24 Vital Christian Life Lessons from C. S. Lewis' The Screwtape Letters
Insights and strategies for spiritual victory as the devil exposes his tactics.
In The Screwtape Letters, C. S. Lewis used satire to reveal profound truths about life, society, and culture. He revealed practical and for all life insights in defense of the Christian faith including strategies the believer can use to defeat the devil’s subtilities and temptations.
You will encounter Screwtape, an experienced devil as he mentors his young protégée and nephew, Wormwood. Senior Devil, Screwtape, ceaselessly coached Wormwood on effective strategies for tempting the human being (a new Christian) he was assigned to bring down.
Their devilish ultimate goal is ensnaring the young Christian with beguiling and seemingly harmless temptations thereby leading him on a gentle but steady pathway into damnation.
As a satire, the author uses ironic reversals throughout the 31 letters of the book. Screwtape and his co-devils call God, Our Father in Heaven “the Enemy”, while he calls Satan, “Our father below”. He called humans “vermins” and two-legged animals, heaven is Light, and perdition is nothing.
The book uncovers deep spiritual truths about human weaknesses, foibles, hypocrisies, and ignorance about what motivates their actions.
The devil blew the whistle on both of his frontal and subtle attack methods. These strategies also show Christians how to overcome the devil’s temptations even today.
Its lessons and practical applications can not be fully explained in a few pages. But for me, highlighting these key points aids in better understanding.
24 Lessons
Desiring their freedom, He, therefore, refuses to carry them, by their mere affections and habits, to any of the goals which He sets before them: He leaves them to "do it on their own". And there lies our opportunity. But also, remember, there lies our danger. If once they get through this initial dryness successfully, they become much less dependent on emotion and therefore much harder to tempt.
You will say that these are very small sins; and doubtless, like all young tempters, you are anxious to be able to report spectacular wickedness. But do remember, the only thing that matters is the extent to which you separate the man from the Enemy. It does not matter how small the sins are provided that their cumulative effect is to edge the man away from the Light and out into the Nothing. Murder is no better than cards if cards can do the trick. Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one - the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.
Do not be deceived, Wormwood. Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy’s will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken and still obeys.
There is nothing like suspense and anxiety for barricading a human’s mind against the Enemy. He wants men to be concerned with what they do; our business is to keep them thinking about what will happen to them.
It is, no doubt, impossible to prevent his praying for his mother, but we have means of rendering the prayers innocuous. Make sure that they are always very "spiritual", that he is always concerned with the state of her soul and never with her rheumatism.
Prosperity knits a man to the world. He feels that he is finding his place in it, while really it is finding its place in him.
If, on the other hand, he is aware that horrors may be in store for him and is praying for the virtues, wherewith to meet them, and meanwhile concerning himself with the Present because there, and there alone, all duty, all grace, all knowledge, and all pleasure dwell, his state is very undesirable and should be attacked at once.
When He talks of their losing their selves, He means only abandoning the clamor of self-will; once they have done that, He really gives them back all their personality and boasts (I am afraid, sincerely) that when they are wholly His they will be more themselves than ever.
All extremes, except extreme devotion to the Enemy, are to be encouraged.
If you can once get him to the point of thinking that ‘religion is all very well up to a point,’ you can feel quite happy about his soul. A moderated religion is as good for us as no religion at all - and more amusing.
The Enemy's human partisans have all been plainly told by Him that suffering is an essential part of what He calls Redemption; so that a faith which is destroyed by a war or a pestilence cannot really have been worth the trouble of destroying.
Once you have made the World an end, and faith a means, you have almost won your man, and it makes very little difference what kind of worldly end he is pursuing.
He cannot "tempt" to virtue as we do to vice. He wants them to learn to walk and must therefore take away His hand; and if only the will to walk is really there He is pleased even with their stumbles.
Hence we always try to work away from the natural condition of any pleasure to that in which it is least natural, least redolent of its Maker, and least pleasurable. An ever-increasing craving for an ever-diminishing pleasure is the formula.
As long as he retains externally the habits of a Christian he can still be made to think of himself as one who has adopted a few new friends and amusements but whose spiritual state is much the same as it was six weeks ago.
The great thing is to prevent his doing anything. As long as he does not convert it into action, it does not matter how much he thinks about this new repentance.
Active habits are strengthened by repetition but passive ones are weakened. The more often he feels without acting, the less he will be able ever to act, and, in the long run, the less he will be able to feel.
About the general connection between Christianity and politics, our position is more delicate. Certainly we do not want men to allow their Christianity to flow over into their political life, for the establishment of anything like a really just society would be a major disaster. On the other hand, we do want, and want very much, to make men treat Christianity as a means; preferably, of course, as a means to their own advancement, but, failing that, as a means to anything--even to social justice.
I see only one thing to do at the moment. Your patient has become humble; have you drawn his attention to the fact? All virtues are less formidable to us once the man is aware that he has them, but this is specially true of humility. Catch him at the moment when he is really poor in spirit and smuggle into his mind the gratifying reflection, "By jove! I'm being humble", and almost immediately pride--pride at his own humility--will appear.
Nothing matters at all except the tendency of a given state of mind, in given circumstances, to move a particular patient at particular moment nearer to the Enemy or nearer to us.
Anything, even a sin, which has the total effect of moving him close up to the Enemy, makes against us in the long run.
False spirituality is always to be encouraged.
But hatred is best combined with Fear. Cowardice, alone of all the vices, is purely painful - horrible to anticipate, horrible to feel, horrible to remember; Hatred has its pleasures. It is therefore often the compensation by which a frightened man reimburses himself for the miseries of Fear. The more he fears, the more he will hate. And Hatred is also a great anodyne for shame.
This, indeed, is probably one of the Enemy's motives for creating a dangerous world - a world in which moral issues really come to the point. He sees as well as you do that courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means, at the point of highest reality.
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