Screwtape Letters

I am reading this book "The screwtape letters" and I really need to keep and pass on the insight. Below is the summary and my take on the first four letters, I plan on doing all thirty. It may look like a lot of reading but the spiritual enlightenment is well worth it.

The book is prefaced with C.S. Lewis explaining how there are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about devils. One is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them and the other is to disbelieve in their existence. Readers are advised that the devil is a liar.

The book is a classic satire that is both entertaining and enlightening. It is about a series of correspondences between a worldly-wise old devil –screwtape(ST) and his nephew wormwood(WW) - a novice demon in charge of securing the damnation of an ordinary young man.

1.

In the first letter screwtape(ST) is chiding wormwood on being naïve and trying to convince the patient that "materialism" is "true' . he explains how this argument of true and false will not work because the enemies agents- ie Gods angels can argue too- and in the act of arguing you awake the patients reason . Whereas instead convince him that materialism is strong or courageous or better yet just a part of real life and don't let him ask what he means by real. This way all reasoning are out of the picture and its is assumed to be just accepted part of life. Then ST gives an example of an atheist he had convinced for 20 years who one day read a article and began to reason about true and false and ST felt his lifes work begin to totter. He explains that if he had lost his head and began to attempt a defense by argument he would have been undone. Instead he suggested to the man it was time or lunch. The enemy-God made the counter suggestion which was this is more important than lunch – to which screwtape countered "quite right this is wat to important to tackle at the end of the morning better come back after lunch and go at it with a fresh mind. Once he was out on the street the battle was won- ST pointed out a couple distractions and showed him that whatever odd thoughts he had in his mind a healthy dose of "real life" (by which he meant the busy life) was enough to convince him it wasn't true. Now that man is safe in their fathers house- ie the devil .

Screwtape finishes impressing on his nephew that he should keep pressing home the ordinariness of things and that his job is to fuddle him not to teach.

I think that this is applicable in my life when I need to do something important that will lead to spiritual growth like read the Bible or a book. That is when I remember how BUSY I am and the 100s of other things I need to do and how busy I am and I push this aside thinking I will come back to it later. I need to remember that I should not put aside important issues especially involving the Lord and I should reason all arguments and try to question the truth or falsity of an argument instead of just accepting it as part of real life philosophy or jargon.

2.

ST notes hos grave displeasure with his nephew that his patient has become a Christian. But he explains that thousands of converts have been reclaimed after a brief experience in the enemies camp, all the habits of the patient are still in their favor. He says that their greatest ally right now is the Church- Not the Church as she spreads out through all time and space and rooted in eternity, terrible as an army with banners( that makes them uneasy). But fortunately that church is invisible to humans and the patient sees church as an erection on a new building estate . when he goes in he sees the local grocer with a rather oily expression and his neighbors whom he has avoided. ST advises wormwood to lean heavily on the neighbors and make his mind think of the body of Christ and the actual faces in the pew. Then point out any ridiculousness in the neighbors such as singing off key or squeaky shoes or a big nose- it doesn't matter that the person may be a great warrior for Christ, as long as you have the patient focusing these things you can have him thinking that these pp lie the body of Christ ie Christians are ridiculous. Thereby their religion too is ridiculous.

ST advises to work hard on disappointments or anticlimax which is certainly coming to the patient during the first week of being a churchman. He explains how the enemy (God) allows disappointment to occur on the threshold of every human endeavor eg when lovers get married and begin the task of learning to live together. It marks the transition from dreaming to doing. The enemy takes this risk because he has a curious fantasy of making all these disgusting human vermin into what he calls "free" lovers and servants "sons" is the word he uses. Desiring their freedom he refuses to carry them to any goal he sets before them. He leaves them to do it on their own.

In conclusion keep his mind focused on the flaws and vices of people in the next row i.e that man is a miser or he is a gambler or smoker. All you have to do is keep out of this mind the question that I am being what I am a Christian then why should other peoples vices prove that religion is mere hypocrisy and convention. He has not been with the enemy long enough to have any real humility yet, what he says about his sinfulness is mere parrot talk he believes he has a favorable credit balance in the enemies ledger by allowing himself to be converted and thinks hes showing great humility and condescension on going to church with these smug commonplace neighbors at all. Keep him in that state of mind as long as you can.

Reflecting on this I feel that it is one of the deadly tactics of the devil to keep us so focused on other people and their imperfections, while at the same time keeping us thinking how humble and sanctimonious we are by associating with them (How much better than them we are). Thereby filling ourselves up with pride and false humility and never pausing to question that we are sinful - as sinful as the people we are so quick to judge and If Christ accepted us while we were still sinners and died for us then what makes us better than them.

3.

This letter starts with ST pleasure about the mans relationship with his mother. He advises WW to work with Glubose who is in charge of the mother and build up a good settled habit of mutual annoyance and daily pinpricks. He advises four useful methods:

1. keep his mind on the inner life- i.e he thinks of his conversion is something inside him. Keep his mind off the most elementary tasks by directing it to more advanced and spiritual ones. Bring him to where he can practice self examination without discovering any facts about himself that will be perfectly cleat to anyone who has ever lived in the same house as him
2. It is no doubt impossible to make him stop praying about his mother. But make sure they are always very spiritual ie the state of her soul instead of her rheumatism. This will create two advantages he will be focusing on what he consider to be her sins and her actions that irritate him- thus rubbing salt on the wound even when praying. And second since his ideas for her soul are crude he will be praying for an imaginary person – the sharp tongued old lady at the breakfast table instead of the real mother. In time you may get the gap so wide that no thought or feeling from his prayers for his imagined mother will flow into the treatment of the real one ST gives the example of a man he had so convinced that he could go from praying for his wife's or sons soul to beating or insulting his real wife without qualm.
3. When humans have lived together for many years there is usually a tone of voice or expression of face which is most irritating to the other person. Work on that WW and make sure that comes fully into his consciousness and let him assume she knows how much it annoys him and she does it to annoy him. if you do your job well WW he will not realize the improbability if the assumption and never let him suspect that he too has tones and looks which similarly annoy her.
4. In civilized life domestic hatred usually expresses itself by saying things which would appear quiet harmless on paper but in such a voice or at such a moment, that they are not far short of a blow to the face. To keep this game up you and Glubose must see to it that each of the fools has a sort of double standard. Your patient must demand that all his own utterances are to be taken at face value while at the same time judging all his mothers utterances with the full and most oversensitive interpretation of tone and context and the suspected interpretation- and for the mother vise versa. So that henceforth from every quarrel that can both go away convinced that they are quite innocent. Once this habit is established you have the delightful situation of the human saying things with the purpose of offending yet having a grievance when offence is taken.

I think this one speaks for itself it is eye opening in its truth that is so blatantly obvious yet we don't even see it. I can definitely relate to the double standard and the imaginary person prayer while ignoring their real needs, and the feelings from prayer for that person not flowing into through into action for the real person. Also I have to be consciously aware to the double standard of being blind to how I may irritate someone while at the same time taking everything they say apart and deriving their intended meaning and being innocent when they are offended.

4.

ST begins this letter angry with the assertion that he has to fully explain the painful subject of prayer to his nephew. He advises that the best thing to do is to keep the patient from the serious intension of praying altogether. If this cannot be done then encourage him to pray in a parrot like fashion like prayers of childhood –something entirely spontaneous, inward, unregularised- not with bended knee or moving lips but with an indulged sense of supplication. This is the type of prayer we want because it bears a superficial resemblance to the prayer of silence as practiced by those who are very far advanced in the enemies service, clever and lazy patients can be taken in by it for a long time. At the very least they can be convinced that bodily positions makes no difference to their prayers, for they constantly forget what you must remember- they are animals and whatever their bodies do affects their souls.

Its funny how mortals always picture us as putting things in their mind – in reality our best work is done by keeping things out.

If this fails you must fall back on subtler misdirection of his intension. When they are attending to the enemy himself we are defeated but there are ways to preventing them from doing so.

• The simplest way of doing this is to turn their gaze away from the enemy toward themselves. Keep them watching their own minds and trying to produce feelings by the actions of their own will. eg when they pray for courage let them really be trying to feel brave , or if they are praying for forgiveness let them be trying to feel forgiven. Teach them to estimate the value of each prayer by their success in producing the desired feeling- never let them suspect how much success or failure of that depends on whether they are well or ill, fresh or tired at the moment.
• Secondly we have ha subtler weapon. The humans do not start from that direct perception of the Enemy the one which we so unhappily cannot avoid. They have never known that ghastly luminosity, that stabbing and searing glare which makes the background of permanent pain in our lives. If you look in your patients mind you will not find that, you need to examine for the composite object containing ridiculous ingredients. There will be images derived from pictures of the enemy as he appeared during that detestable incarnation , or vague images of the other two persons. There will even be some of his own reverence (and of bodily sensations accompanying it) objectified and attributed to the object revered. I have known cases where a patient called his "God" was located up and to the left corner of his bedroom ceiling,, or inside his own head or in a crucifix on the wall.

  But whatever the nature of the composite object you must keep him praying to it- to the thing that he has made, not to the Person who has made him.

  You must encourage him to attach great importance to the correction and improvement of his composite object and keep it before his imagination during the whole prayer.

For if ever he comes to make the distinction and he consciously directs his prayers " Not to what I think you are but to what thou knowest thyself to be " our situation is for the moment desperate. Once all this thoughts and images have been flung aside and the man trusts himself to the completely real, external, invisible Presence there with him in the room and never knowable by him as he is known by it- then it is that the incalculable may occur. In avoiding this situation – this real nakedness of the soul in prayer- you will be helped by the fact that the humans themselves don't desire it as much as they suppose. There is such a thing as getting more than they bargained for.