Noyes, Shelley
Evangelical Theology
3/9/07
The Screwtape Essay
In the Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis proposes a dialog between a senior administrative devil/tempter and a graduate fresh out of the Tempters Training College for young devils. We only get to read letters from the senior, Screwtape, to the junior Wormwood–and by these we overhear how Wormwood’s first assignment is going, what tempting strategies he should try, and what might happen to him if he fails. Screwtape sounds cordial in all his letters, but just beneath is a scathing tone and an apparent dislike of his young mentee. In every letter, he belittles Wormwood in some way or another, and by the end we hear Screwtape’s outright anger and outrage at Wormwood’s failure when his patient dies a Christian.
I’ve been wanting to read this book for a long time, and have started it twice before it was assigned. I’m continually amazed at the way God times things; (though I’ve seen it again and again) I needed to read Screwtape this minute in my life. Letter XV was particularly poignant.
In this letter, Screwtape urges Wormwood to keep his patient from the Present. “It is far better to get them to live in the future,” Screwtape says. “He (God) does not want men to give the future their hearts, to place their treasure in it.” My heart has been in the future lately. I’ve struggled recently with the direction of my life. What am I supposed to do? I’m not suited for housewifery (though I have envied those who are–if I could just be content at home, then I wouldn’t be wrestling with the guilt of not loving it and wondering what is wrong with me…) It seems God has made me for a different sort of life, and my crisis of late has been figuring that out.
Recently I have latched on to the idea that going to graduate school in Portland would make all my dreams come true. If we only packed up and moved to the Pacific Northwest, I would be magically happy and fulfilled and my house would be clean and I would know just how to discipline Sadie. I was so stuck on the idea that I began looking into housing and schools and public transportation systems. “You’ll find a place where you’ll finally fit in…” I heard whispered in my ear. “No one really understands you here. You’ll find real community out there–it is just what you ache for. Haven’t you been here long enough??” The temptation to go there in my mind, to go to this mystical Portland where heaven is actually located was overwhelming. I could think of nothing else. Everything about life would be better out there. I didn’t recognize the diabolical tempting to live in the future until I read Screwtape’s advice about it.
“Come back to us,” my husband said. I hadn’t realized I had gone. So now I’m working on living here, in Now. I loved the line “the present is all lit up with Eternal rays.” I will believe this.
The other letter that rang true for me was IV, where Screwtape helps Wormwood get his patient to focus on feelings. “Keep them watching their own minds and trying to produce feelings,” Screwtape says. “Teach them to estimate the value of each prayer by their success in producing the desired feeling.” As an extremely feeling person by personality, I am constantly tempted to judge God’s presence with me by whether I feel Him there with me or not. If my feelings don’t change, say, during a reading of a Psalm, I feel defeated, like I haven’t been transformed in any way by the Word of God.
Although I know my feelings are not a good gage of God’s reality–I start doubting that God really exists because I don’t always feel Him. I probably wouldn’t have so much trouble with this if I hadn’t experienced some joy and elation in God’s presence. So I am vulnerable to thinking that I am entitled to feel this every time. I appreciate the insight that this issue I have with wanting to feel God at all times could be an attack from the devil, instead of a wiring problem with me. Now armed, I will understand that feelings come and go, but God does not. That I get to feel anything with Him is a gift and a bonus–the rest has to be about faith.
The church we went to before we moved here, they’d always be saying things like how we don’t need to gear ourselves up for worship or achieve the right mood for it — that Jesus worships perfectly on our behalf, and so we can come as we really are, distracted, apathetic, desperate, etc.
It’s interesting to consider presentness when dealing with mental illness… I think there are times when it’s okay to just survive, to just cling to the hope of what will be. Or that there are times when there really isn’t the choice to be fully present — it’s too much for the soul to take at the time.