"Men are not angered by mere misfortune but by misfortune conceived as injury. And the sense of injury depends on the feeling that a legitimate claim has been denied. The more claims on life, therefore, that your patient can be induced to make, the more often he will feel injured and, as a result, ill-tempered."
C. S. Lewis The Screwtape Letters
The idea that a "legitimate claim has been denied" depends upon a perverted doctrine of human rights. This doctrine has now been accepted universally throughout the West. How successful the Satan has been in this instance!
The idea that "I have a legitimate claim" rests upon a foundation of believing that "I am owed . . . ", which is to say, "People owe me . . ." which in turn is to say, "Society as a whole, or mankind in the abstract, owes me."
Underneath these layers of deception, however, lies a deeper bedrock. Dig deep enough and the human heart will rest its claim for compensation for all of their life's miseries and foibles and imperfections upon the presupposition that "God owes me." Most people depart this life resting upon the "certain hope" that they will soon appear before God the Judge of the heavens and the earth, and that they will argue their case--against God--and they will win. They die believing that any imperfections, any evils they have committed whilst upon earth, they will be successful in demonstrating and proving to to have been God's fault. For them the day of judgement will be the day when God will be accused and successfully convicted.
Behold the depths of Satan's subterfuge, and the depraved state of the Western mind. May God have mercy upon us all and open our eyes before it is too late.
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