“Pity was meant to be a spur that drives joy to help misery. But it can be used the wrong way round. It can be used for a kind of blackmailing. Those who choose misery can hold joy up to ransom, by pity.”
C.S. Lewis ~ The Great Divorce
“I pity the fool.”
Mr. T
I pity the fool who doesn’t like this blog.
Beware: the overuse of self-pity in manipulating the emotions and actions of others,… or as a reason or excuse for settling for less than the joy and freedom promised us by God,… or for poor behavioral decisions,…
when the influence behind the self-pity is chronic, self-righteous, unyielding, and even pathetically so, beware the infiltration and presence of demonic influences,… (as in a “root of bitterness”),… the ingeniousness (but nastily so) of the devil is to be able to convince us, via a human he holds sway over in this manner, to have pity on HIM, actually — and to take good and solicitous care of him,… as he is the tenacious and devouring motivating force behind the woeful displays of his captive host,…
Deuteronomy 29:18 “so that there may not be among you man or woman or family or tribe, whose heart turns away today from the LORD our God, to go and serve the gods of these nations, and that there may not be among you a root bearing bitterness or wormwood;”
Hebrews 12:15 “looking carefully lest anyone fall short of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up cause trouble, and by this many become defiled;”
one of the devil’s favorite mottos: “I love it when they continually entertain me and are nice to me because they believe it is simply a poor human they are having pity/mercy on”,… this is always a good ruse for draining the life forces out of everyone around,…
I sure miss the Door’s Theologians of the Year!
I do too. Also Mike Yaconelli. One my other favorite Theologians of the Year was BJ Thomas.