Resisting the Prowling Lion – 40 Days with Screwtape

Day 39 – Good Friday

To Read:

From The Screwtape Letters:

Screwtape, a senior demon, is offering advice to Wormwood his nephew, an apprentice demon.  The language he uses is ‘upside down’ referring to God as ‘the Enemy’ and the devil as ‘Our Father Below’.

MY DEAR WORMWOOD

They, of course, do tend to regard death as the prime evil and survival as the greatest good.   But that is because we have taught them to do so.   Do not let us be infected by our own propaganda.   I know it seems strange that your chief aim at the moment should be the very same thing for which the patient’s lover and his mother are praying – namely his bodily safety.   But so it is; you should be guarding him like the apple of your eye.  If he dies now, you lose him.   If he survives the war, there is always hope.   The Enemy has guarded him from you through the first great wave of temptations.   But, if only he can be kept alive, you have time itself for your ally.   The long, dull monotonous years of middle-aged prosperity or middle-aged adversity are excellent campaigning weather.   You see, it is so hard for these creatures to persevere.   The routine of adversity, the gradual decay of youthful loves and youthful hopes, the quiet despair (hardly felt as pain) of ever overcoming the chronic temptations with which we have again and again defeated them, the drabness which we create in their lives and the inarticulate resentment with which we teach them to respond to it – all this provides admirable opportunities of wearing out a soul by attrition.   If, on the other hand, the middle years prove prosperous, our position is even stronger.   Prosperity knits a man to the World.   He feels that he is ‘finding his place in it’, while really it is finding its place in him.   His increasing reputation, his widening circle of acquaintances, his sense of importance, the growing pressure of absorbing and agreeable work, build up in him a sense of being really at home in earth which is just what we want.   You will notice that the young are generally less unwilling to die than the middle-aged and the old.

The truth is that the Enemy, having oddly destined these mere animals to life in His own eternal world, has guarded them pretty effectively from the danger of feeling at home anywhere else.   That is why we must often wish long life to our patients; seventy years is not a day too much for the difficult task of unravelling their souls from Heaven and building up a firm attachment to the earth.

Your affectionate uncle


SCREWTAPE

To Reflect:

‘To die’ says Peter Pan, ‘would be an awfully big adventure’.

Screwtape in cautioning Wormwood, who is losing his grip on his patient, is eager to warn the young tempter of the finality of death.  If the tempter does not prolong the earthly life of his patient he reduces his opportunity to lure him to an eternal death.

Of course Screwtape never means that Wormwood should encourage the patient to enjoy life, heaven forefend – or should that be ‘hell’ forefend?  An enjoyable life, a rich life full of true joy, love and happiness would be at odds with his purposes.  What is desired is a long boring life.  What Screwtape needs is a life with a host of little failings overflowing with compromise.  A ‘safe’ life that ends up being sensible and expects disappointment as its fruit.  No, the ‘awfully big adventure’ of the death which the ever-young Peter Pan sets out to live is of no use to those below which is why Screwtape bemoans…

You will notice that the young are generally less unwilling to die than the middle-aged and the old.

No, what is good for Screwtape and bad for us is ennui and a gradual wearing down of the soul into a state of ‘why bother?’ which fulfils ahead of our physical death the promise standing over the doorway to hell itself ‘Abandon Hope all ye who Enter Here’.

Teaching us to ‘fit in’ and see failure as the norm and despair as the common lot is the tempter’s aim.  Teach the humans to believe that life is about this world and chasing worldly success is the name of the game.  When we give in to this those below start sharpening their knives as death approaches and a feast of human souls is expected.  ‘Get them really into the world and then we can tuck into them’,  Screwtape counsels. 

Prosperity knits a man to the World. He feels that he is “finding his place in it”, while really it is finding its place in him

Instead we must remember that death is what is meant to be and learn to look forward to the ‘awfully big adventure’ which will finally bring us to a home ‘not made with hands,’ a mansion prepared for us by the death of the Beloved on a cross.

This quote from a Christian staring death in the face during the same war when Screwtape wrote his letters has for almost my entire journey home taught me of the ‘awfully big adventure’ towards which we move.  The same death that the One Who Loves us Best transformed on this ‘Good’ Friday…

Living Christ, decisive clue to the Love that has no end, renew in us the steady hope that even the power of death cannot keep from your presence.     AMEN.     (Jim Cotter)