As we struggle daily with seeking to serve our God, do we really understand Satan and his evil cohorts at work in our decision-making process? Do we truly appreciate the devil as a living entity as opposed to his just being a symbol of evil? The Apostle Paul wrote to the church in Rome: I have the desire to do good, but I cannot carry it out…. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is the sin living in me that does it.[Romans 7:14-21] Due to Adam’s fall, we are each programmed with original sin. As we seek to show gratitude to God for all that He has done for us, we try to live to please Him. But, then we get frustrated when our best intentions turn out to be sinful. We end up as the “patient” of Satan and his hosts...
Oxford professor Clive Staples Lewis wrote about the good/bad, holy/evil tug-of-war in a series of witty “letters” of advice by “Undersecretary for the Infernal Lowerarchy” Screwtape to his assigned student Wormwood. First serialized in The Guardian newspaper in 1941, the following year Lewis collected the 31 “letters” into one volume as The Screwtape Letters. This correspondence of Uncle Screwtape is addressed to his nephew Wormwood, an Apprentice Devil. Screwtape speaks of Satan as “Our Father Below,” and refers to God as “The Enemy.” Satan had given Screwtape an assignment to mentor Wormwood on how he is to tempt a human “patient.” As Uncle Screwtape explains in one of his letters to Wormwood, “we must keep your ‘patient’ from seeking to please the Enemy.” Since the letters are written from the perspective of the Evil One, everything that Screwtape portrays as good is actually evil, and he considers evil as good. This book becomes a fascinating trail of insights from Satan’s perspective. Each ‘letter’ or chapter deals with the Evil One’s perspective on a common human temptation. Since God made man for His pleasure, we may ask: “Is God a hedonist?” We may say “My time is my own,” or “She died before her time.” But is time really our possession—do we own time or is time a gift for us to use?[Chapter 21] Given that the Creator is sovereign, do prayers of the humans really change things?[Chapter 27]
Set during the early months of World War Two, the reader soon appreciates the deep angst experienced by most Europeans at that time. Not unlike today, the Christian readers in 1941 were wrestling with a faith believing that “in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose.”[Romans 8:28] At the time this book was published, commentator Mark Edward DeForrest wrote, “It is the story of a simple life of faith, concerned with the common-place difficulties of being a disciple of Jesus Christ in a world filled with…spiritually deadly dangers.”
Each of Uncle Screwtape’s letters presents insights for our daily lives. For example, Screwtape makes this observation on Wormwood’s progress in degrading the holy intentions of his ‘patient’: We know that we have introduced a change of direction in his course which is already carrying him out of his orbit around the Enemy; but he must be made to imagine that all the choices which have effected this change of course are trivial and revocable. He must not be allowed to suspect that he is now, however slowly, headed right away from the sun on a line which will carry him into the cold and dark of utmost space. I am almost glad to hear that he is still a churchgoer and a communicant. I know there are dangers in this; but anything is better than that he should realize the break he has made with the first months of his Christian life. [Chapter 12]
Reading the correspondence of Uncle Screwtape to Wormwood, the reader can easily make the application to 2012. We have wars now ramped up to the level of their being religiously motivated. In addition, on a personal level, in our perverse culture each of us experiences the daily temptations we know as moral dilemmas. As Screwtape puts it: I see few of the old warnings about Worldly Vanities, the Choice of Friends, and the Value of Time. Your patient would probably classify all of that as ‘Puritanism’—and may I remark in passing that the value we have given to that word is one of the really solid triumphs of the last hundred years [of tempting]? By it we rescue annually thousands of humans from temperance, chastity, and sobriety of life. [Chapter 10]
Each of Screwtape’s letters centers on a topic to mentor how the inexperienced tempter Wormwood is to bring his human case into the world of evil and out of relationship with Creator/Redeemer God. One lesson considers the Deadly Sin of Gluttony. Another discusses the Deadly Sin of Pride—in this one humility is to be encouraged which humans will bring to taking pride in their humility. Yet another lesson deals with the human passion for change or novelty. Wormwood is instructed to encourage ever more rapid changes with a demand for absolute novelty with material goods. Eliminate “the horror of the Same Old Thing.”[Chapter 25] Another, considers the perversion of simple pleasure being turned into ever-changing amusement—realizing that the root word here refers to the absence of thinking (a-muse: no deep musing or thinking). Yet another rejoices in Satan’s workers having replaced the word charity with that of unselfishness—the former is a positive action while the latter can be thought of simply as a lack of asserting personal wishes (a negative).[Chapter 26] We are also shown a discussion between a superior devil and his pupil discussing the “mystery of prayer.” The Enemy Above asks for prayers from His faithful; yet if He is sovereign, how do the prayers of His people change things? “Why that creative act leaves room for their free-will is the problem of problems, the secret behind the Enemy’s nonsense about LOVE.” Foreknowledge vs. predetermination—but, then, the Enemy above is not confined to time as are His creatures.[Chapter 27]
Along the way the reader is even given a glimpse into the fall of Satan from Heaven.
When the creation of man was first mooted and when, even at that stage, the Enemy freely confessed that He foresaw a certain episode about a cross, Our Father Below very naturally sought an interview and asked for an explanation. The Enemy gave no reply except to produce the cock-and-bull story about disinterested love which He has been circulating ever since. This naturally Our Father Below could not accept…and his disgust caused him to remove himself an infinite distance…which gave rise to the story that he was thrown out of Heaven.
It is interesting to hear a possible explanation from Satan’s perspective.
In Chapter 31 the reader is also provided with a conclusion to these temptations. No surprise to the Christian reader, God wins! Wormwood is condemned to special torment in Hell for his having lost his patient to the gates of Heaven. Through the words of Screwtape himself we are witness to Christian’s first glimpse of the Trinity in eternity:
Christian had not the faintest conception till that very hour of how they would look, and sometimes even doubted their existence. But when he saw them [in Heaven] he knew that he had always known them and realized what part each one of them had played at many an hour in his life [on Earth] when he had supposed himself alone, so that now he could say to them, one by one, not ‘Who are you?’ but ‘So it was you all the time.’ All that they were and said at this meeting woke memories. …and was now at last explained…. Recognition made him free…almost before the limbs of his corpse became quiet [in death]. Only you [Wormwood] were left outside.
Wow, what an inspiring conclusion that author Lewis provides!
As this book marks its 70th anniversary, The Screwtape Letters has truly earned the label of a classic in the field of Christian literature. This work is at times lighthearted, insightful, encouraging, and undeniably helpful for any Christian attempting by God’s grace to become more like the example Christ had set for His disciples. The author walks alongside today’s reader providing a glimpse into understanding the mindset of Satan and his hosts who attempt to deceive us in our daily walk of sanctification.
Shortly before Lewis’ 1963 death he wrote a brief follow-up Screwtape Proposes a Toast in which the scene is Hell and Screwtape addresses the graduating class at Tempters’ Training College for Young Devils. Almost two decades had passed and our author Lewis provides through the primary character some reflections on Our Father Below’s (Satan’s) work to subvert Christ’s believers. This literary coda was first published as a 1961 article in Saturday Evening Post and then incorporated as an epilogue in subsequent editions of The Screwtape Letters. ~review by Dan F. Bloem
THE SCREWTAPE LETTERS as part of THE COMPLETE C. S. LEWIS SIGNATURE CLASSICS [published by Harper One, copyright 2002]. A copy is in Trinity library