"The Inner Ring"

Throughout this essay, Lewis makes known the dangers of inner rings. The key idea is that our main motive for forming inner rings is for the purpose of excluding other people, even though it may be subconscious. Because of this, we make it our goal to become part of that inner ring so we are not the one who is excluded. "Unless you take measures to prevent it, this desire is going to be one of the chief motives of your life". This is bad in my opinion because it is not only a sinful desire, but a useless thing to commit such a vast amount of energy to. It is useless because as Lewis says, "[i]t is the very mark of a perverse desire that it seeks what is not to be had. The desire to be inside the invisible line illustrates this rule. As long as you are governed by that desire you will never get what you want. You are trying to peel and onion: if you succeed there will be nothing left. Until you conquer the fear of being an outsider, an outsider you will remain". Inner rings are not always evil, but if this is the prime desire (as it often is) - this is something we need to avoid.

Although I could say much good about "inner rings" as I am part of one myself, and most of us are, I think it is necessary to examine the cliques, circles, or groups (whatever you want to call them) of friends that we have to ensure that we are involved for the right reasons and that our chief desire is not the unending, never satisfying one that I mentioned above. As I was working on the presentation material for my group presentation on pride this week, I was reminded of this essay. Because pride is purely spiritual and it is such a hard sin to pinpoint, I think it is the perfect sin for Satan to use against us. Throughout the vicious search for an inner ring, "you will always find them hard to enter, for a reason you very well know. You yourself, once you are in, want to make it hard for the next entrant, just as those who are already in made it hard for you". This to me spells pride. It is our pride that wants to exclude outsiders, and we feel personal satisfaction when we accomplish this. We want to feel better, more popular, or cooler than everyone else. I always ask myself, "would Jesus do this?", and in this case as well as most others, certainly not! This is so clearly an issue of pride, and therefore is a perfect chance for Satan or "Screwtape" to intervene. It may even seem like the thing we're doing is good because after all, we have friends, and relationships is such an important thing in life. This is exactly what Satan wants, he wants us to think we're doing something good. Again, this does not mean that we are not doing something good, just like going to church is good when we do it for the right reasons. What we must do though, is carefully study our habits, sift them through to make sure that our inner ring does not "exist for exclusion" and that we are not being prideful. If we are not careful about this, "[t]he quest of the Inner Ring will break your hearts unless you break it".