Screwtape in action
With apologies to C S Lewis, also to Ann Owen.(1)
My dear Oldsocks
I am choked with disappointment at your bungling. You have let your patient climb out of fundamentalism (never mind of what sort, all are equally good), you have permitted him to espouse liberalism, not of the useful wishy washy sort, but a freedom of mind to explore everything that pertains to the vermin, and if this were not bad enough, you have let him have direct experience of the Enemy. You couldn’t help it? That doesn’t matter. Bring food or be food. You know the rules.
Nevertheless, all is not lost. The patient thinks that all the vermin are related to him. He has called them his brothers, all of them. Right. Make sure he feels superior to any who are fundamentalists. This is obvious. If he is going to play games, so will we, and have all the better eating in the end, that is, I shall.
You useless apology for a tempter, you let him argue logically. He saw that he was self evidently superior to everybody else. That is of course our standard practice. But then he found that everybody else was self evidently superior in their own eyes by the same token, and he laughed with the absurdity of it. If everybody is superior, who is inferior? Our best ploy! It should have been unobserved and deadly, but you let him see it like the bungler that you are. You will have to be more subtle now. You can try and inject that attitude of superiority again. The old temptations usually work the best. But for Badness’ sake don’t let him know what you are doing. He doesn’t have to feel he is much better than everybody else. You can wreck him quite adequately with just a little, and it is better style. Why work hard when you can topple him with your little finger? I will let you share the delightful stench that issues from him because of his superiority. He will not be aware of it of course, but in time, oh in time he will be very aware indeed.
I see from my monitor that you failed again. Now the patient will be very much on guard. Oh ill! C’est la mort. You will now have to assault him directly. Make him see the tyrants of the world, the psychopaths, the alcoholics, the beggars, the addicts, the malicious fools we have placed everywhere, and make him try to esteem them all equally with himself. You will have him squirming like a maggot on a hook. Delightful in itself, but more importantly, he will struggle so hard with this that he will not be able to look at the Enemy. And make sure that he understands he has to do this in his own puny strength, or forfeit his title to be a liberal. He is proud of that. A good opening there, I should say.
Ugh! In a meeting for worship! You couldn’t help the sun shining I suppose, though you should have made it an invasive glare, but did you have to let the Enemy shine on him as brightly as the sun? The flood of grace flushed all your turd away at once. Yes I know you can replace it all. Yes I know you have an inexhaustible supply, but now your patient remembers that he is the Enemy’s, and that this business which so delighted us is a small matter in that context. Didn’t he even go so far as to say that as he was the Enemy’s there must be an achievable resolution? That it was not surprising that he and others should have difficulties of comprehension if their lives had had virtually nothing in common? Really, you are not doing well enough, so I am going to take a bite out of your leg.
Well, that was pretty insipid stuff, except that your pain and shock gave it a delightful relish. How are you to get about? You blight, what has that to do with me? Bring food or be food. You know the rules. The Enemy said it himself: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom”. (2) I of course am your Lord, and you are to be afraid of me, terribly afraid. I love this verse. It is so perennially useful. And from the Enemy’s book too! It also says that perfect fear drives out love. (3) If I say that is what it says, that is what it says. I will clearly have to take another bite. And “For there is mercy with thee, therefore shalt thou be feared”. (4) Anybody can see that the writer has deviated from the proper meaning of the word fear. But our servants have ensured orthodoxy on this point in the church for most of its history. So then it is so easy. They fear the Lord, as He told them to with a little help from us, and then they can’t love him. He wants to be loved, very much. By them? And when they cannot love Him, delightful results ensue. They can go their whole lives through without knowing his love, and losing all the choicest joy that they could have had, all of it. They can try their whole lives through to love Him, and of course they fail. Marvellous!
Now for my bite. No, No, it is not available to you to say “I will go to my Father and say I have sinned”. That is only for the most pusillanimous of the vermin. He won’t have you. All you bring is your enmity. Our conditions of service? Bring food or be food. What can be more realistic than that? That’s odd, he has disappeared from the screen. Now I come to think of it, Gangplank disappeared like this the other day, or it might have been the other century. Ow! Ow, my leg! Ow! Ow!
[This material was found on a dictating machine, but seems never to have been sent. Apparently they did find one of Screwtape’s shoes]
1. "Screwtape Among Friends" pub D Owen, August 1988
2. Psalm 111:10
3. 1 John 4:18
4. Psalm 130, eg as set by Morley.
My dear Oldsocks
I am choked with disappointment at your bungling. You have let your patient climb out of fundamentalism (never mind of what sort, all are equally good), you have permitted him to espouse liberalism, not of the useful wishy washy sort, but a freedom of mind to explore everything that pertains to the vermin, and if this were not bad enough, you have let him have direct experience of the Enemy. You couldn’t help it? That doesn’t matter. Bring food or be food. You know the rules.
Nevertheless, all is not lost. The patient thinks that all the vermin are related to him. He has called them his brothers, all of them. Right. Make sure he feels superior to any who are fundamentalists. This is obvious. If he is going to play games, so will we, and have all the better eating in the end, that is, I shall.
You useless apology for a tempter, you let him argue logically. He saw that he was self evidently superior to everybody else. That is of course our standard practice. But then he found that everybody else was self evidently superior in their own eyes by the same token, and he laughed with the absurdity of it. If everybody is superior, who is inferior? Our best ploy! It should have been unobserved and deadly, but you let him see it like the bungler that you are. You will have to be more subtle now. You can try and inject that attitude of superiority again. The old temptations usually work the best. But for Badness’ sake don’t let him know what you are doing. He doesn’t have to feel he is much better than everybody else. You can wreck him quite adequately with just a little, and it is better style. Why work hard when you can topple him with your little finger? I will let you share the delightful stench that issues from him because of his superiority. He will not be aware of it of course, but in time, oh in time he will be very aware indeed.
I see from my monitor that you failed again. Now the patient will be very much on guard. Oh ill! C’est la mort. You will now have to assault him directly. Make him see the tyrants of the world, the psychopaths, the alcoholics, the beggars, the addicts, the malicious fools we have placed everywhere, and make him try to esteem them all equally with himself. You will have him squirming like a maggot on a hook. Delightful in itself, but more importantly, he will struggle so hard with this that he will not be able to look at the Enemy. And make sure that he understands he has to do this in his own puny strength, or forfeit his title to be a liberal. He is proud of that. A good opening there, I should say.
Ugh! In a meeting for worship! You couldn’t help the sun shining I suppose, though you should have made it an invasive glare, but did you have to let the Enemy shine on him as brightly as the sun? The flood of grace flushed all your turd away at once. Yes I know you can replace it all. Yes I know you have an inexhaustible supply, but now your patient remembers that he is the Enemy’s, and that this business which so delighted us is a small matter in that context. Didn’t he even go so far as to say that as he was the Enemy’s there must be an achievable resolution? That it was not surprising that he and others should have difficulties of comprehension if their lives had had virtually nothing in common? Really, you are not doing well enough, so I am going to take a bite out of your leg.
Well, that was pretty insipid stuff, except that your pain and shock gave it a delightful relish. How are you to get about? You blight, what has that to do with me? Bring food or be food. You know the rules. The Enemy said it himself: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom”. (2) I of course am your Lord, and you are to be afraid of me, terribly afraid. I love this verse. It is so perennially useful. And from the Enemy’s book too! It also says that perfect fear drives out love. (3) If I say that is what it says, that is what it says. I will clearly have to take another bite. And “For there is mercy with thee, therefore shalt thou be feared”. (4) Anybody can see that the writer has deviated from the proper meaning of the word fear. But our servants have ensured orthodoxy on this point in the church for most of its history. So then it is so easy. They fear the Lord, as He told them to with a little help from us, and then they can’t love him. He wants to be loved, very much. By them? And when they cannot love Him, delightful results ensue. They can go their whole lives through without knowing his love, and losing all the choicest joy that they could have had, all of it. They can try their whole lives through to love Him, and of course they fail. Marvellous!
Now for my bite. No, No, it is not available to you to say “I will go to my Father and say I have sinned”. That is only for the most pusillanimous of the vermin. He won’t have you. All you bring is your enmity. Our conditions of service? Bring food or be food. What can be more realistic than that? That’s odd, he has disappeared from the screen. Now I come to think of it, Gangplank disappeared like this the other day, or it might have been the other century. Ow! Ow, my leg! Ow! Ow!
[This material was found on a dictating machine, but seems never to have been sent. Apparently they did find one of Screwtape’s shoes]
1. "Screwtape Among Friends" pub D Owen, August 1988
2. Psalm 111:10
3. 1 John 4:18
4. Psalm 130, eg as set by Morley.