From Where I Sit

Years ago, I had the opportunity, at the Lansburg Theater in Washington, DC, to see a splendid stage adaptation of C.S. Lewis’ book “The Screwtape Letters.” It prompted me then to reread the book. Each time I read it I remember how much I ‘enjoy’ it. I laugh at its satire but am always chagrined at how timely its wisdom remains.

The ‘Letters’ are a correspondence from a worldly-wise old devil by the name of Screwtape to his nephew and apprentice Wormwood on how to secure the damnation of an ordinary young man. As one person has put it: it is a manual on “spiritual warfare from a demon’s point of view.” Lewis has created “an inverted moral theology” where the Devil becomes “Our Father Below,” God becomes “The Enemy,” and the young man becomes a “Patient” who is being made ‘fit’ for “The Kingdom Below” - hell.

A sampling of Screwtape’s counsel for temptation: “Build up a good settled habit of mutual annoyance; daily pinpricks.” “Bring him to a condition in which he can practice self-examination for an hour without discovering any of those facts about himself which are perfectly clear to anyone who has ever lived in the same house with him or worked in the same office.” “Make him value an opinion for some quality other than truth, thus introducing an element of dishonesty and make-believe into the heart of what otherwise threatens to become a virtue.” “Try to make the patient abandon the people or food or books he really likes in favor of the ‘best’ people, the ‘right’ food, the ‘important’ books.” Teach him to “treat Christianity as a means; preferably to his own advancement.” Help him to see the defects in others until there develops in him “the strongest and most beautiful of the vices - Spiritual Pride.”

The ‘wit and wisdom’ of Screwtape: “Men are not angered by mere misfortune but by misfortune conceived as injury.” “Hatred has its pleasures. It is often the compensation by which a frightened man reimburses himself for the miseries of Fear. The more he fears, the more he will hate.” “A spoiled saint, a Pharisee, an inquisitor, or a magician, makes better sport in Hell than a mere common tyrant or debauchee.” “Prosperity knits a man to the world: he feels he is ‘finding his place in it,’ while really it is finding its place in him.” “The search for a ‘suitable’ church makes a man into a critic.” “The safest road to Hell is the gradual one - the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.”

But, as a Tempter up against God, Screwtape is in a bind. He knows that the real purpose of his work is “undermining faith and preventing the formation of virtues.” His problem is that he knows that God wants people “to ask very simple questions; ‘Is it righteous? Is it prudent? Is it possible?’” When people begin to ask such questions, the purposes of evil are themselves undermined. So, the devil must resort to a more subtle temptation: subterfuges like little annoyances, clever dishonesties, unexamined prosperity, cloaked judgmentalism, and a prideful spirituality.

Our problem is that when we dress evil up in red suits with horns and pitchforks, or call someone else’s religion evil, or point to a politician we disagree with as a personification of evil, we often miss the point of spiritual conflict. We must not trivialize or dismiss evil: it will bite us! It will turn an annoyance into a grievance and a perceived personal injury that will fester until it becomes a loathing that requires destructive action. It can turn a virtuous everyday Christian life into spiritual pride that aligns itself with an inner circle whose disdain for people not like them creates ‘sinners’ who are either to be converted from ‘the errors of their ways’ or crushed in some ‘moral’ crusade. It can turn virtue into a self-righteousness that becomes puritanical, then repressive, and finally prone to witch hunts.

Over eighty years ago C.S. Lewis, writing in the midst of the horrors of World War II, leveled a good measure of satire at the evil of the world, and exposed its existence in surprising places. In the process he heaped scorn on all those things that lead good people astray. He is worth reading still today for any who might be prey to a more subtle temptation.

“The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn.” Martin Luther