful conclusion that summarizes your argument but that also engages in a bit of speculation. See the prompt for your Inklings essay for the format. Your essay should be 8-10 pages in length.

Dorothy Sayer’s play-cycle, The Man Born to be King, C. S. Lewis’s book, The Screwtape Letters, and J. R. R. Tolkien’s essay, “On Fairy Stories” contrast what humans perceive as reality with reality itself. Sayers points out that art must be good in order for it to reveal anything good. At first glance, the Gospels appear to contradict one another, but in reality, the differences add to the truth. Mary, John, and Thomas do not recognize Jesus at first, but when he speaks each person’s name, he or she recognizes him. Uncle Screwtape presents his client with “real life,” and the client forsakes the truth for this lie and is thus damned. Screwtape tells Wormwood to encourage his client to pray to falsehood and idols instead of God. However, Screwtape reveals the real pleasure and love that is involved in a relationship with God. Tolkien contrasts the false “real life” by presenting the reality of fairy stories. All three works contrast what humans perceive as reality with the stuff that is real.
Sayer’s play-cycle, The Man Born to be King, demonstrates how what seems to be contradiction is actually truth and how people mistake the reality of Jesus for falseness. For instance, the difference in the order of teachings in between each Gospel may seem to be a contradiction. Sayers argues, however, that they “turn out not to be contradictory at all, but merely supplementary” (Sayers 29). The different Gospels merely fill in each other’s gaps and alter the order slightly. Jesus would have probably told his parables and sermons multiple times, tweaking them on each occasion, so any minor difference in between each gospel merely supplements the truth of the others (26). “The divergences appear very great on first sight” in the story of the Resurrection, but in fact, every event in each gospel only adds to the story of the others (29). What appears to be a contradiction is rather adding to the truth and reality of the Resurrection.
No one recognizes the resurrected Jesus upon first sight. Not until Jesus calls out his or her name does the person recognize who Jesus is. They do not see the massive reality before them until they have proof. Mary thinks that Jesus is just a gardener. When Jesus yells, “Mary!” she calls out in reply, “(with a wild cry) Rabboni!” (326). She does not recognize him until he calls her name. She is unable to recognize truth until truth calls out to her. When Jesus appears to the disciples, John replies to Jesus that they “thought you were a ghost” (332). They mistook reality for something that is not real. John recognizes Jesus when Jesus yells out John’s name “(a little reproachfully)” (332). John does not see the truth until Jesus calls out his name. Thomas thinks that “seeing’s believing,” when in reality “Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed” (334). Thomas recognizes Jesus, but not until Jesus calls him to feel his hands and side. All three of these characters do not recognize truth for what it is until Jesus reveals it to them explicitly.
In C. S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters, Uncle Screwtape tells Wormwood to present a false “real life,” to feed the patient false prayer and false modesty, and to avoid Pleasure because that may lead to God in its reality. Screwtape tells Wormwood to deceive his client by making him think that the mundane around him is “real life.” Screwtape gives an example of how he prevents another patient’s salvation by showing him that “whatever odd ideas might come into a man’s head when he was shut up alone with his books, a healthy dose of ‘real life’ (by which he meant the bus and the newsboy) was enough to show him that all ‘that sort of thing’ just couldn’t be true” (Lewis 3). In reality, ‘all that sort of thing’ is exactly what is true, and the ‘real life’ is only a shadow of reality. But Screwtape manages to deceive his patient into thinking the opposite. Screwtape warns Wormwood, “If he must dabble in science, keep him on economics and sociology; don’t let him get away from that invaluable ‘real life’” (4). Screwtape knows that if he feeds the patient lies, then he will not recognize truth.
Screwtape tells Wormwood to encourage his client to mistake the reality of God through false prayer and false humility. He tells Wormwood, “. . . you must keep him praying to it – to the thing that he has made, not to the Person who has made him” (18). This “it” is a false construct or idol that the patient creates in his head. As he prays to “it,” he is not praying to God, and through this confusion he grows further away from God. The patient thinks that God’s Will is “the conscious fume and fret of resolutions and clenched teeth,” but God knows His Will is “the Heart” (18).
The gap between what the patient perceives as truth and what God actually is keeps the patient away from God, thus achieving Wormwood’s goal. Wormwood tries to “Fix in his mind the idea that humility consists in trying to believe those talents to be less valuable than he believes them to be” by Screwtape’s orders (70). Defining something given by God as lowly or invaluable perverts its true nature and draws the patient further away from God.
Although Screwtape tells Wormwood to pervert his client’s perception of reality, Screwtape knows that real Pleasure can lead to God. He admonishes Wormwood, “How can you have failed to see that a real pleasure was the last thing ought to have let him meet?” (64). Screwtape sees the dangers of the gifts of God. He acknowledges, “The characteristic of Pains and Pleasures is that they are unmistakably real, and therefore, as far as they go, give the man who feels them a touchstone of reality” (64). He recognizes that the powerful reality of Pleasure may lead the patient to recognize the reality of joy around him, and thus lead him to God. Screwtape commits heresy in Hell for stating the truth about Pleasure, but this statement he reveals what reality is. Screwtape fears that the patient will not take the bait of “real life,” but in fact stumble upon reality if he participates in real Pleasure.
Tolkien contrasts the falseness of what many think of as “real life” with the reality of fairy stories. He declaims “real life” by saying, “The notion that motor-cars are more ‘alive’ than, say, centaurs or dragons is curious; that they are more ‘real’ than, say, horses is pathetically absurd” (Tolkien 21). For him, industrialization perverts the reality of God. He disdains a clerk of Oxenford when he declares that the clerk “‘welcomed’ the proximity of mass-production robot factories, and the roar of self-obstructive mechanical traffic, because it brought his university into ‘contact with real life’” (20). Tolkien says this “real life” “‘is the sign of a biological inferiority, of an insufficient or false reaction to environment.’” (21). This clerk is an example of someone who mistakes the mechanical world around him for reality and truth. His deception obstructs his vision.
Tolkien contrasts this obstructed view of “real life” with a presentation of how fairy stories show reality. Tolkien feels that “The maddest castle that ever came out of a giant's bag in a wild Gaelic story is not only much less ugly than a robot-factory, it is also (to use a very modern phrase) ‘in a very real sense’ a great deal more real” (Tolkien 21). Fairy stories depict more of reality than industrialization or falsehoods. He shows how religion can be reached through fairy stories because “Something really ‘higher’ is occasionally glimpsed in mythology. . .” (Tolkien 9). Fairy stories and whatever forms they come in - mythology, gospel, or just a good story - show readers a higher truth and how to perceive reality as it is.
These three Oxford Christians contrast reality and human’s mistaken perception of reality. Sayers first points out that art has to be good and true, and then she shows how what humans perceive to be contradiction in the Gospels actually build on each other and present a greater truth. People mistake the presence of the resurrected Jesus for falseness until Jesus calls out their name and proves his reality. Screwtape in The Screwtape Letters steers his patient away from the truth by presenting a false “real life.” He shows Wormwood how to encourage the patient to pray to something other than God and to show false humility. Both draw the patient further away from God. However, Screwtape does present what reality is through his depiction of Pleasure and its dangers. Tolkien contrasts the false “real life” of the world with the reality shown through fairy tales in his essay, “On Fairy Tales.” All three of these works highlight the difference in between reality and the false perception that humanity has of the world. These three Oxford Christians share a similar view on reality and its imitators because their shared reality is God.