Unfolding Screwtape

Unfolding Screwtape

The Screwtape Letters, by C.S. Lewis, is a very unique and intriguing book. It is written as if it were a collection of letters composed by an evil underworld spirit named Screwtape to be received and to give guidance to his spirit nephew, Wormwood. Basically, throughout the book, Screwtape’s role is to mentor his nephew, instructing him in a plethora of ways to tempt Wormwood’s assigned patient into living a life of sin as opposed to a life of honoring Christ. Wormwood’s patient is a young Christian man who is simply living out his life, he has no idea of the great measures being taken to cause him to stumble in his walk with God. A considerable amount of the instruction Screwtape offers Wormwood seems to be directed towards tampering with the man’s feelings, desires, and emotions. Screwtape knows that if these three areas can be tampered with it will cause the man to stumble. The majority of the letters hit on all three of these areas, but for length sake I have chosen to analyze letters II and XXI.

The first section where I found the tampering of all three of these areas to be apparent was letter II, which was pages 15-19 in my copy of the book. In this letter the patient has just become a Christian and Screwtape is educating Wormwood on the different approaches that might cause the patient to fall. Screwtape’s first idea is to have Wormwood tempt the patient into focusing his attention on the members of his new Church rather than focusing his attention on God. Screwtape says that if any of the members sing out of tune, wear odd clothes, or have double chins then Wormwood must do all he can to make the patient judge Christianity on the site of this, thus thinking it to be a ridiculous religion. During all this, Screwtape emphasizes that Wormwood must block the man from thinking rationally, because if he does he obviously will realize he can’t judge the religion as a whole based on what a few people in the are wearing or look like.

The next phase is to attack the patient when he is in the process of his anticlimax. Screwtape knows that the patient will be on a spiritual high when he first becomes a Christian but after awhile the patient will suffer from the realization that his life has dramatically changed and being a Christian means total devotion to God. Screwtape stresses that God does not control his followers, but rather gives them free will to live a life honoring to him or not honoring to him. Wormwood’s job is to keep the man away from things that honor God, let the man constantly judge and compare himself to the others around him, make him think that he doesn’t have to change, and most importantly let him keep the mind set that he is a really good person for going to Church, better than those around him. Screwtape knows how important it is to put a stop to Christianity in this stage because once a person is through it they only will grow stronger as a Christian.

Letter XXI, pages 106-110, was the other letter I chose to take a closer look at because I feel that it strongly hits upon the