Screwtape Updates 6 -- Blinding Indignation

Previous chapters:

• 1 -- The Operations
• 2 -- The Veil Technique
• 3 -- The Fog 
• 4 -- Hard Hearts
• 5 -- Focus on Feelings

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My dear Wormhole,

At last, you have begun to recognize the depth of my influence upon your work. Though long overdue, it is most gratifying to see my instruction bearing fruit, even in so modest a soil as your own mind. You are quite right that the cultivation of double-mindedness remains among our most reliable stratagems, especially for those whose faith is shallow or easily overgrown. The blurring of an individual’s feelings of devotion is indeed one of the surest ways to deform whatever genuine faith might once have existed.

I confess I laughed heartily to hear that a few of the truly faithful in your region have begun warning against what they call "Christian nationalism." They, of course, rightly refer to your tactic of confusing devotion toward country with devotion toward God. These worried souls have grasped the nature of your work but have little sense of how to address it. They do not understand that once devotion to country has been woven into the fabric of a person's religion, a person can hardly be reached by argument. Indeed, we have tampered with their very affections on the deepest level.

I see that you have been most industrious in empowering a whole parade of politicians and public figures with that deliciously muddled faith. They fancy themselves builders of a theocracy in which the Enemy Himself shall rule America. Oh what delight when I think of the period of the judges in ancient Israel, when the Enemy was supposedly ruling Israel directly. How frequently we were able to manipulate those who told the people what the Enemy thought! You and I have long known that whenever a people claim to rule on behalf of the Enemy, it is usually but an idol enthroned within their own minds.

How I have savored all this talk of a "Christian nation," remembering how well we had emptied the concept of the Maker in those early days. We had persuaded multitudes that the Enemy was a remote artisan who had long since withdrawn from His creation, leaving it to run by impersonal laws. Even among that blessed group, the Puritans, we had crafted a society of rules rather than relationship, fear rather than devotion. It was a splendid demonstration of how easily holiness can be turned to tyranny.

We were, I confess, somewhat anxious in those days that the system they were constructing contained too much potential for goodness. But virtue committed to parchment is easily corrupted in practice. A few centuries of patient work have proved that written ideals pose little danger once properly reinterpreted. And I see with the keenest pleasure that you are now steering the nation toward a stage in which it cares neither for the paper nor for the faint goodness that once so vexingly began to grow upon it.

I observed with great interest the disturbance you managed through the recent assassination of one of those so-called Christian nationalists. How admirably you converted chaos into conviction! The churches fairly burned with blind indignation. A complicated man was canonized overnight, while any who dared to raise a question were denounced as heretics. I assume your intent was to provoke a pleasant surge of persecution or, with any luck, some acts of "righteous" violence. 

Alas, the Enemy appears to have cooled the fever for the moment. Yet this stratagem has often served us well, inflaming both populace and church alike with the most exquisite indignation. Under its influence, men will commit horrors while congratulating themselves on their virtue. How many “righteous” lynchings once stained the South before those lamentable days of the so-called civil rights movement! Happily, your present rulers seem intent on unraveling whatever good those years produced.

While your progress is commendable, your results would no doubt multiply if you were to seek my counsel more frequently. I remain, as ever, eager to impart further instruction, should you at last learn to ask for it.

Your affectionate Uncle,
Screwtape