“When He talks of their losing their selves, He means only abandoning the clamour 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.” — C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
C.S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters is written as correspondence from a senior devil, Screwtape, to his junior tempter, Wormwood, who is assigned to a human patient in England around World War II. Across thirty-one letters, Lewis delicately dissects the smallest nuances of human existence, showing how the thinnest strands of our daily lives can be pulled and exploited into devastating, long-lasting effects.
Screwtape explains early on that the most effective way to lead a human to hell is the slow, gradual path – small, seemingly innocuous decisions that steadily widen the gap between the soul and God.
I find it difficult to read these letters without seeing myself in the Patient.
Lewis forces an examination of conscience with every page turn. He exposes how thoughts can be manipulated even in the middle of a church service, encouraging the mind to wander in judgment toward the people in the surrounding pews. In the third letter, Screwtape details the precise, minor irritations a tempter can exploit to slowly deteriorate the Patient’s relationship with his mother. He describes how to twist even the best of intentions – like a prayer for her – away from the real, complicated humanity of the woman, and into a warped, frustrating ideal of what she should be. Once read on paper, it is terrifyingly easy to see how quickly this trap can be laid in our own homes.
I try to return to this book at least once a year, and it always provides a timely conviction. In this most recent reading, the insight that struck me deepest was regarding time.
In the fifteenth letter, Screwtape urges Wormwood to steer the Patient’s thoughts away from the present moment and toward the Future, where hope and fear are easily inflamed. The tempter notes that the Past also has some lure, as we can spend too much time dwelling on what cannot be changed. But it is the Present where we are truly closest to God. As Lewis writes, the Present is “the point at which time touches eternity,” the only place where “freedom and actuality are offered.”
With that passage in mind, I am redoubling my efforts to anchor myself in the present. I want to live without the heavy burdens of dwelling on the past, and without the paralyzing anxieties of anticipating the unknown future.