TSL Chapter 23 -- Historical Jesus: A Crank Vending a Panacea

Summary

Screwtape is back to fine form, with more Uncle-ly advise for Young Wormwood. Having been forced to accept the presence of a good, Christian woman in The Patient's life, Wormwood will have deal with encroaching spirituality and corrupt it.

This isn't a bad thing, Uncle Screwtape points out -- a spoiled saint is better sport in Hell than a common tyrant or debauchee.

Screwtape suggests politics. He's quick to point out that you don't really want people informing their politics with a Christian viewpoint, but rather that by bringing politics in, you can frame Christianity as being a means to political ends.

He discusses the 'historical Jesus' which is inevitability a corruption and reduction of the actual Jesus -- a new view of Jesus seen through some modern political lens. The distorted Jesus will inevitability  reduce Jesus's role to that of secular teacher and will otherwise destroy a devotional life founded on accepting Jesus as a living God.

My Own Historical Jesus

There's certainly no shortage of historical Jesuses which attempt examine Jesus outside of any supernatural context. I am no historian, and cannot comment much on these (I also am not nearly well-read enough to engage them on any level) but my ignorant layman's understanding suggests that there is ample evidence from non-related sources that Jesus existed, called disciples, and was crucified.

That doesn't suggest a lot of non-biblical material to go on, so my conclusion is that CSL is probably dead on in advising us to beware of anyone offering a 'historical' Jesus that varies in any significant way from the Biblical account.

Lewis also flirts with his more famous quote from Mere Christianity about anyone who presents Jesus as a 'great moral teacher' as completely missing the point. After his title drop of Mere Christianity earlier in the book, this one feels like a warm up for MC.

Church & State

I was a bit disappointed that he didn't get more into the pitfalls of politics. Screwtape 'warns' that politics can subvert Christianity by making it a means to an end instead of an end, itself, but beyond that he's more on about Historical Jesus than he is about how a Christian should engage in politics.

My sense is that engaging with politics is a hugely dangerous area -- perhaps more so here and now, in America, than it was in WWII-era England. Where is CSL when we really need him.

The services I attend are bible-focused and while I don't feel that politics and current events are in any way avoided, they are only invoked where they are directly relevant and that is rare (exceptions would be current events -- often disaster situations where aid is needed and local political issues around right-to-worship in public spaces).

Where I have heard political commentary, it's come from members of the congregation, and it's often expressed a sense of persecution, marginalization, and victimization at the hands of a liberal, secular society.

I admit I'm fascinated: these people do not come off as marginalized or oppressed. While I do not know the intimate details of their lives, they appear to have great material comforts and financial security. They are professionally successful and respected in their fields.  Many of them have advanced education. I don't know if they have medical insurance but they don't strike me as people without adequate health care. They seem to have the discretion to take care of personal business, to travel, and otherwise to live fulfilling, privileged lives.

So what's going on here?

I can't be sure, and my assessment is admittedly uninformed, but my instincts tell me that there's some un-healthy mixing of politics and religion going on and I think that people are doing just what CSL warns about, but not exactly the way he does. I think they're imagining God cares about things they see as important cultural signifiers (The 2nd Amendment), and mistaking their personal political focus for a divine agenda.

Perhaps Lewis will touch on this in a future chapter.

TSL Chapter 22 -- So! Your Man is in Love

Summary

In a rambling, nearly incoherent letter, Screwtape addresses a number of revolting developments

1. The Patient has fallen in love with a good, Christian woman whom The Devil(s) despises
2. Wormwood has committed some kind of treachery -- informing on Screwtape's heresy to the infernal authorities
3. The Christian woman's household which is full of love, and therefore abhorrent and incomprehensible to the demonic
4. How unfair the world is to demons

It ends with Screwtape turning into a giant centipede and his letter being completed and signed off on by his secretary, Toadpipe.

Literary Analysis

In a radical departure from most of the book, this chapter is almost entirely literary -- there's not much real theology and virtually no anti-sermon.

Instead, this chapter serves to introduce a conflict -- a good Christian woman who will be a bad (good) influence on Wormwood's patient.

This conflict allows CSL to introduce a variety of new topics deal with the Christian life (e.g. Spiritual Pride) over the next several chapters. It also allows him to reveal more about the characters, their conflicts and their natures.

The Girl

Who is this fearsome woman who throws the best-laid plans of demons into chaos? Like all humans, she doesn't get a name, but we do get Screwtape's description of her:

Demure, monosyllabic, mouse-like, watery, insignificant, virginal, bread-and-butter miss.

Monosyllabic?

The Secret Police

Apparently some of Screwtape's letters found their way to Hell's Secret Police, and Wormwood was responsible. Screwtape assures his Nephew that the matter has been settled ("tidied over"), and then provides him with what is evidently an illustrated torture manual about a House of Correction for Incompetent Tempters.

The letter doesn't make it clear exactly what happened? Did Nephew Wormwood turn over Screwtape's letters in an attempt to get Screwtape whacked? If so, why? And why, after this betrayal is Screwtape still happy to help him?

This chapter doesn't answer any of those questions, unfortunately, but it does suggests hidden depths to their relationship which I trust will be explored later,

Metamorphosis 

Screwtape's fury at Worms turns him into a centipede and he then claims it's not a punishment from God, but a signifier of his interior vital life essence of something. Funny! (it's a Milton reference, which Screwtape, himself credits explicitly)

Noise v. Music & Silence

One last thing I noted was the contrast of Heavy and Hell on an audible level. George MacDonald writes of Heaven, 

"...the regions where there is only life, and therefore all that is not music is silence."

Going where MacDonald didn't, Lewis amplifies this by noting that Hell abides neither music nor silence, but instead fills every available space with noise.

Cool.

TSL Chapter 21 -- The Patient's Peevishness

Summary

After Glutton, and Lust, Uncle Screwtape addresses Wrath, but not so much fiery anger as "peevishness."

He notes that irritation-induced anger comes, not just from misfortune, but from a perceived injustice and as such, Nephew Wormwood will need to attack something The Patient feels entitled to. Fortunately, that "lever" is readily at hand: "nothing throws [the patient] into a passion so easily as to find a tract of time which he reckoned on having at his own disposal unexpectedly taken from him!"

From here, Screwtape launches into an extended discourse on the failed human concept of ownership, which can be summarized as such: Humans think they own stuff, but they (obviously), don't and so taking things away from them

a) Makes them angry and
b) Makes them angry for unjust reasons, making that anger sinful (this isn't explicit, but one presumes just anger would not be a sin)

Nothing is as ridiculous as humans thinking they have any ownership of time, but humans think of themselves as owning a great many things ("my dog, my servant, my wife, my father, my country, and of course 'my God').

In the end, Screwtape notes, everything will be owned, either by God, or by Satan, and that's that.

My Reaction

Lewis is at his best when he's talking about ground level sins -- every-day sins with which most people have intimate and immediate experience. I also suspect that (unlike his treatise on women and love) this chapter is grounded very much in things he has practical, first-hand experience with: getting angry over being interrupted.

Most readers probably don't have dramatic explosions of rage in which the damage and injustice would be extremely visible. In our civilized world, people who get angry control it -- mostly -- and rather than wrathful, act aggrieved, peevish (a great word), or more colloquially, "pissy."

Modern anger in cultured settings is like to be as passive as it is aggressive, and Lewis hits that squarely. I also think he nailed the sense of victimized injustice that accompanies feeling intruded upon. 

At work I get a cascade of calls and emails from vendors who want to sell me something -- or at least have a thirty minute conversation with me about their company. These are people who clearly have no idea what I do and are making some very broad assumptions are are (inevitably) going to waste both of our times.

I ignore their emails, and I don't return their calls. Once in awhile, in a moment of weakness, I'll answer the phone and find myself talking to someone who wants thirty minutes to tell me about their outsourced database administration solution.

I sometimes find myself getting angry (oddly, I'm usually less angry at the people and more angry at the emails that begin with a personal greeting).

I think ignoring emails is a sin (I ought to tell them 'no,' clearly and politely), and I think getting angry about overly personal greetings is a sin (it's not *my* time, after all). The kind of outrage I feel at these annoyances is very much the kind of peevishness that Lewis is talking about here, and I suspect it's even more prevalent in our society than it was in his.

What About The Theology

Prohibitions about feeling ownership of... basically anything are also, to my read, biblically founded -- God lays claim to everything -- although it's clear that we're expected to be good stewards of the gifts he has bestowed on us, and I would think part of that stewardship would be good time management.

So managing time is expected, but getting angry is a sin.

Anger as a Sin

Screwtape spends most of his letter talking about the absurd human ideas around ownership. He doesn't really linger on the concept of anger (maybe he'll return to it), but it's a foundational concept here. I think it's self-evident to most people that anger can have some destructive components (and it's usually ugly at best, scary at worst), but are natural emotions really sinful?

A simplistic answer is that it's okay to get angry so long as you only get angry about actual injustice. The bible tells us God is angry every day. Jesus famously opened the proverbial can of whup-ass on the money changers. So anger by itself isn't problematic -- just unjust anger.

So don't get angry unless you have good, Godly reasons.

There's a problem with this -- and it's not that "it doesn't work that way."

The problem is that the Bible, to my read, doesn't call on us to do that. It calls on us to control our anger, to be careful in our speech. We may be too fallen to avoid feeling unjustified emotions, but we can be expected to control what we do with them.

TSL Chapter 20 -- A Terrestrial and an Infernal Venus

Summary

Having lectured on Love (mortal and divine), Uncle Screwtape turns his baleful eye on the object of that love: Women. He notes that God has prevented Nephew Wormwood's attempts to undermine The Patient's chastity so (sigh), they're going to have to get him married.

Screwtape wants a dossier on each of the young women in the neighborhood (a Binder full of Maidens?) so he can find the right "type" of woman to lead The Patient into damnation.

"Type?" -- Hell sets fashion (who doubted it?), and for each age, they describe a proper "type" of woman who will be trendy and attractive and thus unwomanly -- and therefore leading pious men away from "spiritually helpful, happy, and fertile marriages."

He describes the women of various ages concluding that in the current age (1940's) Hell has deigned that the model woman will be "more boyish than nature allows."

He then describes, in general the two type of women fixed within each man's mind -- the Terrestrial and the Infernal Venus. A man will feel natural, even Godly love toward the Terrestrial Venus. His feelings will be "readily mixed with charity, readily obedient to marriage, colored through with... golden light of reverence and naturalness." The other kind of girl -- the Infernal Venus, the man will desire brutally. She will draw him away from marriage (naturally), but should he somehow marry her, he would treat her as "a slave, an idol, or an accomplice."

Ideally the attraction to the Infernal Venus would lead to a mistress or to whoring, but marrying her would be fine, anyway, because even without fornication sexuality can lead to a man's undoing.

Girls, Girls, Girls...

If writing about love is a minefield of self-exposure for moralizing writers, writing about women is walking into the furnace of sexual-frustrations on parade.

Lewis's are surprisingly by-the-book for a man who was living with, and may have been fornicating with a woman almost three decades his elder, whom he referred to as "mother" when he was writing this.

He hits the classic Madonna-Whore complex dead on, of course, and has a boiler-plate condemnation of fashion. He doesn't go much beyond this though, more or less ending with extremely conventional wisdom.

Where he stops short, though there is something a bit interesting: fornication and solitary vice (The Wanking) are clearly sins -- but he suggests that sex within marriage can be a sin if it's done correctly (wrongly). He implies that the man's MW-complex will keep him from acting appropriately lovingly toward the target of his desire, so maybe that's it: if a man marries a Whore and then treats her as a Whore, it's still a sin, even if they're married before God.

But CSL doesn't tell us much about this -- just that it's possible.

My Reaction

My reaction was more or less "Meh" -- I found Screwtape's advice conventional and dreary but now that I've read up on CSL's "love life" I'm sort of glad he left it that way.

As an anti-sermon, it's lacking in practical advice. I suppose he's saying, "Don't marry the girl you want to fuck! For goodness's sake, marry the girl you view through the Golden Light of reverence and Naturalness! That stroppy temptress at the pub won't make you happy, young man! She won't!"

Meh.

TSL Chapter 19 -- He Cannot Really Love: No One Can

Summary

Oops. In his previous Chapter(s), Screwtape has described God as "really loving" human vermin -- a heresy, to Hell, which believes that disinterested love (love in which you get nothing in return) is impossible.

According to Hell's dogma, God must have mysterious and as-of-yet-not-fathomed designs for mankind which do not involve for-real love.

Screwtape opens his letter with an extant and ever-so-slightly-frantic concern that should someone else see his letters they might conceivably think him a heretic who somehow believes Godly Love is possible. He grovels a bit, explaining that he was never serious about leaving Wormwood to suffer the authorities and that his digs at Slubgob were meant in fond jest.

He then goes on to explain that Hell has a research program not unlike the Manhattan Project to unravel the mysteries of God's profession love (with "richer rewards" for those who make progress and "more and more terrible punishments" for those who fail).

He dismisses the idea that having The Patient be "in love" is really meaningful. It's meaningful so long as it moves him toward or away from God or The Devil, and otherwise not. In other words, whether love is helpful or harmful depends on the human's reaction to it (if he's romantic, then seeking true love will probably lead him away from "casual unchastity" but it might lead him to tragic adulteries ending in murder and suicide!)

He ends with the reminder that "like most of the other things which humans are excited about, such as health and sickness, age and youth, or war and peaces, it is, from the point of view of the spiritual life, mainly raw material."

The Impenetrable Mysteries of God

I think, here in this chapter, we're meant to laugh at the demons that we understand so much better! Of course God loves us! They can't see that because -- as powerful as they are -- they're blinded by their own cosmic limitations!

For once we get to feel just a very little bit superior, as we look down on their scrambling scientific bureaucracy, which we see as foolish on the face of it.

But I wonder if Screwtape's having the last laugh. 

As I've said before, I think God's love is, in fact, incomprehensible from a human standpoint -- the universe he designed is a great torture chamber for uncountable souls for which there is no solace and no mercy, and no end to their torment, ever.

It's a Möbius strip in which we are unable to save ourselves without his help, and yet bear all the responsibility for our own damnation. As the torturer says to his struggling victim as he applies the pliers, "You're Making Me Do This."

And in this vast darkness of never-ending-screaming, a select few are chosen to look down on the writhing, agonized masses from a place of great comfort and peace... and they will find that charming and find the agony of those below them glorifying God with their screams as they glorify God with their songs.

This is not love as we understand it.

I'm interested to see what Hell's scientists come up with.

TSL Chapter 18 -- Being In Love

Summary

Uncle Screwtape ends Chapter 17 -- his opus on Gluttony -- with a teasing discourse on chastity, suggesting that 18 might find him talking about Lust.

No such luck. He dismisses charnel temptation as a matter of "considerable tedium" and then gets down to the business, not of lust, but of love.

Humans are demanded "either complete abstinence or unmitigated monogamy" by their creator. Hell takes credit for making the first "very difficult" and has been working to undermine the second. How does Hell undermine monogamy? By the "curious" and "usually short-lived" experience of "Being In Love."

By linking love (a somewhat glandular condition) to monogamy, Hell aids and abets human desires to fornicate or to divorce by giving them excuses, either for the fucking ("I luuuuuve her and I am going to marry her!") or for the not-marrying after the fucking ("But I don't love him!")

Screwtape briefly forays into the Philosophy of Hell -- that all things are Zero Sum, and that the transcendental union created by the fucking is no different. There's no such thing as love, really -- since what's good for me, isn't good for you (zero sum).

He also notes that during intercourse, souls are, in fact, joined in a transcendental relationship which must be "eternally enjoyed or eternally endured," and finally finishes by mocking humans for not accepting the true, godly justifications for marriage -- making babies and preserving chastity.

CSL: Not Getting Any?

Philosophers, moralist, and deep thinkers of all stripes often find themselves unable to resist writing about sex -- which is understandable since it plays such a central role in the human experience. However, that jagged trail is not without pitfalls: there may be writers capable of navigating it without performing a distracting self-reveal, but they are few in number.

For example, you can almost always tell when the author in question isn't getting any.

I submit that this was probably the case when CSL wrote chapter 18.

I've avoided researching him and his life for exactly this reason: I don't want my thinking to devolve into a pre-post-modernest psychoanalysis of the author... but if someone's going open his kimono in front of me (to mix some metaphors), I'm going to consider myself invited to speculate.

To the Wikipedias!

:: reads ::

Um... living with Jane Moore... mother of dead friend, referred to as "mother" by CSL... almost thirty years older than him...

:: reads more ::

Okay. It's weirder than I had thought. 

When Screwtape Letters was published in 1942, CSL was living with the mother of his war-time friend Jane Moore -- a woman 26 years older than he was. He never married her, and if they had "relations," it's probably best not to think about it.

He did marry later in life  (1956) -- a civil contract to keep Joy Davidman (a friend -- probably not yet a friend-with-benefits), in the UK. He later married her for-real when she was ill and they had a son.

So Lewis was ~42, living with a 64-year-old woman he publicly referred to as "mother" when he wrote this. Whether he was "getting any" at the time, I'll leave up to the CLS Scholars.

Conclusion and Moral: Whatever you do, do NOT go reading about an author's sex life.

I was going to comment on how someone watching his peers marry off from the sidelines, might be quick to find those choices unwise (with the wisdom of the outside observer) and be highly critical of the foundations of those choices. But I'm done thinking about this for now, On With The Show.

Game Theory

Screwtape's description of the "philosophy" of Hell is fascinating here. Hell -- as one might expect -- runs on a rationalist, game-theory type of philosophy where they flatly state that it's impossible for two things to become one without one consuming the other, and so the kinds of unions caused by godly love (or human fucking) are nonsensical.

I don't have much comment on this, except that I think it's a very well wrought foundation for a logical underpinning for Hell. Lewis often seems to use Screwtape to preach sermons that are ever-so-slightly off coming from a Demon, but here he really gives us a credible, consistent, and deeply realized Screwtape who gives us, further, a fascinating look into the mind of a devil.

Awesome stuff.

Transcendental Relationships

Screwtape, who can see Eternity and lives in the realm of the unmitigated says that when people have sex, they create some kind of eternal union that they have to live with forever after.

And he's not talking about kids. This is a purely spiritual connection that's established.

Words-on-paper, it looks like complete poppycock, and I am hard pressed to provide any justification for literally believing it -- but even if one accepts it as a fictional conceit or (taken as advice in a lecture) a metaphor, I find it remarkably true in my experience.

To make it clear, I grew up in an age far more sexually permissive than CSL did (and anyone reading this, did, too), and further, in an age with reliable birth control that could also prevent infection. The physical, materialist, after-effects of sex were almost all mitigated forty years after Screwtape was published -- but my experience is that even if there's no persistent physical connection the psychological (and I dare say spiritual) implications of having sex remained (for me) lingering.

My experience is that there's not really such a thing as "casual sex" and that even if everyone's pretty casual or drunk about it when it happens, it tends to change the relationship for good and maybe even change the people doing it.

When I was dating in my early 30's I was extremely careful about sex along a number of spectrums and while I didn't worry about the spiritual implications (Screwtape would have been thrilled -- the idea that I was sinning wasn't even on my radar) I recognized that sex implied a connection that was deep, extremely hard to break, and completely impossible to undo.

I recall a specific instance where it was green-lights all the way and I was... not willing to go ahead... with considerable relief. I pretty much knew I wasn't going to marry the girl I was with, and while I liked her a lot (and she was scorching hot), I was unwilling to create a connection that would not follow through.

I would never have put it the way CSL does here, but reading this more than 10 years later, I think... yeah... if I'd had sex with her, that persistent relationship would still be here, even with her a world away in Indonesia and me in NYC, and I'm frankly relieved that it's not -- that's not a connection I could honor.

Anyway, I'm sure that's more than enough of self-disclosure Saturday.

TSL Chapter 17 -- Gluttony

Summary

Another chapter where Wormwood has been asleep at the wheel, failing to exploit weakness for profitable damnation! Uncle Screwtape scolds Worms for being dismissive of the sin of gluttony. Screwtape acknowledges that yes -- humans have been diverted from it, but wants to ensure that demons don't forget its values.

He introduces the state-of-the-art thinking in Demonic gluttonization: the "gluttony of Delicacy" which has surpassed the more normally thought of "gluttony of Excess."

He then launches into several pages where he expounds on this using The Patient's prissy, demanding mother as an example. She is evidently quite particular about what she eats but in no way thinks of herself as a glutton since she eat very, very little.

Screwtape acknowledges that a guy is unlikely to go in for that kind of thing, and so suggests that Wormwood go after his Patient through his vanity -- have him be a connoisseur of food and drink and focus in an overt and ungodly way on those.

Screwtape ends with a segue into lust, which sets up the next chapter.

My Reaction

I'm old school. My gluttony is of the old-fashioned "excess" type. While I appreciate a good steak or a fine craft beer as much as the next guy, I've steadfastly avoided learning anything about wine despite years of Consulting (consultants take people out to drink all the time and tend to know a lot about wine), and I'm pretty much happy with common fare or the good stuff.

Reading the prolonged description of the irritating mother, I found myself wondering if that was someone CSL knew -- and if so, did she recognize herself ("All-I-Want") when the book came out?

If so: Ha-ha.

But I wonder where the line between appreciating fine, worldly things and being a glutton is. Clearly, it's when one's priorities shift so good food (fine food) comes ahead of God. But humans are justification-machines. How would I know?

TSL Chapter 16 -- Party Churches

Summary

Screwtape is annoyed that Wormwood has not exploited The Patient's mild dissatisfaction with his parish church. If Wormwood can't stop him from going all together, he can -- at least -- make the man a church-hopper until he becomes (in Screwtape's words) a "taster" or "connoisseur" of churches.

The purposes of this is manifold: to weaken the physical organization itself, to encourage factionalism, and finally to make the man a "critic" of the word rather than a receptive student.

Uncle Screwtape has even done the legwork for Worms: he's got out the map and checked out the two nearest churches, and both have faults that could be nurtured into full damnation!

Screwtape describes the Vicar who waters down his sermons until they are repetitive, soporific, and only surprise his congregation in how insincere they are. The second church has "Fr. Spike" who is a shock-jock of the pulpit. But Spike "really believes" and so might be dangerous yet.

What it comes down to is that the target should be encouraged to attend a "party church" which is to say one filled with partisan alliances, where "my-teamism" is more important that doctrine. Screwtape reminds Wormwood that without their efforts the Church of England "might have become a positive hotbed of charity and humility."

It's been what? Like a week?

Why did I go a week without writing this up? Well, for one thing I've been busy, but for another thing it didn't upset me -- which is to say, it didn't present any horrifying element of cosmology, but also that it didn't irritate me by tweaking one of my sins.

I find myself more irritated with sermons, in-general, when they seem especially relevant to me. This one didn't so much. I've never been either a church-hopper (I have, for long, long stretches been not-a-church-goer) or a doctrine partisan.

CSL accounts for what might describe me: indifference -- but if I were truly indifferent, I doubt I'd be as troubled by doctrine as I am. So it may be that we've reached a chapter (or a set of chapters -- the next one felt a bit flat to me as well), where I might engage intellectually but not so much emotionally.

Take That, Church of England

My indifference to Chapter 16 might also be that it's a bit of a shot at an organization I don't have any personal connection to. Yes, it's broadly applicable, but CSL has already made it known in earlier chapters that he's mostly unhappy with the quality of preaching and singing in his parish churches and I'm sure that anyone paying attention can find innumerable incidences of hypocrisy in whatever church they might attend.

So, yeah -- I'm sure these are all valid criticisms, but they don't make for a very coherent whole. On one side the Patient is instructed to be an open learner and not a critic, on the other hand, the teachers are revealed to be buffoons. Clearly the lessons both of these men teach should invite valid criticism from their congregation.

I think Lewis undercuts himself by advising us to be receptive students on one hand and then exposing those teaching us as insincere and even (in one case) unbelieving.

Party Church

I think the idea of factionalism "within" a church is much more fertile ground. While I don't have a huge amount of experience with factionalism within a church, I've seen enough Karate schools in my youth to know that schisms within an organization are sources of great drama and can be hugely destructive to the mission (in Karate, it's when a high-placed student goes off to another school). I've never experienced this in Church and I wonder if there are such factions simmering just below the surface in my church (I see no evidence of that), but since we're a human organization, I'd be hard pressed to wonder how we couldn't be.

I suspect that a focus on intra-congregation drama would have been both more meaningful and more engaging, than a shot across the bow at the CoE.

TSL Chapter 15 -- Living In The Present

Summary

Screwtape returns to, and expounds on, an earlier theme of keeping The Patient focused on the future (or, failing that, the past), rather than the present. To this end, either fear or hope would work -- either keeps the mind fixated on what's to come instead of what's before it.

Screwtape also makes a strict distinction between the future (which is in time) and the eternal (which is beyond time). A focus on 'the eternal' is equally godly. Screwtape concedes that God allows some thought of tomorrow -- but just enough to plan virtuous outings (acts of justice or charity. Bruce Wayne would approve).

Finally, Screwtape addresses the phrase 'living in the present' -- as a common-wisdom term, it's usually wrong. 'Living in the Present' is likely either equanimity driven by a belief the future will be okay (in which case, it's just more of that sinful, earthly future-focus, although less alarming than fear) or it's a matter of a lack of reflection entirely: a human is healthy and enjoying himself -- in which case, while it's by no means Godly, it's still something a demon would want to quash.

Literary World Building

There's a bit of world-building here I want to acknowledge. Firstly Screwtape mentions the 'Philological Arm' of Hell -- presumably a bunch of demons who come up with clever words that can be used to put a good spin on a bad concept. "Living in the Present" is that kind of thing -- sounds good, but references a fallen, earthly state rather than an apparently-but-not-really-similar Godly state. Screwtape's example is "complacency" which maybe sounds good, but isn't.

One can imagine demoniacal linguists cunningly fabricating words to subvert the living.

Secondly, and more importantly: the whole concept of time and focus is something that I think a) Lewis is probably very much right about and b) is the kind of thing that appears implied by the Bible, but not explicitly stated.

As an eternal, timeless creature, it's just the sort of thing Screwtape would be extremely aware of, but it's also the kind of thing regular humans find odd. Screwtape's articulation of it not only demonstrates CSL's insight, but perfectly fits one of the most inhuman aspects of the character. Well done, Lewis!

My Reaction

"Give us this day, our daily bread," and Jesus's warnings about stockpiling resources imply a need for day-to-day dependency that precludes too much concern for the future. We're supposed to leave things up to God -- and should disaster we're unprepared for hit, to accept it as a welcome trial.

In other words: don't trust that God will take care of you -- act like he will, accepting that he might well not. In terms of worldly wisdom, this would be catastrophic irresponsibility: if I don't save money for my child's education and then -- surprise! -- no school! I'm supposed to pray for strength to accept my son's life of poverty. Likewise, rather than saving money for the proverbial rainy day (or major surgery), I should live paycheck-to-paycheck, and if an ear infection puts us all in the poorhouse (translation for modern day: the last car on the E-train), I should concentrate on lessons we'll all learn from those hardships.

As insane as this sounds, I think that that's a reasonable thing we're called for.

Typically people believe that God will provide. Or that He will provide except in those cases where he'll teach us something -- and those 'tests' will not be more than we can bear.

I recall a Christian I know saying (in a group discussion) he took comfort in the belief that when he "wasn't around" that God would take care of his family. I asked the group leader if God had stepped in front of the bullets aimed at children in Sandyhook Elementary School.

Evidently not.

As I said earlier in this blog, I believe terrible, mind-breaking things happen to Christians. Now maybe those people were faux-Christians, and God protects his own... but I find that even scarier -- that means if something really bad *does* happen to me, it means I'm damned.

I'd rather believe that God lets terrible things happen to us, and we're just supposed to smile and thank him and go on praying. As awful as it sounds, it's the lesser of two horrors.

I think I'm okay about not focusing too much on the future, but I recognize that I'm mostly fine because I think I can take care of most things that'll come (I can probably pay my bills. Probably). If tragedy were to strike, I think I'd be terrified -- I know (from experience), I'd ask God to help, but I'm equally certain that I'd expect nothing and instead of finding some inner, God-given Shalom or looking joyously forward to being closer to him, I suspect I'd just feel orphaned, devastated, and adrift.

Since tragedy is a when-not-an-if, I guess we'll just have to see.

A Question! I'm asked a Question! Existence: Validated!

One of the joys of having a blog is connect and communicate with other pilgrims on the same journey. In this case, I've shared this blog with a few folks I know and I've already made a connection!

And not just a view or two -- that validation that every blog author loves: a question!

As every writer knows, being asked a question is one of the ultimate forms of validation. It not only means that your work has touched someone intellectually and -- perhaps -- spiritually, but it means that the querent respects your knowledge and, I dare say, insight enough to value you as a source of enlightenment, even  (one imagines) furthering of their own spiritual journey.

In this spirit, and having just read a lesson on the virtue of Humility, I will now ponder the question I am asked.

Reader Marco, on October 15th asks:

"who would win in a fight? dracula vs. screwtape"

Dracula vs. Screwtape

A fight between Dracula and Screwtape would take place on both a spiritual and physical plane. To predict the outcome we have to look at both of these. Let's start with physical battle. 

Physical Warfare

Dracula has a physical form -- Screwtape is proud that he doesn't. Yes, Dracula can turn into mist, but that's still physical. It's moist. If you can feel it, there you go. You can't punch Screwtape, or kick him, or bite him, so Dracula's enhanced physical strength is no real advantage here.

But can Screwtape directly affect the physical plane? It's not entirely clear. In the book demons of his ilk don't (up to chapter 15), but that doesn't mean they can't -- they've been forbidden from directly showing their existence. Maybe they could manifest as a 20 meter tall flaming red man with a pitchfork...

But I doubt it. Biblically, spirits can take up residence in people. Even if Screwtape can't manifest in a physical way, he could probably possess someone (if he was willing to break orders) and have them lob garlic at Dracula. How effective this might be is anyone's guess, but it's probably not decisive.

Still...

 Advantage: Screwtape

Spiritual Warfare

Most of the battle would take place on the spiritual plane where it's not clear Dracula can really play. He has sort of hypnotic eyes, but he was able to make Renfield eat a bug... not so impressive.

On the other hand, Screwtape is a master of Spiritual warfare. He's able to see into men's souls and tempt them mercilessly. Dracula is all about the nubile maidens and blood so he's hardly beyond temptation. He'd be vulnerable to Screwtape's whispers and as a fallen, demonic creature, himself, he'd receive no divine protection.

Advantage: Screwtape

And the Winner Is...

Dracula, obviously. Screwtape is a mid-level bureaucrat who oversees a division dedicated to corrupting already-fallen, self-corrupting creatures with virtually no natural (or, for a great many of them) spiritual defenses against him. His whole deal is that he preys on the weak.

He's obviously chummy and comfortable, and quite confident in his abilities.

Dracula, on the other hand, is Vlad III, Prince of Wallachia, who spent his life fighting wars with people waiting to betray or depose him and mostly winning. When he was captured, and imprisoned, he came back to rule again. He created forests of rotting bodies of his enemies. He's an expert in understanding the limits, limitations, and blind spots of the kinds of civilized, decadent creatures of the sort Screwtape is.

Here's how it plays out:

Wladislaus Dragwlya, vaivoda partium Transalpinarum, Son of the Dragon, Impaler Lord, invites Screwtape to his castle for a drink. Screwtape, who knows it's a trap, comes anyway because

1. He's a spirit and Vlad can't actually hurt him -- he has nothing to be afraid of
2. Although he denies it, he's flattered by the invitation and thinks it'll make him look good around the office. Vlad, after all, is freaking royalty and Screwtape, despite himself, is a Britt and Britts do love their royals, even sub-germanics
3. So he goes...
4. Screwtape arrives, floating ethereally, and makes subtle fun of Vlad as they talk. Screwtape considers just blasting the guy or getting inside his head, but that would be barbaric, so he holds off, figuring he'll tempt Vlad to stay out all night and join him for a bar-b-q and a good laugh at daybreak.
5. Old Slubgob, who's been hiding in the pantry, jumps out stabs Screwtape through his dark little heart with  deadly sliver of the True Cross, stolen from Rome by a corrupt Pope, and taped to the end of a fire-poker. As Screwtape expires on the floor, Slubgob thanks Vlad for giving him chance to get even with "That Guy Who Ran Me Down In His Book" and heads off for the Academy, while Vlad enjoys his victory with a carafe of O+

Well played, Slubgob. Well played.

TSL Chapter 14 -- By jove! I'm being humble!

Summary

Trouble in Wormwood-land continues. Not only has The Patient second-converted, but he's being more realistic about it this time. No grand promises to obey every law, no lavish visions of perpetual virtue. Uncle Screwtape diagnoses the problem in the second paragraph: The Patient has become...

Humble.

This is bad. But there are things that can be done. Firstly, make him aware of the problem, so that he can be proud of being humble, thus slipping into a vice. Secondly, if his self-hatred can be mutated into hatred of other selves, or an inordinate self focus, that would be just as good.

Another good strategy: have him be falsely humble about something he's actually good at. Then his own mind will destroy his (aspected) humility because it's patently absurd.

In the course of explaining humility, Screwtape has to explain God's view of it. He describes prefect humility as a state where the subject has no personal pride in his accomplishments at all, even as he is clear-headedly aware of them, and recognizes all creatures (even himself) as "glorious and excellent things," but without what he calls an "animal self-love."

God, once again, takes something away (self love) only to give it back in a pure-er form.

Or something.

My Reaction

God Gives You Back Self-Love

You can always tell when Screwtape is going start preaching God's word: he exclaims with obvious, italicized exasperation that God really loves the vermin / hairless-bipeds / etc.

His view of humans denuded of pride is instructive. It's inhuman, the way the idealized people of St. Thomas Moore's Utopia are -- we can sort of imagine that level of self-abnegation, but to actually practice it seems impossible without divine intervention.

I think this is right.

To be a disciple of Jesus, you have to hate your family -- as strange and alien as this sounds (and horrible), I think that it fits with what we're being told: that the new 'us' will be indistinguishable from the 'us' we know. And the new love will be very different from love as we view it in our fallen, corruptible state.

Self-hate and Abjection -- the virtues we want to see in others

I'm always skeptical of tracts telling me to be more humble -- they have the whiff of hypocrisy about them. I'm sure that CSL (and any nuanced, sophisticated preacher) would first start by exposing their own issues with humility and present the lecture as intended for "all of us," (or, like Paul, to declare one's self the 'worst sinner of all!') but that sort of positioning is fundamentally tactical:

To get up in front of someone (or to bang out a chapter on one's typewriter) about advice, one has to be fundamentally sure of one's own standing.

And rooting one's certainty in God's word isn't always a cure. How many sports heroes are quick to credit God for their outstanding athletics? And how many really live lives of true humility?

I'm afraid I'm not buying it.

I think that the true test of humility is seen, not in disclaimers, but in how seriously one takes one's self. Certainty, triumphalism, and a scolding judgmental tone are often give-aways that the speaker takes himself pretty seriously. Not being able to take a joke, or seeing one's activities as centrally important are likewise, giveaways.

I think CSL reasonably passes these tests: he's not extremely humble, but he approaches this material with a sense of humor that -- I think -- reveals a bit of honest humility. And while I suspect that he might commit the sin of being proud of his humility, he at least calls this out in what feels like a self-directed barb.

TSL Chapter 13 -- a walk through country he really likes

Summary

Bad news! Wormwood has blown it big-time, and Uncle Screwtape is there to let him know it. The Patient went for a walk in the country and read a good book and those Honest, Simple Pleasures (my caps on Honest & Simple, but Screwtape's on the 'P') re-awakened his Christian spirit.

Screwtape calls this tantamount to a "second conversion" and probably a deeper one than the first! What to do?

Screwtape, for once, is somewhat lacking on the practical advise front -- he more or less just scolds and lectures Wormwood, saving his pragmatic ideas for the next chapter. He does provide some warnings about keeping the target disconnected from the real and distrusting honest pleasures, even if they're not Godly.

He concludes with a bit of advice -- that perhaps the best way to keep someone in the realm of the imaginary and away from the real is to have them "write a book" about whatever it is they think they have a passion for.

My Reaction

Imaginary Distresses & Vanity, Bustle, Irony and Expensive Tedium as Pleasures

Screwtape echoes his earlier advice about keeping the target in the realm of the imaginary and out of action of any kind, advising keeping the Patient 'of the World but not in it,' so-to-speak.

I liked this. And I like that CSL isn't against intellectualism, per se -- finding a book (a purely intellectual pursuit) purely and legitimately Pleasurable works for him, but is very much against 'imaginary' pleasures -- which in this case are things that aren't really pleasures. Or are pleasures born of sin (e.g. prideful feelings coming from reading a trendy book).

This seems like a pretty well aligned with my experience -- imagining something is easier than doing it. A good deal of my daily workout is imaginary.

Simple Pleasures

I'm not quite as taken with CSL's embrace of simple pleasures. While he doesn't seriously misstep, the pleasures he lists are things like walks in the country, stamp collecting, country cricket, and tripe & onions.

He contrasts those to pleasures of vanity, and he does include reading a book... but taken with his examples of Butchers and Grocers, it's getting a little bit God's Country / Salt of the Earth here. Surely there are some honest, simple pleasures commonly enjoyed by Oxford academics, no?

God (really) Gives you back ALL (every bit of) your Personality

Demons and God both try to break a man from himself, but God (who loves men) gives them back their personalities -- once they've joined him.

Uh huh -- and all the having Screwtape call people vermin doesn't do much of anything to make this more credible. 

It might be that CSL is reading some Biblical passage about how we'll get our original (um... fallen) personalities back when we're in Heaven, but I sincerely doubt it.

• Firstly, if our personalities were any good, we wouldn't need to shed them. It's not about making better people, it's about making *new* people, right? (didn't someone say that)? Once you get rid of vanity, greed, and sloth, I'm not sure how much of the original 'me' is left...
• Secondly, once we're in Heaven, we're going to look down, like Abraham, across a vast gulf and see people we liked, if not our loved ones, looking up from Hell, begging us for a drop of water and instead of helping them, we'll scold them righteously for being so evil during life. 
• Or maybe we'll be like Lazarus, and be so blissed out that we don't even notice our friends suffering (Dude... can you turn down the screaming? I'm trying to listen to the harp music...). Either way, that... doesn't sound like me.

I skeptical that we get our personalities back. I think CSL recognizes how horrible this sounds to us, and feels the need to jump in and comfort anyone who thinks being turned into some new, eternal person sounds frightening or like something a Loving God wouldn't do.

I don't like this kind of apologism -- it bothers me. I don't think God's love is recognizably human. That's terrifying, but I can't reach any other conclusion. When we think of God 'loving us' it's not the way our parents love us or how we love our children.

It's some vast, different, potentially horrifying kind of love that might result in our eternal damnation.

I feel like CSL here is trying to sugarcoat that.

TSL Chapter 12 -- A dead fire in a cold room

Summary

Wormwood's patient has been drifting "out of his orbit around the Enemy" and slowly heading into the "cold and dark" of "utmost space."

He's carried by his own unawareness that his Christian zeal is fading, even as he takes communion and dutifully attends church. These habits lull him into believing in his salvation, even as he's more and more damned with each passing day.

Screwtape warns Wormwood that he should be careful to keep The Patient from thinking about his relationship with God -- which is enabled because The Patient will naturally avoid things that make him feel convicted. In a best case (worst case) scenario, The Patient will withdraw completely, filling his world with dull, cold, joyless trivia, and finally arrive in Hell having found no pleasure in the world at all.

Screwtape closes with a reminder that small sins will damn a man as finally as big ones, and are safer because they give no outward indication of the man's progress toward the infernal.

My Reaction

Flight from Salvation

As I've already said, I quite believe that people avoid God, and see that in my self. My attempts to pray for "5 minutes" in the morning are an abject failure. I find even five minutes pretty undo-able, and 5 minutes was a compromise from the suggested "30 minutes," which I recognized as intolerable.

Screwtape would be gratified.

Is Disease Sin?

What struck me here, though, was I recognized the phenomena that Screwtape describes as depression. It's not for certain -- maybe what we think of as "clinical depression" is a different kind of thing than the state of being damned... but the internal and external signs are clearly there: a loss of joy in the world, a withdrawal, a sense of being profoundly disconnected.

I'm not depressive and never have been -- so I don't recognize these things from personal experience -- but I know them from people in my life and from reading, and I'm reasonably certain I know depression when I see it in print.

Screwtape, here, implies that depression is a result of a decision to withdraw from God to avoid feeling guilty. In other words, a sin. Today, Western Medicine thinks of depression as a neurological malfunction and something that is (potentially) treatable with medicine.  But back when CSL was writing this, that view of neurology was nascent, if it existed at all (I would categorize the psychoanalytic model as a substantially different model of mental dysfunction).

So what gives? We can be held accountable for decisions made freely, but if there's something wrong with the brain that compromises (or appears to compromise) our free will, what then?

Can we be damned for thoughts or conditions we can't control? There's no way to know. I don't think the bible addresses this at all -- subtle mental illness and any kind of neurological determinism is not really a biblical concept, from what I can see.

Looking at modern writing (that is, anything written in or translated into English), I see two distinct possibilities.

No, of Course Not (The comforting possibility)

From a modern perspective the idea of damning someone because of mental conditions beyond their control is unjust -- c.f. the insanity defense. Since God is just, He would never do such a thing. Q.E.D.

I suspect that if I were a depressed person, that's what I'd be told -- and I'd be reminded that God is capable of curing sicknesses (including, explicitly, in some people's experiences) depression, and invited to pray for deliverance.

Also, children and babies who die before they can accept Jesus are given an exemption and saved from Hell -- because, due to immaturity, it would be unfair to condemn them.

Yes. You're Accountable No Matter What (the scary possibility)

The comforting possibility is the one we dearly hope is true, but it's founded in a human sense of Justice and we know that although our sense of what's Just might emanate from God, it isn't always flawless.

Maybe our 'disease model' is wrong, and depression isn't a physical (neurological) problem, but just a failure to man up and get outside and do something. Maybe (as CSL suggests), it's more a moral failing than a weakness of the flesh -- and something that is best addressed with sincere contrition.

In this view, we shouldn't be comforting a depressed person -- we should be gently telling them to take accountability for their condition and to seek God in the hope that he will help them lift their own spirits and bring them around. Telling depressed people they're responsible for their own numbing sadness is very much out of favor these days, but if that is merely Worldly Wisdom, maybe the mental health community is in league with the Devil.

CSL might well agree with that.

Even Scarier

There's one possibility I've run into that's even worse: If God knows everything, and destiny is pre-determined, then it's quite possible that He simply prevents children who would have grown up to be saved Christians from dying before their baptism, and prevents the Elect from having mental malfunctions that would lead them away from Salvation.

In this view crib death and depression can still be basic physical phenomena and, like the instruction in James, they're just litmus tests for salvation -- if you're depressed (and you don't get better), it's because you're Reprobate, Sinner. Get thee to Hell.

Interestingly, this is exactly the sort of thing people with depression tell themselves. In the 'comforting view' above, it's either a manifestation of the sickness -- or even the whispers of demons trying to make someone miserable and in doubt of their salvation. But what if that was just wishful thinking, and the agony and hopelessness a depressed person feels is exactly what the Depressions claims to be: unvarnished Truth of the sort CSL is trying to give is in his book?

This is absolutely terrifying and horrific, but it's quite nicely aligned certain views of Election that suggests God's love would be manifest as earthly success of practicing Christians.

This is terrifying because it suggests that horrible things quite beyond our control can condemn us -- but it's really just a re-iteration of the idea of Election: our salvation is beyond control; people are condemned because that's what happens. 

If this is not comforting... well, there's not much comfort in our cosmology, is there?

A dead fire in a cold room, indeed

TSL 33% Retrospective!

I'm about a third of the way through The Screwtape Letters, and I think it's a good time to look back and see what I've learned and what I think, etc. As always, Clint Eastwood provides the proper taxonomy for a holistic evaluation of anything.

At 11 chapters read, we can look at the morals in order

1. Hard science is Godly, soft science -- not so much
2. Not-so-persevering saints -- even Christians can be damned if they're 'Christians'
3. Praying for idealized (and therefore imaginary) people doesn't work, and contempt is bad for relationships
4. Actual prayer does work, though -- so long as it's aimed at God and not a Papier Mâché God. Also: People don't really want divine intervention, probably
5. War: Not as good for Satan as you might have thought. (No Atheists in Foxholes, etc.)
6. Imaginary virtues aren't really virtues at all. That virtue you thought you had? Probably imaginary.
7. The Masquerade, also don't be an extremists in anything but Love of God
8. The Law of Undulation -- people move in cycles
9. A Moderated Religion is No Religion at all. Also, forbidden pleasures are more tempting when people are at low ebb
10. Don't be friends with trendy atheists
11. Flippancy & Irony are damning and don't justify bad behavior by saying, "Hey, man -- it was just a joke!"

The Good

There's a lot of good here. If the theology isn't exactly Calvinist (and in some ways glaringly not so), the practical implications line up with Calvinism well enough that it might as well be. This stuff is meant to be instructional and it is. I can usually find some nits to pick but as I read through the 11 chapters of advice, I don't find much to disagree with.

I also like the world and the character voices. The idea of a huge demoniacal bureaucracy full of reserved, even polite demons carrying out a highly civilized war against Heaven where, even in private missives, their manner is cultured and diplomatic is both amusing and intriguing. The parallels with a chummy, if somewhat socially competitive academic environment are equally interesting. Screwtape and his ilk are remarkably relate-able for  a minion of infinite darkness.

I'd like to see more of this world -- I'd even like to see a story or two set there.

The Bad

Despite a charming world and an author who writes his characters well, it's still a big edifying plate of vegetables -- more than a decade ago I brought and read it, but my recall is very limited. I suspect that around chapter 3 or so, I tired of being lectured at, and skimmed the rest for anything really interesting about the world or characters.

While I could recommend it on its merits as a lecture series, I would have to caveat that by saying, it feels a bit like a daily scolding.

One would think that the assurances of Calvinism would mitigate that somewhat (in theory, we shouldn't fear Hell the way Anglicans do: we, like them, slip up from time to time, but unlike the Anglicans our souls are not in mortal peril from our mistakes -- Calvinist Saints persevere!), but in practice, it's the same deal: when we slip, we should take that as a warning that our souls may not be as saved as we would like to presume: in Calvinism, James is not exhorting us to do better, he's instructing us on the mortal signs of damnation -- teaching us how to identify the 'Saints' among us who, it turns out, are not Saints at all. And should we read James and take any comfort in the belief that we, ourselves, are moving toward the Christian ideal, Screwtape is quick and consistent in his reminders that Humans excel at deluding themselves about their own virtue and safety.

In practice, the difference in theologies makes things worse for the Calvinist, who might be damned and if he is, there's literally nothing he can do about it. 

The Ugly

Doubt in one's salvation, from a Calvinist perspective, makes the whole thing somewhat dreary and disturbing. Of course some of this is a requirement for the narrative: a Calvinist Screwtape Letters would have the demons sitting around watching passively as the Celestial Sorting Algorithm inexorably moves the Elect into Heaven and the Reprobate into Hell.

No action on their part would be required because individual humans' fate would be determined by the incomprehensible and the ineffable. Not much of a story there.

This whole thing becomes a bit alarming -- but worse, it raises the question of the pillar from which the author lectures: the only point of reality we have is the Bible. However flawed our ability to understand it is, it's the only source of guidance and truth in the universe. As we extrapolate from there, we inevitably create errors.

I think a huge source of these errors comes from trying to logically understand concepts like eternal damnation -- particularly in the context of something like a story where it has to hold together in a human-understandable way.

While Lewis doesn't show his proof, I think it's fair to say it's something like this:

1. God allows humans to be damned and suffer forever because of their decisions
2. This must mean that God values allowing humans to make such critical decisions more than he values the safety of their souls and their eternal well being
3. Since we're talking about an infinity of pain and despair, he must value something called 'free will' to an infinite level

That's logical -- it justifies damnation -- but I don't think it follows. And my (ignorant layman's) read of the bible doesn't help: in some passages we choose (Joshua). In others, we have no choice (Ephesians). Human exegesis tries to split those atoms, but I think that runs into the same set of errors the logician makes: we might find a consistent and logical interpretation of different verses, but it's based on human logic.

In the end, I think that human articulations of God's values or plans are fine in fiction, but when Lewis aspires toward apology that requires what I suspect is an unwarranted faith in his own reason... and that makes the whole exercise just a very little bit ugly

TSL Chapter 11 -- The Causes of Human Laughter

Overview

The Patient is laughing it up with his new skeptical, blasphemous friends cuing Uncle Screwtape to tackle the causes and utility of human laughter, itself. He finds a four-part taxonomy from the least useful (in damning people) to the most-useful:

1. Joy
2. Fun
3. the Joke Proper
4. Flippancy

Joy is pure love of life (maybe with an actual joke or funny saying as a pretext for laughter). It's useless for the damning.

Fun is a slightly less pure form of Joy -- it arises from the "playfulness" instinct and can be used to divert humans from their responsibilities, but is otherwise not very demonic: it tends to promote virtues rather than vices.

The Joke Proper can be somewhat useful: people can tell dirty jokes (the term Screwtape uses is "indecent or bawdy" proving that while devils may enjoy tempting humans to be vulgar they decline to be so, themselves). More-so, it can be used to cover for bad behavior -- cruelty, cowardice, or other vices. A clever human will pass off such actions as "a joke" and find them both guiltless and shameless (i.e. socially acceptable).

But the big money's in Flippancy, which I would call "Irony" is almost a worldview in itself and aims skepticism and contempt at virtue itself. In finding virtue and authenticity funny, Flippancy becomes an armor against God.

Literature -- The realism, dignity and austerity of Hell

Hell takes itself seriously and has a good deal of pride in its appearance (maybe explaining why Screwtape is such a prude). We've seen this before in asides where Screwtape complains about God's love of humans and his creation of them as half-spirit / half-animal abominations he calls "amphibians." God has no Pride, does not hold himself above the mortal realm (or at least not with the contempt the Devils feel for it), and in doing so offends the demonic hosts.

I like this. It feels very much right -- and works with a worldview that could be aware of God while setting themselves against Him.

Theology / My Reaction

Save the Hipsters?

I don't have any idea what the Bible says about flippancy / irony. I suspect that it wasn't a huge deal back then and might not have rated highly in terms of warning people. That said, I believe it's corrosive and I think the description of it as "armor" is dead-on.

In my experience, people use flippancy defensively -- to distance themselves from others and proactively shield themselves from criticism (I'm not uncool -- I'm making fun of people who think this is cool).

According to the media, this is a problem of epidemic proportions in the population known as "hipsters." I doubt this is the truth, because it's the sort of thing the media is awfully bad at getting right, but I can believe that irony and flippancy and finding virtue and authenticity laughable is bad for one's soul.

So save the hipsters, I guess?

I was just joking!

I'm also down with CSL / Screwtape on this one. You're too sensitive / I was just joking / etc. excuses nothing. If I do something that's hurting someone, even if I sincerely didn't mean to, I need to cut it out and I should consider an apology: if, upon reflection, I should have known better, they're owed one.

If I keep doing it, I'm being an ass.

This goes for things covered as jokes, but also goes for non-joke politically-incorrect terminology. And yes, that may mean that I'm held hostage in my right to tell the kinds of jokes I find funny in mixed company or whatever, but if I'm more worried about my rights to tell The One About the Pizza, than how the people around me feel then I'm back to being an ass.

It's my right to be an ass -- I have freedom of the speech and everything -- but if I'm concerned about my Immortal Soul, I probably shouldn't be screaming about my entitlements. 

TSL Chapter 10 -- Desirable New Acquaintances

Chapter Summary

That old scoundrel Triptweeze has informed Uncle that Worm's patient has made some new friends. These are fashionably intellectual skeptics who will clearly be good (bad) influence on The Patient -- he will, desiring their approval, become shallow, cynical, and trendily flippant just like they are.

So opposed are these new influences to The Patient's Christian values that Screwtape urges Wormwood to work hard to ensure that The Patient doesn't realize how fundamentally opposed he is to them and that when he does, to make sure he doesn't cut ties immediately. As always, Screwtape has practical advice to offer:

Not so much in how to prevent the patient from realizing the grave disconnect, but to make sure that when the Patient does realize his problem he either doesn't think of it when they're around, or -- and this is better -- to have the guy gleefully understand how out of integrity is when he hangs out with the intelligentsia. Or maybe think he's doing them some good with his presence.

Meanwhile Screwtape suggests that Wormwood inspire the guy to overspend and neglect mom.

Literature & Theology

I found this fascinating: Who are these dreadful people -- people whose sins and values are so anti-Christian that even hanging out with them imperils the soul and even as mild and tentative a Christian as The Patient (who is also a bit of an idiot) cannot help but realize how foul and antithetical these folks are?

Are they criminal? Cruel? Perverse? Are they idolaters who worship at the alter of Marxism or Pacifism? Are they pagans?

None of the above. These Agents of Damnation are

• Rich
• Smart
• Superficially intellectual
• Brightly skeptical (about everything in the world)

And while they may have some ideology, there's no sign that their vague pacifism and "purely fashionable and literary communism" is anything but the same superficiality they bring to their intellectualism.

We learn later that to fit in with their "urbane and mocking" world The Patient he will have to assume a manner with "cynical and skeptical" attitudes which will eventually become sincere.

Oh, and these Sirens of Worldly Culture people are "middle aged" and "married."

What the heck is going on here? Why are these folks so extremely bad and dangerous that not only are they damned but they're in danger of sucking down those around them, like a great ship sinking[1]?

I have to admit, I'm not sure. I will examine two theories:

Theory One: Damned by the Every Day

Theory One is that CSL recognizes that his target audience is more likely to have trendy intellectual friends than criminal perverts. He aims his warnings at the every day, not the dramatic:

For his lecture on Choosing the Right Friends, he's chosen the sorts of people he thinks his readers might have for friends. If he chose extreme examples, his reader would chuckle and shake his head, self-satisfied and secure that he has no friends like that.

This is probably part of the picture, but I don't think it covers all the waterfront. For one thing, CSL doesn't see a need to explain their crimes. They're almost certainly atheists, but the problem isn't their theology -- it's their worldliness and extreme seductivity.

Also, he contrasts them to The Grocer -- a simple, Godly man who kneels beside The Patient in Church. I mean, let's face it: the Grocer is probably just as doomed as The Patient is (which is to say, in peril until he's dead), but here he represents the polar opposite of the Temptations of the World. In an earlier chapter it was the greasy looking Butcher who would cut a faintly ridiculous figure when seen in Church handing out pamphlets his simple mind couldn't quite understand.

I think this is key.

Theory Two: Damn those Skeptics!

What's so bad about these people? Sure they're worldly, but most of The Patient's friends probably are. If they were presented as extremists in some way (Commies), then they'd be obvious idolaters and that would answer the question. 

I think the problem is their skepticism, which is probably expressed as an unconsidered agnosticism or even an explicit atheism (although he doesn't use the term). Firstly, CSL/Screwtape uses invokes skepticism twice, and secondly that's only area where their nature becomes sinful.

Being rich isn't a sin[2]. Being smart can't be bad. Superficial affectations are the polar opposite of idolatry, so their trendy communism and pacifism can't be that damning. That leaves being middle aged and married and the skepticism.

Theory Three: Damn those Intellectuals in the English Department!

One of the joys or writing fiction from a God's Eye PoV, is the opportunity to put your enemies in Hell. This dates back to Dante, and it would be surprising if CSL was completely above it. I bet the English Department in Oxford was full of mocking, laughing, intellectual (well, you know, superficially intellectual) sophisticates with progressive liberal values and a good dose of class-ism who would not have been sympathetic to Lewis's conversion or thought well of the simple working class folk he'd kneel with in Church.

There's no way to prove this, but the chapter feels like a bit of a Take That at the intellectuals who would have been his colleagues.

The Aesop

The moral here is really that you don't sell out your beliefs for the approval of your friends (whoever they are) and that if you have worldly friends (and believe me, you do -- even if you're hanging with the Butcher or the Grocer), you'll probably have to do some selling out to fit in with them.

This is true and it's a good reminder. I recall being uncomfortable when a guy I was with asked me incredulously, point blank, if I believed in the Resurrection in front of a bunch of secular Jewish folks I was hanging out with. I said I did and he dropped it was the sort of thing that could have been quite divisive and unpleasant.

But I wonder what the remedy is. Screwtape and Mom both remind us we should Choose our Friends Wisely, but does that mean that we shouldn't consort with anyone who doesn't match our values? Maybe -- or maybe we should hang out with them but not for friendship, only to convert them. I have a good, observant Jewish friend I used to work with and still see regularly. We spoke today and I'm looking forward to seeing him next week. Have I chosen poorly?

I guess I'll find out one day.

[1] Myth Busted -- according to Justified.

[2] We hope. Since we're all rich by 0 A.D. and by 2013 global standards, by virtue of living in the US, we dearly hope that business about the eye of the needle isn't all that literal, or that it just means you can't buy your way in, or something about that small gate or that rock you have crawl under or whatever.

TSL Chapter 9 -- Present Dryness

Overview

Since CSL didn't title his chapters, I'll do it for him. In Chapter Nine Screwtape proves that he's a demon of his word by carrying through on his promise to tell Wormwood how to exploit the down cycles of a human's Undulation.

He suggests that vices (sex, drink) are more tempting when a man's inner world is "drab and cold and empty" but warns that pleasure, at its core, is a Godly invention. No matter -- demons can make good use of it, by distorting or perverting natural pleasures into unGodly ones.

He also cautions Wormwood to make sure his target never suspects the natural cycle of things, but rather despairs or accepts a low-grade "moderated" religion, which is "as good" as "no religion at all."

Finally, he suggests that Wormwood encourage The Patient to think of his Christianity as a  phase that he has grown out of -- a childish thing he has left behind.

Literature

Demons engage in Research and Development -- although they're not very good at it. Apparently they have been trying to engineer some new pleasures but haven't been successful.

He also points out that, style-wise, it's best to damn a man having given him nothing in return. We knew demons were sadistic -- now we know they're petty!

Theology

A moderated religion is no religion at all -- or to put it another way: if you're lukewarm, you'll be spat out.

In Anglican theology (CSLs) I read this as a warning to be committed with the attendant dangers of being uncommitted being eternal damnation (and ultimately being part of Satan).

In Calvinist theology, it's more of a litmus test for salvation: if you're moderate / lukewarm, then it may be a sign you're not actually saved (or maybe just a sign you need to grow more).

In both, it's a bad sign and something that requires divine intervention to resolve. CSL notes that a surefire way to capture a human soul is to set someone on the quixotic task of regaining their dedication and passion through their own will. Human willpower may be required, but isn't sufficient.

My Reaction

I read these (and other) condemnations of moderate or "moderated" or lukewarm religion and I see myself in that category.

I can sort of imagine what I might look like if I were "hot" -- but my image is exhausting and somewhat dismal. I suspect it's possibly the result of some erroneous assumptions.

More importantly, when I see lukewarmness in myself, instead of feeling inspired to do better and push on toward hot-ness, I tend to feel sullen and demoralized: yeah... I probably *should*... I mean, heck, I'd like to be 'hot!' But what's it going to matter anyway? I'll just undulate back down and I'm probably damned / doomed anyway, and it sounds like no-fun-at-all.

I think I'll pass. If my Immortal Soul's taken care of, it's all good and if it isn't? Nothing I can do will make a difference anyway...

That kind of uninspired reaction probably wasn't what CSL was looking for -- although maybe it was; maybe he'd be pleased to know his barbs are hitting their intended targets.

TSL Chapter 8

... sigh... when I started this blog I was all excited about this, and I was like, "I'm gonna write a blog post EVERY DAY!" and all that, and now I'm all, "eh. I've got stuff to do," and it seems like so much effort, and no one's commenting... I guess I just don't feel... inspired.

You know?

Summary

Uncle Screwtape schools Worms on the law (no caps) of Undulation (caps). Apparently humans work in cycles of interest / activity and then disinterest / inertia. Screwtape instructs that these cycles will do no good unless they're properly exploited.

By way of explanation, he expounds significantly Hell's plans for humans as well as Gods: Hell wants cattle. God wants sons. Or more bizarrely: Hell wants all matter in the universe to ultimately be Satan (even Screwtape? Apparently), while Heaven wants to create a huge number of low-fidelity images of God.

Uncle Tape also mentions tactics: God can't coerce. He demands free will, and even abandons (or appears to abandon) his creations so they can find him on their own, without help.

Screwtape, having laid this out, doesn't explain in depth how to exploit the natural troughs in focus and activity -- that comes next-letter.

Literary

lower case laws

So the law of Undulation has no capital L, but a capital U. What's up with that? A quick look at other laws suggests that in English specific laws as in "The Law of X" come with a capital L. Sources like Wikipedia follow this pattern for a variety of laws such as the Second Law of Thermodynamics (capital S, L, and T -- a veritable bonanza of big, bold capitals).

However, when we're talking about a law that belongs to someone (Murphy's), the law itself is not capitalized. And in the case of "laws" such as the 'law of unintended consequences,' capital letters need not apply.

After some consideration and a bit more googling, I could not find anything that explained this to me. I could dismiss it as an error, but I haven't found any similar errors, and Lewis seems a careful writer.

I have another theory:

Slubgob's law

Screwtape introduce the loU with a petty dig at old Slubgob -- the current administrator of the Training College (not "a training college" -- Junior Tempters do not study at technical schools, apparently ruling out the possibility of commercials where a peer tempter damns a dozen souls as a perplexed, astonished friend looks on, and is then told, "I got my degree at Pandaemonium Technical Institute -- you should go! You'll be glad you did!" But I digress).

He says that things have gone "to pieces" since Ol' Slub has taken over.

Note that he did not say, "have gone to Hell" since that would be either vulgar or redundant. He could have said, "Gone to Heaven," but that doesn't seem like a likely idiom given their relationship with the celestial realms. Screwtape, despite his demoniacal nature does not use the scatological which would fit here,  and he doesn't say, "Pear Shaped" which would would have outed him as a brit.

But I digress.

I think that the weird capitalization is a subtle sign from CSL to show us that whoever taught Screwy English did a poor job, and that we shouldn't take his criticisms of academics seriously.

That said,

Infernal Ambitions

The idea that Hell wants to make everyone part of Satan is reasonable and kind of cool. It seems demonic and hungry and empty and gluttonous all at once. I do wonder what happens to an immortal soul that becomes part of the devil. Are you still you, but now you're a tendon? Or is the self dissolved? It sort of implies the later, but that kind of implies an end to suffering -- either oblivion, or something close to it.

Anyway, these end-game visions are pretty good.

I was going to talk about something else, but I think I'll do the Theology.

Theology

I don't know where he gets this Undulation stuff, but it doesn't seem biblical. I don't buy it at all. I'm also not sure about God valuing freedom over everything.

Firstly, God does prime the pump. He's willing to intervene to get things started, but then he wants people to pull themselves along by their own power and -- at least in CSL's theology -- he's willing to watch them end up damned forever if they can't quite make it.

I think absolute dedication to freedom is a valid explanation for letting people be damned -- but what we're seeing here isn't quite absolute.

Of course Lewis's conceit is that he can explain God's objectives and reasons; I think he knows better, but at some level apologism is about explaining God to people, with a fallback that if the person doesn't quite buy my logic, I can always shrug appeal to the infinite unknowability of the maximally-omni and them move in a mysterious way.

Personally I prefer "we have no idea why things are this way" to partial explanations. A friend of mine was shot and killed and his mother (a holidays-and-weddings Catholic) went to a priest to arrange for a service and to seek... some kind of explanation.

The man told her flat out he had nothing, and frankly, I'm not sure anything he could have said to try to explain God's purpose could have made a positive difference. Pain and struggle can be edifying, but they can also be crippling and soul-rending, and explanations that have God wanting us to suffer terrible things to make us better seem a bit horrific to me. 

At the end of the day, I think Lewis is on to something -- we may well be at our best when, during our deep troughs, where we're most discouraged and feel most alone, we seek God because, not because it comforts us, but because it's the right thing to do.

And that may even please God more than our obedience when we're on fire with his presence.

But I am deeply skeptical of anyone who connects this to God's valuation of concepts like free will. 

TSL Chapter 7

Chapter Summary

Screwtape answers a question posed by Wormwood about whether demons should let their presence and reality be known (it's against orders) and then returns to his earlier comment about Pacifism v. Patriotism both (probably) supporting his demoniacal ends.

He argues that both can be made ends in and of themselves, and are therefore good ways to bring an idol between man and God.

Literature & Theology Together

I'm going to do these together because they mesh pretty well in this chapter.

The Masquerade & The Materialist Magician

Wormwood has apparently asked if it would be okay to reveal his presence to the patient. Screwtape reminds him that it's forbidden by the High Command (capital letters in the original). 

He examines the obvious tradeoffs: if people accept the existence of demons, they won't be materialists. If they deny them, they won't be magicians. If you have to remain hidden, you can't directly terrorize someone with demonic attacks a la The Exorcist.

He then posits the ideal configuration -- a Materialist Magician: someone who denies the reality of the metaphysical world but nevertheless worships (rather than just "uses") 'Forces,' engaging the forbidden demonic world while still intellectually denying it.

This makes for a pretty good swipe at Scientology, although it considerably pre-dates it. CSL is taking aim at the cults of his time that made use of the trappings of science.

For what it's worth, I think he's right about people "emotionalizing" and "mythologizing" science to their detriment. Science, for better or worse, has a lot of emotional credibility and all sorts of people (secular and religious) who ought to know better routinely claim Science is on Their Side.

Patriot v. Pacifist

CSL addresses all the points of my earlier confusion more than adequately. His issue is less about patriotism v. pacifism and more about the dangers of zealotry in the service of anything other than God. In this view, pacifism motivated by a (pure) desire to serve would be Godly, but almost any corrupted, earthly form of it would amount to the worship of an idol, and therefore deliver the extremist into the hands of the demons.

He also makes some good points about the isolating, extremism-generating nature of sects and cults, finding them good mechanisms for driving corruption.

He's counseling moderation in all things except obedience to and worship of God, and that sounds eminently reasonable and tenable.  

TSL Chapter 6

Chapter Summary

Annnnnd... we're back. Screwtape returns from a brief look at the wider world to the soul of Wormwood's patient. In this chapter, Uncle Screwtape focuses on the nature of Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt (FUD), and how (not) to deal with them. He touches on the value of self-consciousness and conscious management of emotions (especially ones that might lead to sin) and then on the surprisingly limited value of hatred (especially hatred aimed at distant people).

Finally, he explains the concentric spheres view of man, with the Heart / Will at the core, the "Intellectual" sphere around that, and the the sphere of "fantasy" which contains things the man believes about himself but are not, in fact, true.

Screwtape advises Nephew Wormwood to concentrate on pushing virtues outward, into the fantasy sphere, and away from the heart -- doing so will make the man act from vice while believing in his own inordinate virtue and such may make him all the more "amusing" when he finally ends up in Hell.

Literature

There's not a lot to say here. The chapter focuses on how fear, will, and self-image / self-delusion may interact. There's an awkward bit where Uncle Screwtape has to explain God's will, supposedly for the purpose of explaining how to subvert it -- the facade of the anti-sermon approach gets a little thin.

The concentric-circles-of-man view is somewhat interesting, but it's less a metaphysical view of the world than a conceptual tool. It does, in some ways, address what I saw in earlier chapters as a bit of confusion around the role of self-awareness. Clearly CSL sees value in self-awareness, self-inspection and intellectual management of emotions -- he just advises us to be wary of believing in our own worthiness.

I do think that the idea that a man who believes himself to be virtuous would be more entertaining to torture forever than one who was evil and acknowledges it is pretty chilling. CSL makes the most of the terrifying prospect of an infinity of torture. And who amongst us would not be astonished to discover ourselves forever in the clutches of the Father Below?

I imagine most people would be quite entertaining by Screwtape's lights.

More Pandering

CSL engages in one element of shameless pandering: apparently the English are more -- objectively more -- virtuous than other peoples: Screwtape complains about their hypocrisy in treatment of enemies. While they may intellectually hate Germans, when actually presented with one, their innate virtue of kindness and charity shines through and they treat their sworn enemy decently and humanely.

This is doubly annoying since as a patriotic American I would like our people to have the moral high-ground, but I've seen pictures of how we treat our prisoners taken in wartime and it's neither humane nor infused with charity. I suspect Uncle Screwtape would be less irritated with our management of the prison facilities we ran in Iraq.

The Theology of F.U.D.

If the literary / world-building aspects are light, Chapter 6's theology is somewhat meatier. It deals with Fear, Uncertainty, and indirectly, with Doubt (F.U.D.)

(Fear) Fear is the Mind Killer

Fear -- and the bearing of fear -- as a trial we are expected to endure, is interesting and perhaps even rises to the level of being insightful. CSL counsels patience and forbearance in the face of uncertainty instead of praying for help with imagined, not-yet-manifest circumstances.

I like this, since it fits with my experience that fear does tend to eclipse other concerns. We know that people who live under constant fear have a harder time performing intelligently -- it really does wear down the will and corrupt the heart.

I think CSL's advice is good here, even if it does, somewhat, come from Screwtape's mouth (as I said, his more-or-less-straight-up exposition crumples the conceit of the work a little.)

(Uncertainty) The Circle of Fantasy

In this chapter Lewis illustrates how managing vices and growing in virtue require a clear headed view of one's own internal states. He explicitly describes how a man might identify and react to a potentially problematic emotion through clarity and how a demon subvert that by having the target focus on believed virtues -- ones which don't actually exist.

This is both advice and a warning. The advice is to have clarity about our emotional states. The warning is to be uncertain about our perceived moral position.

Anyone reading Screwtape's advice is invited to wonder: are my virtues really "virtues?" Are they embedded in my Heart, or do they exist in the Circle of Fantasy, where they do me no good? Of course this invites an accounting, but it's inevitably a subjective accounting: humans are notoriously good at self-deception, and any honest man must acknowledge that there's no way he can be sure.

Hence, uncertainty. I think that's where Lewis feels we're supposed to be. While Screwtape doesn't explicitly say this, his examples all suggest that a man who feels certain of his virtue or even his progress toward virtue is a deluded fool -- a plaything of demons and his own fallen nature.

Better then to always be uneasy and uncertain, and thus striving to better, right?

It is, of course, possible to read TSL and think, "Ah -- well, yes -- others ought to be uncertain, but not me, but not me. I'm quite secure in my virtue," or -- for the more sophisticated pallet, who recognizes the abject absence of humility in the previous paragraph, to loudly proclaim, "And I am the worst sinner of all!" and yet feel adequately assured. After all, though worst-sinner, I may be, am I not (by virtue of my salvation) on an inexorable upward track?

(Doubt) Chicks Dig Confidence

I think an intellectually honest Christian would have to exist in a state of doubt. Am I good enough? Am I saved? Am I trending better (evidence of election) or is my positive trend just a laughable, self-deluded fantasy? How could I tell, when my fallen senses and logic will work against me?

Of course in practice we don't see a lot of this kind of doubt. Christians by and large are assured of their salvation. Why is this?

I don't have a definitive answer, but I can find some parallels:

I recall reading an assessment of depression in Japanese culture which pointed out an apparent contradiction: in Japanese culture, people are expected to be self-deprecating. Self-promotion is seen as intolerably rude and arrogant and a gross violation of cultural norms.

However, looking at culture, one noticed that the successful people fully obeyed the norm -- they were quick to enthusiastically declare themselves to be the worst of the worst, the slowest, least capable of the lot... but they didn't seem to internalize those perceptions. At some level they were very much playing the game: their affect and manner, as well as their actions demonstrated a profound confidence in their ability.

And, of course, society reacted: they were praised both for their capability and for their humility. They were winning in both ways.

Depressed people (apparently a lot of them in Japan), on the other hand, often internalized those self-criticisms. They took them to heart, and as a result felt (predictably) miserable. They were meek, effacing, tentative, and often socially isolated and ineffective. Their behavior and affect matched their words.

As a character in the South Park movie (whom I shall decline to name) says, "Chicks dig confidence." I think that's right: we want people who say the right things, but doubt -- honest doubt -- not only isn't attractive, it may be debilitating. It's not what we can afford from our leaders.

At some point, to function, we have to believe in our salvation -- to truly take F.U.D. to heart, would be to stare into the abyss of the unthinkable with no assurance of any kind. Not many people could handle that sort of thing and keep going.