The Screwtape Letters, an epistolary novel by C.S. Lewis, published serially in 1941 in the Guardian, a weekly religious newspaper. I would like to share some of the first chapter and do remember Lewis wrote this in 1941, and it is clearly taking place in our culture.
Chapter 1 page 1 of The Screwtape Letters
My dear Wormwood,
I note what you say about guiding your patient’s reading and taking care that he sees a good deal of his materialist friend. But are you not being a trifle naïve? It sounds as if you supposed that argument was the way to keep him out of the Enemy’s clutches. That might have been so if he had lived a few centuries earlier. At that time the humans still knew pretty well when a thing was proved and when it was not; and if it was proved they really believed it. They still connected thinking with doing and were prepared to alter their way of life as the result of a chain of reasoning. But what with the weekly press and other such weapons we largely altered that. Your man has been accustomed ever since he was a boy, to have a dozen incompatible philosophies dancing about together inside his head. He doesn’t think of doctrines as primarily ‘true’ or ‘false’, but as ‘academic’ or ‘practical’, ‘outworn’ or ‘contemporary’ or ‘ruthless’. Jargon, not argument, is your best ally in keeping him from the Church. Don’t waste time trying to make him think that materialism is true! Make him think it is strong, or stark, or courageous – that it is the philosophy of the future. That’s the sort of thing he cares about.
Skipping down a bit
Your business is to fix his attention on the stream. (Note “the urgent”) Teach him to call it ‘real life' and don’t let him ask what he means by ‘real’. Remember, he is not, like you, a pure spirit. Never having been a human (Oh that abominable advantage of the Enemy’s!) you don’t realize how enslaved they are to the pressure of the ordinary.
From the Back Porch,
Bob Rice
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