by C.S. Lewis

I kept stumbling across “The Screwtape Letters” everywhere – online, in bookstores, in discussions about C.S. Lewis. Decided to buy it from a used bookstore. Recently, when two close friends went to see the stage adaptation, one admitted they couldn’t quite wrap their head around the book and hoped the play would make it clearer. But here’s the thing: the book’s brilliance isn’t just in its complexity. It’s in how it flips our perspective, letting us peek behind the curtain at spiritual warfare through a demon’s eyes.

The Screwtape Letters presents a series of fictional letters exchanged between demons who seek to lead a human soul astray from God. The individual referred to as the “patient” faces the challenge of resisting these temptations, with the potential outcomes being either a steadfast adherence to Christianity or succumbing to malevolence.

The work consists of thirty-one letters that serve as a warning to the reader regarding the nature of these demons. The author suggests that one of the most effective strategies against them is through ridicule, while also advising caution against both disbelief in their existence and an excessive fascination with them. Furthermore, it is emphasized that Screwtape, the devil, is inherently deceitful and untrustworthy.

For the sake of brevity I will only introduce a few letters that stood out. You’ll have to buy the book to get them all…

In Letter One Screwtape writes to his young nephew Wormwood advising him on how best to keep his “patient” away from Christianity. He advises Wormwood not to rely on logic, but instead keep the patient distracted and confused. It’s good to absorb the patient in ordinary matters so he doesn’t start thinking about higher truths.

Letter 4: Screwtape writes to Wormwood on the subject of prayer. He offers strategies to render the patient’s prayers useless, while also offering advice on how to make the patient become disillusioned with the practice of prayer altogether.

Letter 8: Screwtape writes to Wormwood on the subject of prayer. He offers strategies to render the patient’s prayers useless, while also offering advice on how to make the patient become disillusioned with the practice of prayer altogether.

Letter 13: The patient has repented for his sins, and Screwtape is furious. Wormwood let the patient indulge in genuine healthy pleasures, which led to his repentance and second conversion. He discusses the differences between the devils’ and the Enemy’s approach toward getting human souls—the devils take souls, while the Enemy gets humans to give theirs to Him freely. Screwtape says the only way to prevent further disaster is to keep the patient from converting his repentance into action.

Letter 18: Screwtape advises Wormwood on how to use sex as a temptation, describes the devils’ influence over societal perceptions of love and marriage, and outlines the “philosophy of Hell”—that the purpose of existence is to conquer other forms of life. He also explains how the Enemy’s designs for procreation and family are meant to aid in the continuation of love, and that it’s the job of the devils to twist human attitudes toward love, sex and family to prevent this.

Letter 27: To get the patient to lose his faith in prayer, Screwtape wants him to think that his prayers that don’t come true are proof that prayer doesn’t work, and his prayers that do come true are simply the result of physical events that would have had the same result anyway. He says the patient can be made to view the Enemy in this way because he sees time as the only reality, and he writes that any ancient books that expose the truth about the Enemy’s perception of existence have been nullified by the “historical point of view.”

We give The Screwtape Letters

The scriptures teach us that The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy..(John 10:10a). And that’s exactly what the writer shows and yet somehow Lewis managed something remarkable here – he created a war book for Christian living by showing us exactly how the enemy works to prevent it. This a good book to have in your spiritual armory.

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