Screwtaping: Comparisons

by Dan Masterton

From time to time, people will ask for spiritual reading recommendations. Never really the true academic scholar despite the preponderance of theology classes that I’ve taken, I skew lighter than most of my fellow nerds. For my money, especially when making recommendations to someone more so on the entry level who needs to be hooked quickly and in a compelling way, I lean on CS Lewis, most heavily on The Great Divorce and Screwtape Letters. These two books offer an imaginative, allegorical narrative style that comes from a place of substantial faith as well as literary accessibility. Here, I want to focus on the latter.

In Screwtape Letters, CS Lewis adopts the persona of Uncle Screwtape. Screwtape is a veteran demon, well worn in the practice of influencing humans. The book is written as a series of letters from old Screwtape to his nephew, Wormwood; while Screwtape seems to write from a mentorship point of view, no longer “in the field” so to speak, Wormwood is in the thick of it, working actively on a living person as they correspond. We don’t get to read Wormwood’s reports from earth, so we just get the one-sided input of his mentor-uncle.

As Screwtape advises his nephew on how to demonize someone, Lewis uses lovely vocabulary to invite you immersively into the mind of a demon. Screwtape calls God “The Enemy” and calls Satan “Our Father.” Perhaps most hauntingly, he refers to the subject of Wormwood’s demonizing as a “patient.” The whole equation leads you to reason through the strategies from the demons’ point of view, and then invites you to simultaneously analyze the demons’ tactics as well as reverse-engineer positive theology and spiritual insights.

In the introduction, Lewis warns that the two common errors with respect to the devil are (1) to claim the Devil doesn’t exist or (2) to be excessively obsessed with him; either way, these errors and the people who practice them are satisfying to the devil. While the book pulls the reader into the labyrinth of thought corruption and temptation allure that evil presents, the book illuminates the central reality of evil, which I summarize in the paraphrased words of Mike Patin: The devil’s goal is to make you think you’re alone, that you’re the only one going through something.

In reality, at bare minimum, Christ is always with us, and we’re always with Christ. Even if we feel disconnected from friends or family, Christ never leaves us. When the devil is most successful, we allow evil to make us doubt God such that we fully separate ourselves from Him. The power of Lewis’ Screwtape Letters is the way that the inverted process helps us consider the ways that evil and temptation creep into our lives, especially into our thought processes. By reading through Screwtape’s explanations, we can see reflections of the darker parts of our own minds and hearts. His tactical rundowns create all too easy resonance (at least for this reader) with the more selfish and shallow parts of who I can too easily let myself be.

I thought, then, it’d be intriguing to invite myself into Wormwood’s shoes. If I were theorizing the playbook for my personal demons, what would it look like? Lately, I have been tempted toward comparisons. Rather than doing and being good for goodness’ sake, for Christ’s sake, for other’s sake, I can sense myself instead choosing favorable measuring sticks that might make me look better, and furthermore create context to unfavorably judge others, too. I’ll leave the rest to my inner Screwtape, and invite you to consider how your letter might look. It’d be intriguing to hear from your demons after you read…

* * *

My dear Wormwood,

As demons do their bidding, we must be careful to stay out of the realm of reason, where The Enemy is all too effective in undoing our work. Argument has long been a wheelhouse for our foes. But your patient is laying tracks for trains of thought that you can build toward the house of Our Father. We must avoid debates where their style of apologetic can succeed. Instead, you can skew this path toward certain emotions and thus stoke self-righteous passions that help our cause. You know that Christian patients remain in play for us, and that their practice can even invite our methods to greater effectiveness.

Continue to show to your patient those churchgoers behind, in front of, next to him. Let The Enemy move his heart toward empathy for these others; let him feel for and sympathize with those who are late or those who are juggling children. Then carry the connection onward to comparisons. Show him the family that doesn’t come forward together for communion -- let him wonder why one stays back while the other go. Show your patient the ones who don’t kneel in worship of The Enemy -- invite doubts about their inconsistent piety. Show him the person beside him who leaves early before the gathering is concluded -- push for judgments against these disjunctors. But do not stumble as you link these chains, for the passions of the heart must be moved toward our Darkness, for if otherwise allowed, The Enemy may more easily move them into the light.

Find other avenues to carry on this comparative impulse. Be attentive to the peaks of virtue in your patient. Watch carefully when he is with his family. Wait for the moments of apparently selfless attention to the little one, and then show him her mother. But choose carefully -- let pass those times when she is otherwise engaged in potentially important activity and focus instead on apparent idleness. Sow doubt in the patient’s mind about the equation. Do not suggest fault in the mother; instead plant seeds of pride in the patient. Affirm and inflate this selflessness and incite celebration of the heretofore kenotic care the father gives. In this redirection, you may yet more effectively conjure feelings of malice and set off the building of a flimsy case of inequality between the parents, assembled foolishly by your patient. Then, without having even antagonized him, you have set a frictious course for him that shuts out more of that horrid light.

Look, too, to the humdrum encounters of daily life. The derelicte at the off-ramp, the man making speeches in the train car, the beggar at the end of the drive-through lane -- these are opportunities to buttress your work further. You may be tempted, dear nephew, to invite simple comparisons between your patient’s wealth and theirs, but don’t be so simplistic. These Christian patients have the basics mastered toward “those less fortunate,” and fairly comfortably do bits of charity to allay their silly souls. Tempting the patient toward ignorance can harden the heart as we seek, and this can invite a fair amount of shadows. Should you feel more confident and want to take the greater risk, choose a deeper tack, and go for the heart. While you cannot quite hear what The Enemy says to him, use your hand to make the patient see the close friends and dear family in these lowly men. Show him the face of his closest ones in these strangers and force that uncomfortable connection. The guilt of not giving money to people who need it only cuts so deep. Ignoring people entirely who might as well be those he claims to love? Well, this is more of a long shot, but its success only deepens and widens the chasm of doubt where we can do our best work.

Your affectionate uncle,
Screwtape