Screwtape is alive and well

My son had the most interesting writing assignment in college last spring. His task was to write three letters in the form of C.S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters. If you haven’t read the book, it’s a series of letters from a demon named Screwtape to his nephew and apprentice Wormwood. As an underling demon, it’s Wormwood’s task to steal a young man’s soul from “the Enemy” (i.e., God) through the use of deception (which after all is Satan’s only true weapon).

In Screwtape’s letters to Wormwood, he provides instruction, advice, and correction as his nephew badgers the Christian, sometimes making progress, but mostly losing ground. Among other things, Screwtape advises Wormwood to use “jargon, not argument” to keep the young man from “the Church.”

I thought of this recently when, after an especially good church service, a friend and I were sharing our excitement over the morning’s events. It turned out that both of us had thought seriously of staying home that morning. She was exhausted after a sleepless night, and I had a child heading back to college and kind of wanted to hang around home to see her off.

Had we mindlessly given into those urges to stay home, we would have missed an awesome morning in God’s presence that blessed and strengthened us spiritually!

I said to her, “Don’t you suppose some little imps are getting chewed out right now because they failed to convince us to stay home?”

She laughingly agreed, “Yes, the head demon is probably saying, ‘You told her she was too tired to go to church? That’s the best you could come up with? You gotta do better than that!’”

While we had fun with the analogy between The Screwtape Letters and our experience, it really is important to remember that we do have an enemy who seeks to “kill, steal, and destroy” (John 10:10).

Any time God is doing something good in your life, don’t be surprised by the stumbling blocks that “suddenly appear.” Do you think the enemy wants you to do anything that’s going to further your walk with the Lord? Of course not!

If you’re moving forward, you’re probably experiencing resistance.

Expect that and know that “He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world” (1 John 4:4).