In C.S. Lewis’s book The Screwtape Letters, senior demon Screwtape gives his nephew, a junior tempter named Wormwood advice on leading his human into damnation:
The humans live in time but our Enemy destines them to eternity. He therefore, I believe, wants them to attend chiefly to two things, to eternity itself, and to that point of time which they call the present…He would…have them continually concerned either with eternity (which means being concerned with Him) or with the Present—either meditating on their eternal union with, or separation from Himself, or else obeying the present voice of conscience, bearing the present cross, receiving the present grace, giving thanks for the present pleasure.”
“Our business is to get them away from the eternal, and from the Present… It is far better to make them live in the Future…thought about the Future inflames hope and fear. Also it is unknown to them, so that in making them think about it we make them think of unrealities. …Nearly all vices are rooted in the future. Gratitude looks to the past and love to the present; fear, avarice, lust, and ambition look ahead.”
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
See also Matthew 6:19-34 & Philippians 4:4-7
