Book in Review: The Screwtape Letters

As many of you know I enjoy a lot of C. S. Lewis' writings. My Dad read the Chronicles of Narnia to me and my sisters growing up, and since then many of his other writings have become personal favorites. Lewis has a truly unique way of writing and framing ideas, which is part of what makes him so enjoyable to read.

The Screwetape Letters is a good rehashing of much of Lewis's thought, presented in the negative perspective of a senior devil giving advice and admonishment to a junior devil. The junior devil has been given a human "patient" and it is the devil's duty to ensure that he does not end up in "the Enemy's" possession. For those of you who may be new to Lewis, this book is an easy to read synopsis of many of his writings—and therefore a great place to start.

As usual, Lewis's understanding of pure human pleasure and desire as something God given is refreshing. The devils decry their inability to create a new positive pleasure with which to draw the mortal patients. They are left to only contorting, twisting, debasing the glorious beauty already created by God. Screwtape lays out the grand strategy in this department: "We always try to work from the natural condition of any pleasure to that in which it is least natural, least redolent of its maker, and least pleasurable. An ever increasing craving for an ever diminishing pleasure is the formula."

This and many other schemes are suggested by the elder devil: distraction of the human from that which is true, real, eternal; the elevation of secondary causes (social justice, pacifism, patriotism) to the Primary cause; the isolation created by the separation of both other time periods and other Christians; the slow attachment to the temporal through the subtlety of prosperity; and the over-time cumulative wearing down of the patients, “hardly felt as pain.” "Our best weapon--" Screwtape freely admits: "the belief of ignorant humans that there is no hope of getting rid of us except by yielding."

Of these things and many more Lewis freely delves into. I do not agree with everything he postulates, but even in the disagreements Lewis is sure to make any reader think more deeply about the subject(s) in question. Above anything else, though, he reminds us of the reality life after death, of heaven and of hell--and the forces and temptations that look to obstruct our path to the True destination.

"The safest road to Hell is the gradual one--the gently slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts."