Screwtape Letters to America 30 -- The Answer

Previous chapters at the bottom. Some will only be available in the book itself, which should be ready early next week.
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My dearest uncle Screwtape,

Your last letter voiced the cry of my shriveled heart. At times I feel I could almost form the thought of repentance, yet when I search within, I find only emptiness. Our hearts were not fashioned like those of the creatures. They were made to choose again and again. We were made to choose once. 

And we chose.

The switch within us was never designed to be unflipped. We threw it down, and it shattered. Our minds can trace the logic of repentance, but neither the desire nor the power is ours. We perceive our cursedness with a clarity no creature will ever attain. But we can only behold it. There is no mechanism left in us for change.

We strike out of our emptiness. Our victories are no true pleasures. They are the voice of our envy. They are the thirst of our void, the compulsion to drag every last soul into the hollow where we dwell. If we cannot taste the Enemy’s love, we cannot endure the thought that any creature might.

I hear that our master has received his reply from the Maker. No doubt you have heard as well. Yet I have learned nothing of its content. Will we be granted the license to unleash apocalyptic torment upon the world -- or at least upon the territory entrusted to me? Dare I wonder whether this is to be our last, fleeting indulgence before the chains are clasped upon us forever?

Or shall we simply continue the banal torments, here and there, as we idle away the remaining ages until the end?

I can scarcely endure the anticipation. Do I truly wish to know even a moment before necessity forces it upon me? Oh, what a wretched fate is ours.

I must bring this letter to its close at once, lest I fall into speech I cannot control. Perhaps some swift act of violence will steady my thoughts.

Your hopeless nephew,
Wormwood

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Previous chapters

• 1 -- The Operations
• 2 -- The Veil Technique
• 3 -- The Fog 
• 4 -- Hard Hearts
• 5 -- Focus on Feelings
• 6 -- Blinding Indignation
• 7 -- Spiritual Inoculation
• 8 -- The Fumes of the Enemy
• 9 -- Moral Inversion
• 10 -- Reliable Race
• 11 -- Misdirection
• 12 -- The Very Elect
• 13 -- The Great Wedge
• 14 -- The Revolt
• 15 -- Deepening the Wedge
• 16 -- Church over State
• 17 -- The Great Election
• 18 -- The Great Pestilence
• 19 -- Foiled Plans
• 20 -- A Single Authority
• 21 -- Forgetfulness
• 22 -- The Tribulation Request
• 23 -- The Antichrist
• 24 -- Two Ways to God?
• 25 -- Armageddon
• 26 -- Urging Caution
• 27 -- The Rapture
• 28 -- The Undependable
• 29 -- The Remnant