The Screwtape Letters

I finished up reading the Screwtape Letters a while back, and thought I'd post a few excerpts. It's written by CS Lewis and is a satirical compilation of letters written by a devil named Screwtape to a field tempter offering advice on how best to tempt humankind. It's a really cool book, and I recommend it to all. Here are the excerpts:

He has balanced the love of change in them with a love of permanence. He has contrived to gratify both tastes together in the very world He has made, by that union of change and permanence which we call Rhythm. He gives them seasons, each season different yet every year the same, so that spring is always felt as a novelty yet always as the recurrence of an immemorial theme.

The game is to have them all running about with fire extinguishers whenever there is a flood, and all crowding to that side of the boat which is already nearly gunwale under...Cruel ages are put on their guard against Sentimentality, feckless and idle ones against Respectability, lecherous ones against Puritanism; and whenever all men are really hastening to be slaves or tyrants we make Liberalism the prime bogey.

The grand problem is that of "Unselfishness." Note, once again, the admirable work of our Philological Arm in substituting the negative unselfishness for the Enemy's positive Charity.

Don't forget to use the "Heads I win, tails you lose" argument. If the thing he prays for doesn't happen, then that is one more proof that petitionary prayers don't work; if it does happen, he will of course, be able to see some of the physical causes which led up to it, and "therefore it would have happened anyway." Thus a granted prayer become just as good a proof as a denied one that prayers are ineffective.

The long, dull, monotonous years of middle aged prosperity or middle aged adversity are excellent campaigning weather. You see, it is so hard for these creatures to persevere. The routine of adversity...provides admirable opportunities of wearing out a soul by attrition. If, on the other hand, the middle years prove prosperous, our position is even stronger. 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.

He did not create the humans - He did not become one of them and die among them by torture - in order to produce candidates for Limbo, "failed" humans. He wanted to make Saints; gods; things like Himself.

The Screwtape Letters: Flippancy

I have begun reading The Screwtape Letters by CS Lewis, and I have found it to be incredibly insightful. One chapter in particular has resonated strongly with me because it reminds me of many encounters I have had while travelling the tubes of the internets. Rather than try to summarize the chapter and most likely fail to relay its message, I will copy one of its paragraphs which does a pretty good job of getting the point across:

But flippancy is the best of all. In the first place it is very economical. Only a clever human can make a real Joke about virtue, or indeed about anything else; any of them can be trained to talk as if virtue were funny. Among flippant people the Joke is always assumed to have been made. No one actually makes it; but every serious subject is discussed in a manner which implies that they have already found a ridiculous side to it. If prolonged, the habit of Flippancy builds up around a man the finest armour plating against the Enemy that I know, and it is quite free from the dangers inherent in the other sources of laughter. It is a thousand miles away from joy; it deadens, instead of sharpening, the intellect; and it excites no affection between those who practise it.

"Small Sins"

I now turn to milder ways of not offending the devil. Nephi has given us the pattern or formula by which Satan operates:

“And others will he pacify, and lull them away into carnal security, that they will say: All is well in Zion; yea, Zion prospereth, all is well—and thus the devil cheateth their souls, and leadeth them away carefully down to hell.

“And behold, others he flattereth away, and telleth them there is no hell; and he saith unto them: I am no devil, for there is none—and thus he whispereth in their ears, until he grasps them with his awful chains, from whence there is no deliverance.”

C. S. Lewis gave us a keen insight into devilish tactics. In a fictional letter, the master devil, Screwtape, instructs the apprentice devil Wormwood, who is in training to become a more experienced devil:

“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. … 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. … Indeed, the safest road to Hell is the gradual one—the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.”

Society’s oft-labeled “sin laws” exist to counterattack Satan’s so-called small sins of gambling, alcohol use, and drug consumption. Some who wish to appear broad-minded say, under the guise of not imposing religious belief, “I don’t drink or gamble, but I don’t think we ought to have any laws to control others who wish to.” This completely ignores the health and social costs to society of the vices. They foolishly argue that laws cannot control human behavior. My long legal career has led me to conclude that all criminal laws have a moral basis.

Serving the Lord and Resisting the Devil
President James E. Faust
Second Counselor in the First Presidency