brief thoughts on the screwtape letters
a book by C.S. Lewis
My dear Wormwood,
So you 'have great hopes that the patient's religious phase is dying away', have you? I always thought the Training College had gone to pieces since they put old Slubgob at the head of it, and now I am sure...
The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis has long been a favourite among Christians. The premise is simple: Screwtape is a senior devil and Under Secretary of some diabolical department in the dark recesses of Hell. Wormwood, a junior devil and his nephew, has just started his first assignment with a “patient” who is a young man working in a munitions factory during the war who has just become a Christian. Screwtape writes letters to Wormwood, teaching him and giving advice on how to secure the young man's damnation, thus permanently separating him from the one whom the devils refer to as the Enemy.
In preparation for this issue on sin, someone suggested that we read The Screwtape Letters because, in a sense, it is all about sin. So Ben picked up our copy from off our bookshelf and read it for the first time whereas Karen, who had already read it, just listened to John Cleese's magnificent reading of it on the train or when falling asleep at night.
Here are some of her brief thoughts:
1. The Nature of Sin
One of the wonderful characteristics of the book is Screwtape's thorough and horrifying analysis of different aspects of human sins. For example, where Screwtape talks about gluttony (one of Karen's favourite passages - especially when John Cleese is reading it):
My dear Wormwood,
The contemptuous way in which you spoke of gluttony as a means of catching souls, in your last letter, only shows your ignorance. One of the great achievements of the last hundred years has been to deaden the human conscience on that subject, so that by now you will hardly find a sermon preached or a conscience troubled by it in the whole length and breadth of Europe. This has largely been effected by concentrating all our efforts on gluttony of Delicacy, not gluttony of Excess. Your patient's mother, as I learn from the dossier and you might have learned from Glubose, is a good example. She would be astonished—one day, I hope, will be—to learn that her whole life is enslaved to this kind of sensuality, which is quite concealed from her by the fact that the quantities involved are small. But what do quantities matter, provided we can use a human belly and palate to produce querulousness, impatience, uncharitableness and self-concern? Glubose has this old woman well in hand. She is a positive terror to hostesses and servants. She is always turning from what has been offered her to say with a demure little sigh and a smile “Oh please, please ... all I want is a cup of tea, weak but not too weak, and the teeniest weeniest bit of really crisp toast”. You see? Because what she wants is smaller and less costly than what has been set before her, she never recognises as gluttony her determination to get what she wants, however troublesome it may be to others. At the very moment of indulging her appetite she believes that she is practising temperance. In a crowded restaurant she gives a little scream at the plate which some overworked waitress has set before her and says, “Oh, that's far, far too much! Take it away and bring me about a quarter of it”. If challenged, she would say she was doing this to avoid waste; in reality she does it because the particular shade of delicacy to which we have enslaved her is offended by the sight of more food than she happens to want. (Letter XVII)
We have been indoctrinated with the notion that sin is big stuff—murder, adultery, embezzlement, or what Screwtape calls “spectacular wickedness”—however Lewis shows us that the real work of Satan can be found more in the everyday—the things which we would not consider to be sins but can dominate our whole lives. As Screwtape writes,
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. (Letter XII)
We squirm uncomfortably, recognising ourselves in Screwtape's hellish prose and the myriad ways in which we, as Christians, have stuffed up, but through contrast we are able to see things in their true light and can therefore proceed to addressing our sins now that we have identified them.
2. Double Agency
Lewis makes it very clear what Satan's role is and how much of a hand he has in our sin. There is always the temptation to refuse to take responsibility—to say, as Eve said, "The serpent made me do it." Wormwood's role is to fuddle his patient—to drive a large wedge between himself and God so that he misses the mark. The fact that he generally fails to do so is an indication of our ability as humans to sin (or not sin, as the case may be) on our own. Though we may be influenced by the devil, we do not have to follow him; all he can do is “tempt” us to vice, and it is our own fault if we are taken by it.
3. God
In Lewis' preface, he writes,
Readers are advised to remember that the devil is a liar. Not everything that Screwtape says should be assumed to be true even from his own angle. I have made no attempt to identify any of the human beings mentioned in the letters; but I think it very unlikely that the portraits, say, of Fr. Spike or the patient's mother, are wholly just. There is wishful thinking in Hell as well on Earth.
Though Screwtape's insights into the workings of the Lord are interesting, you feel like you cannot trust everything he is saying, especially when you learn that he sometimes doesn't really know what he's talking about: “Next to the curse of useless tempters like yourself the greatest curse upon us is the failure of our Intelligence Department. If only we could find out what He is really up to!” (Letter XXXI)
Screwtape's inability to understand the true nature of God corrupts all his writings on the subject and gives rise to great scepticism concerning the things he does say. In short, the book doesn't really tell you much about God's nature—more about the nature of humans.
4. Real Life
The danger—as with anything fantastical—is thinking that reality is like that; every person in the world has a devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other, and the devil's job is to tempt him/her into sin while the angel's job is to encourage him/her to virtue. But of course we must remember that The Screwtape Letters was written by a human—a gifted and fantastically brilliant human but a human nonetheless.
Perhaps it is fitting, then, that Lewis' perception of Hell has its roots in a very human image: that of a kind of government bureaucracy which, one can easily understand, can seem quite hellish at times. Even the portrayal of the devils reeks of humanity: arrogance, superiority, double-crossing (see Letter XXII), injustice and a Machiavellian ends-justifies-the-means attitude (“At any rate, you will son find that the justice of Hell is purely realistic, and concerned only with results. Bring us back food, or be food yourself.” [see Letter XXX]). If this is Hell, then no wonder Heaven is so much more preferable!
Karen Beilharz has trouble with the word “brief”.
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