C.S. Lewis, Clive Staples Lewis, (born November 29, 1898, Belfast, Ireland died November 22, 1963, Oxford, Oxfordshire, England), Irish-born scholar, novelist, and author of about 40 books, many of them on Christian apologetics, including The Screwtape Letters and Mere Christianity. His works of greatest lasting fame may be The Chronicles of Narnia, a series of seven children’s books.

Lewis is a great illustrator, as you might suspect from a legendary storyteller. He’s brilliant. Mere Christianity is an excellent book for the novice considering Christianity.

Today, we are going to be looking at Screwtape Letters. Deep rumination on religion and a high comedy rooted in Satan’s foibles and humanity’s flaws. And a tale of redemption and everlasting life. The storyline takes the form of two demons plying humanity with temptations.

Ben Shapiro gets it wrong on Christian theology, stating that the Christian take and the Jewish take on Satan is divergent.[i] That may very well be, but he isn’t getting the Christian understanding right. Satan is an opponent to God. True that Satan is opposed to God’s character and plan, but is of no consequence to God. God can dispatch Satan without batting an eye. Shapiro states that Satan is almost on equal footing (dualistic structure) with God in terms of power. No. In Judaism, Satan and all the angels are messengers of God. Malach. Single forces in the world without will. Kind of like automatons, robots. This is against their own scriptures. In Job, Satan challenges God on the virtue of His servant Job.

" The apostle and brother of the Lord, Jude, writes: "Now Michael the archangel, when he took issue with the devil and was disputing about the body of Moses, did not dare to lay upon him a judgment of blasphemy, but said, 'May the Lord rebuke thee."'

Arguments aren’t possible without independent wills and thoughts.

Luther: Jeer the devil, for he cannot bear scorn. Thomas Moore: The Devil, the proud spirit, cannot endure to be mocked. Those are the ways to drive him out. Exorcism by derision and laughter.

Today, we have people asserting that either there is no difference between men and women, or that you can switch. Further, if you do switch, you are elevated in their eyes. Of course, this is laughable. It is also Satanic. God made male and female. He didn’t say you could switch, or that it is your choice.

In the vein of laughing at evil. If you do laugh at this, those advancing this would immediately say you are intolerant, a hater and deplorable. They cannot stand mockery.

Gertrude Himmelfarb, Religious Americans now find it difficult to transmit their own practices and principles to their children, instead they rely on non-judgementalism, but laughter is inherently judgmental. So religion should be filled with laughter, laughter at evil.

Screwtape Letters is a story of instruction conveyed to Screwtape’s nephew Wormwood through a string of letters. Wormwood’s first devilish task is to convince a fledgling Christian to drop his faith. Screwtape is hellish middle management.

The surgical weapon of choice is temptation.

Temptation is the prelude to sin.

When tempted, the best advice is to run. Get out of there!

1. Satan’s best weapon is the “real world.” The spiritual world God is unreal. The real world is the material world. But if you ask them about what is most important to them, they’ll talk about their feelings, which are unreal. They are not consistent. The definition of “real” is capacious and changing from secularists.

a. Lewis contends that man’s faith can be rooted in reason. Reason can guide you to greater things than you can see in the moment, transcendent things. Who made the rules, for example. It gives you “greater” understanding of the world and reality. Material things were created for a purpose.

b. Luke 19: 37 As he was drawing near—already on the way down the Mount of Olives—the whole multitude of his disciples began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works that they had seen, 38 saying, “Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!” 39 And some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, rebuke your disciples.” 40 He answered, “I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out.”

Secularism and materialism gets you to focus on the thing itself. Bertand Russell. Oftentimes material things are pointing to something beyond and greater than themselves, a glorious sunrise or sunset for example.

c. First word of advice from Screwtape: Even if a particular train of thought can be twisted so as to end in our favor, you will find that you have been strengthening in your patient the fatal habit of attending to universal issues and withdrawing his attention from the stream of immediate sense experiences. Your business is to fix his attention on the stream. Teach him to call it “real life,” and don’t let him ask what he means by real.

d. Busyness. You are too distracted, all the time, to do any deep contemplation. The internet age has done this superbly. We just care about the next 15 seconds and the adrenaline rush we get from immediate gratification. No one thinks about “higher ideas.”

e. Screwtape is advising that when a human looks at death, just see the material remnants and don’t ask questions. Same thing goes for happiness. Just be happy, don’t ask why.

f. The aim is contented worldliness.

g. Part of the driving force of faith is the inadequacy of our world. Injustice, corruption. We are on the verge of nuclear fusion because it would be cheaper, cleaner and limitless, not like our current sources of energy. Discontent drives us toward something better. Discontent drives us toward God.

h. God has aspirations, duties, will. There isn’t just mental assent to God. Admit there is a God, and drop it there. Admitting there is a God has consequences. Many people would not want those.

2. Focus on the future at all times. It is far better to make them live in the Future… The Future is of all things, the thing least like eternity. It is the most completely temporal part of time – for the Past is frozen and no longer flows, and the Present is all lit up with eternal rays. Hence the encouragement we have given to all those schemes of thought such as Creative Evolution, Scientific Humanism, or Communism, which fix men’s affections on the Future, on the very core of temporality. Hence nearly all vices are rooted in the future.”

a. Future without God. Or not including God. I will build my barns to hold all my surplus grain.

The Bible speaks of a future:

2 Corinthians 4:17-18

17 For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. 18 So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.

You can do bad things now for a better future, like rob a bank, assuming you aren’t caught.

The means don’t justify the ends

Exitus acta probat

-Ovid, not Machiavelli in The Prince

Anticlimax: New Christianity is exciting, shiny and new. Once you have been in it for a while, a routine can set in. Luster is not what it was. Disillusionment and disinterest can set in.

Revelation 2

To the Church in Ephesus …3Without growing weary, you have persevered and endured many things for the sake of My name. 4But I have this against you: You have abandoned your first love. 5Therefore, keep in mind how far you have fallen. Repent and perform the deeds you did at first. But if you do not repent, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place.…

Screwtape is saying, “Look into being morose. Look into being depressed.” Don’t think of the positives anymore, focus on it being drudgery.

First, it’s really not drudgery. That’s misbranding it. Finding a feeling of inspiration to pray can be really, really difficult. “Ah, I’m never getting inspired, and you stop doing it.” With prayer, focus on the doing. Will eventually come to feeling.

3. Blasé about sin. Better yet, engage in full on festivals celebrating your sin. On the contrary, when go to church, should be shy, nonjudgmental, don’t want you to feel ashamed. Don’t invite people. Come up with reasons not to go.

Lewis was wildly ahead of his time. This is exactly the malady with the American culture right now.

Instead of being blasé, think about the positives. The music is great. Messages are great. God is great.

A laissez-faire attitude leads people to check out of a vital life and relationships with others. Soon, they’ll say, “I can’t come to your graduation, wedding. I have to wash my hair. The trash needs to be taken out.”

The Parable of the Wedding Feast

Matthew 22 And again Jesus spoke to them in parables, saying, 2 “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding feast for his son, 3 and sent his servants to call those who were invited to the wedding feast, but they would not come. 4 Again he sent other servants, saying, ‘Tell those who are invited, “See, I have prepared my dinner, my oxen and my fat calves have been slaughtered, and everything is ready. Come to the wedding feast.”’ 5 But they paid no attention and went off, one to his farm, another to his business, 6 while the rest seized his servants, treated them shamefully, and killed them. 7 The king was angry, and he sent his troops and destroyed those murderers and burned their city. 8 Then he said to his servants, ‘The wedding feast is ready, but those invited were not worthy. 9 Go therefore to the main roads and invite to the wedding feast as many as you find.’ 10 And those servants went out into the roads and gathered all whom they found, both bad and good. So the wedding hall was filled with guests.

It should be a source of great joy and affirmation that they king even thinks to invite you to this wedding. You have been acknowledged as valuable. Food, music and ambiance is going to be great. Opportunity to meet people.

This is Not a burden and something you dismiss. Not going is rude and insulting to the King. He could if he wants, make your life pretty miserable if he takes offense.

Another source of disconnection is depression.

When people are depressed, they are less likely to think that their actions and thoughts even matter.

Some symptoms of depression are:[ii]

• low mood, feeling sad, irritable or angry,

• having less energy to do certain things,

• losing interest or enjoyment in activities you used to enjoy,

• reduced concentration,

• becoming tired more easily,

• disturbed sleep and losing your appetite,

• feeling less good about yourself (loss of self-confidence), or

• feeling guilty or worthless.

You may also find that with low mood you:

• feel less pleasure from things,

• feel more agitated,

• lose interest in sex,

• find your thoughts and movements slow down, and

• have thoughts of self-harm or suicide.

4. Ah, the Bible is archaic. Things have changed. No, it’s not.

Human nature does not change. We have always dealt with sin. Marxism says you can create a new human. Change the economic conditions, change the man. Secular humanism says the same thing. If you just get rid of God, then magically a new human being will flourish. We have built institutions to hem in human nature, to channel us toward our better selves. When we blow up institutions, chaos ensues. Sin proliferates.

5. Human relationships can undermine faith as well. “In civilized life, domestic hatred usually expresses itself by saying things which would appear quite harmless on paper (the words are not offensive) but in such a voice, or at such a moment, that they are not far short of a blow in the face…” “Your patient must demand that all his own utterances are to be taken on their face value and judged simply on the actual words, while at the same time judging all his mother’s utterances with the fullest and most over-sensitive interpretation of the tone and the context and the suspected intention.”

Sex differences abound. “A woman means by unselfishness chiefly taking trouble for others; a man means not giving trouble to others. As a result, a woman who is quite far gone in the Enemy’s service will make a nuisance of herself on a larger scale than any man except those whom Our Father has dominated completely, and conversely, a man will live long in the Enemy’s camp before he undertakes as much spontaneous work to please others as a quite ordinary woman may do every day…”

In other words, helpfulness taken to an extreme can be intrusive and overbearing. Allowing others their space, taken to an extreme can be cold and heartless. Got to get the right amount.

Screwtape talks about the misinterpretation of love. He takes it to mean sexual desire, and removes duty, care and responsibility. “In humans the Enemy has gratuitously associated affection between the parties with sexual desire. He has also made the offspring dependent on the parents and given the parents an impulse to support it – thus producing the Family, which is like the organism, only worse, for the members are distinct, yet also united in a more conscious and reasonable way. The whole thing, in fact, turns out to be simply one more device for dragging in Love..” “The truth is that wherever a man lies with a woman, whether they like it or not, a transcendental relation is set up between them which must be eternally enjoyed or eternally endured.”

6. Sacrificing others on the altar of your own ambition. Screwtape says we can extend malice to our neighbors and love bomb people we don’t even know. This people justify by saying that they have the welfare of mankind writ large in mind. Humanity. If you think that the human species is filled with joy and wonder, but the individuals who live next door are devils, you can do some pretty rotten things to your neighbor.

7. Human incapacity to understand the divine. God has to limit his power in our lives. We could literally be destroyed, and God prizes free will.

Exodus 33 The Glory of the LORD …19“I will cause all My goodness to pass before you,” the LORD replied, “and I will proclaim My name—the LORD—in your presence. I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.” 20But He added, “You cannot see My face, for no one can see Me and live.” 

Isaiah 55:8-9 NIV

8 “For my thoughts are not your thoughts,  neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord. 9 “As the heavens are higher than the earth,  so are my ways higher than your ways  and my thoughts than your thoughts.

If God doesn’t do what we expect, we get angry at God, or think that He doesn’t exist.

There are some things we can understand. God was generous in creating humanity, and He has given us boundaries in terms of our relationships with Him and other humans. God is not created. We cannot know God at the most intimate level.

“If once we can produce our perfect work – The Materialist Magician, the man, not using but veritably worshipping, what he vaguely calls “Forces” while denying the existence of “Spirits”- then the end of the war will be in sight.

Forces like global warming, evolution or disease controls our fate. They deny that God has any say in the matter whatsoever.

8. Human autonomy. We tend to think of our bodies as our own. Did we ask to be born? Do we pick when we die? Are we the height we want to be? No. Does our body ask permission every time we get sick or get hurt?

What is the devil’s aim in all of this? We want cattle who can finally become food. We want servants who can finally become sons.

God wants from us what he wanted from Job, devotion, the understanding that we don’t understand, and we can remain faithful.

Moderation. Some think that moderation is key in religion. Don’t do too much of this. Don’t do too little of that. True many times. But we should be zealous for the Lord, not moderate or lukewarm.

Revelation 3 To the Church in Laodicea …15I know your deeds; you are neither cold nor hot. How I wish you were one or the other! 16So because you are lukewarm— neither hot nor cold— I am about to vomit you out of My mouth!

These days, secular Left, believes that religion should be relegated to your house at best. Keep it out of sight. Maybe even be ashamed.

Matthew 10:32Therefore everyone who confesses Me before men, I will also confess him before My Father in heaven. 33But whoever denies Me before men, I will also deny him before My Father in heaven.

Limiting your faith to certain aspects of your life is to deprive it of its power and diminish your fealty to God. Best way to practically fight sin and the devil. Pray and active repetition of good habits. Don’t get lax.

What happens to the patient?

Found a woman he wants to marry, but his life is cut short in a bombing raid in ww2.

Questions:

Is our country experiencing a demonic influence?

Yes. We have the LGBT+ community. Pedophilia is on the docket to be normalized. Minor attraction, that’s all. Stealing in California up to $950 at one go. We can’t define “what is a woman?” Corporate media lie more than they breathe. We are involved in a proxy war in Ukraine. Bibles are being eliminated from our public schools while very young children are being sexually groomed and exposed to drag shows. Everywhere. Pro-life advocates are being rounded up by the FBI and parents are branded “domestic terrorists” when they show up at school boards to oppose the curriculum.

The MAID program in Canada — Medical Assistance in Dying — has become a leading cause of death for our neighbors to the north. Recent reports estimate 10,000 Canadiens died from medically assisted suicide last year, but Rebel News’ Sheila Gunn Reid tells Glenn that number may be under-reported. They are expanding it to children and people who are depressed, not just terminally ill. The 10,000 are those who requested it in writing. Can just ask for it and get it on the very same day. Knee replacement is 182 day wait. Numbers are being obscured by physicians who label cause of death the reason the person asked for it.

What other temptations might be effective?

Sex and sexual identity and how it is most important. Become commonplace in the west. Reality still existed in 1942. Birth control came to “free” people from the consequences of being sexually wanton. However, it isn’t satisfying. Doesn’t live up to its promise.

Humility

Lewis describes humility as the chief virtue of Christianity. God took on human flesh, died and was resurrected for the sake of humanity. That is the most humble act ever. Does humility play as important a role in Judaism? Yes, Shapiro says. Arrogance is forbidden in Judaism. Moses is described as the most humble man, anavah. All great rabbis are described as incredibly humble. Top form of charity is giving someone a job. Second ranking is giving anonymously. Don’t get credit for the thing. Not doing the best on that score.

Can humor deride virtue or disempower sin?

Both. Spent time on how Satan cannot be mocked. Whenever someone puts forth their own virtue, either in fact or presenting a false one, humor cuts them down. Difference between mean laughter and warm laughter. Typically the first is not funny.

Who is the original audience?

In 1942, people who were interested in Christianity. Now the audience is broader. Jews are reading it. Now, Christian values are new to people because our culture is not as steeped in our faith.

What is the psychological effect of the end letter?

Screwtape proposes a toast in how hard it was to write this book. The devil is still there and he is still feeling his oats.

Conclusion

Overcoming temptation is our goal. Sin and depravity destroy us. We are not to go down that path.

According to the Bible, your first step in overcoming temptation is to turn to Him in repentance and faith. Acknowledge that only Jesus the Christ can make you right before God. He died in your place to satisfy the just wrath of God against your sin, and He rose from the dead to prove the debt was paid.[iii]

Practice the good and read God’s word.

The Apostle Paul highlights the essence of the battle and its solution: “And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect” (Romans 12:2).

[i] https://www.dailywire.com/episode/the-screwtape-letters

[ii] https://www.rethink.org/advice-and-information/about-mental-illness/learn-more-about-conditions/depression/

[iii] https://accountable2you.com/blog/overcoming-temptation/#:~:text=According%20to%20the%20Bible%2C%20your,prove%20the%20debt%20was%20paid.