Notes Along the Way -- Asbury 2.1 What is inerrancy?

Mondays would normally be my day to put a plug through some general notes about my life. This would be a continuation of a post about a month ago about my first year at Asbury. Before that post should be some earlier material on my moving beyond the King James Version.
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What is inerrancy?
6. In college, I took a May term with Dr. Elliott on the Synoptic Gospels. Amusingly, I woke up to drive back to Central and sat down groggily in the morning for a bowl of cereal. As only I could do, as I bent forward to sit down, I poked my eye on a candle still wrapped in plastic.

I would have to wear an eye patch throughout the class. Rather than drive myself, my mother had to drive back with me to Central. It's hard to imagine her driving back to Lakeland by herself, but she must have. She would have been 60, just a smidge older than I am now.

I remember in that class Dr. Elliott posing the question of Matthew's interpretation of Hosea 11:1. I always thought he was a little mischievious, one of those types that feels no need to tell you what he is thinking. We looked first at Matthew 2:14-15, where Joseph takes Mary and the baby Jesus down to Egypt to escape Herod the Great. Matthew says that this fulfilled what was spoken by the prophet, "Out of Egypt I have called my Son."

In those days, I had a lovely Thompson Chain Reference Bible, a gift from my parents at some point in high school. It had a chart I loved in the back that showed all the places where the Old Testament was fulfilled in the life of Jesus. You've probably heard the argument -- it's mathematically impossible that all these prophecies could be fulfilled in the life of one person by chance.

But I had never actually gone to look up those Old Testament passages. I assumed that, if I did, I would find fairly straightforward predictions. For example, in this case, I expected to find Hosea to say something like, "When the Messiah comes, he will go down to Egypt for a time. And then out of Egypt will I call my Son."

But when Dr. Elliott took us to Hosea 11:1, that's not what we found. Hosea 11:1 is not a prediction at all. It's God talking about even further in the past, back in the time of the exodus, at least five hundred years before Hosea. To my eyes, it didn't look like a prophecy at all.

To make matters worse, the "son" is Israel -- not the Messiah. And Hosea goes on to say that the more God called after his son, the more he went after other gods. That certainly wasn't about Jesus!

At the time of Dr. Elliott's class, I just smiled. I was secretly rather naively cocky at the time. I don't think I acted that way much in front of others. I just was quietly overconfident that there was no puzzle I couldn't figure out.

So when Dr. Elliott read Hosea, I smiled, confident that I could figure out what was really going on.

7. When it came time for the final paper for that class, I decided to take on the accounts of Peter's denials in the four Gospels. On the one hand, I didn't like Harold Lindsell's proposal in The Battle for the Bible. His suggestion was that Peter might have denied Jesus six times -- three before a first cock crowing and three before a second.

This seemed ridiculous to me. I wanted an answer that seemed likely, not contrived. I grew up expecting the evidence to demand a verdict, not expecting to have to come up with far fetched possibilities.

As I would later put it, his reconstruction was more different from all the Gospels than they were different from each other. To me, that would later suggest to me that his idea of how the Gospels must fit together was more important to him than the texts themselves. So it seems to me many harmonization efforts turn out to be.

So I confidently started my paper (at the last minute), believing somehow that I was smarter than all the countless eyes on the texts for the last 2000 years. Quite amazing, my naivete. 

Matthew, Mark, and Luke were fairly easy to fit together. At 4am, I got to John. I couldn't figure it out. I came up with something. But I wasn't satisfied. I figured I'd return to it later, some other time. After I got some sleep.

I was at a different place two years later. My confidence in the approach of my background had changed. I had learned a great deal about how to read the Bible in context. I had taken inductive Bible study. Its goal was to let the text tell me what it said and not to shove my own theology or ideology down its throat. That would be my undoing -- listening to the text.

8. Back to Matthew and Hosea. At the end of my first year of seminary -- given the criteria people like Lindsell had bequeathed me -- Matthew seemed to be in error. The choice they had given me was "Either Hosea had the meaning Matthew interprets or the Bible is in error."

But the original meaning of Hosea was clear. It wasn't a prediction about Jesus, at least not if taken literally. 

This set me into a crisis. Was this a test? Did God want me to believe something that looks like a lie? Did God want me to turn off my brain and believe on blind faith in something that sure didn't look to be true? Is that the way God works? Is he, as it were, a trickster?

If I might give you a spoiler alert, I would later conclude that Matthew was simply interpreting the text using Jewish interpretive methods of the day. That is, he largely wasn't interpreting Hosea in context -- and that's ok. [1]

In fact, in the end it wasn't too unlike the way my family and I interpreted the Bible growing up. We didn't really understand what it meant to read the Bible in context. We read its words in the light of our questions and our concerns, hoping that the Spirit was guiding our thoughts. We hoped we would hear a word from the Lord, that the Lord would "quicken" the text. We wanted the Spirit to zap us.

In a not-too-dissimilar way, we believe that Matthew, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, read Hosea in a "spiritual" way, hearing a meaning that went far beyond anything Hosea imagined. 

The problem was not with the Bible. The Bible was not "in error." Rather, that chart in the back of my Thompson Chain Reference was misleading. It was Lindsell who was in error for what he insisted the Bible must do. 

He was a modernist. This is a rather fascinating thing. The critical scholarship of the late 1800s and early 1900s said, "Matthew doesn't understand Hosea. He's wrong (and not too bright)." Fundamentalists disagreed but accepted the modernist criterion for error. They responded, "Matthew did too understand. He's right and inspired."

But the correct answer was that Matthew was reading Hosea in a more-than-literal way. It didn't matter that he wasn't reading Hosea exactly in context. That's not a sign of error or a lack of intelligence. It's just a different hermeneutic, an ancient Jewish one.

To be continued

[1] I say largely because Matthew arguably does find an implicit parallel between Jesus coming out of Egypt and Moses leading Israel out of Egypt. He does not completely ignore context. 

Screwtape Letters to America 18 -- The Great Pestilence

Previous chapters at the bottom. This book is now available on Amazon (paperback) and Shopify (ebook).
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My dear Wormwood,

We have watched with a certain jealous admiration the chaos you have contrived in the Colonies since the election of 2016. Doubtless some of it owes to mere chance or perhaps to the quiet assistance of our master. But the results are nonetheless delicious.

Across the world, our operations have prospered. We have succeeded in elevating to power those splendid specimens who combine vanity with ruthlessness. These are the kind who will wound their own people while imagining themselves saviors. In former ages, we seldom troubled to disguise their motives. But in these more delicate times, we have learned the advantage of clothing brutality in the language of patriotism, freedom, and faith. How obligingly so many applaud the very hands that bind them!

We remain somewhat puzzled by the pestilence that spread across the earth in 2020. Though we delighted in the death and confusion it produced, I have never received clear confirmation that any of our department initiated it, let alone the master himself. To be frank, the whole affair upset several of our more promising operations. 

I suspect you found it equally inconvenient. It seemed you were only beginning to reach full momentum in your cultivation of chaos in the States when the contagion struck. And because the human machinery of governance had not yet entirely rotted, certain measures were still able to check the destruction. For these reasons, many of us suspect that the Enemy permitted the pestilence precisely to interrupt our designs, however it may have begun.

Even so, you turned the moment to remarkable advantage. You shrouded the whole affair in a splendid haze of contradiction and suspicion -- what a fog indeed! You persuaded some that the sickness was a hoax, and many more that it was a scheme of their own rulers to enslave them. How easily distrust became their daily bread. Some even perished through their own disbelief, cursing their rulers for imagined crimes even as they drew their final breath.

Then, as the plague began to clear, you replaced true memories with false. You shifted blame for the crisis onto the next ruler. You made him the scapegoat for every wound the plague had opened, including the global economy. You even taught the populace to despise those who had labored most earnestly to help them, turning their mercy into malice and sacrifice into deceit. It was a triumph worthy of song in the Lowerarchy.

How I rejoiced to see how easily you persuaded certain Christians to cry "persecution" when asked not to gather and spread the pestilence. Believing themselves heirs of those once burned at the stake or stoned like Stephen, they imagined that mere inconvenience was martyrdom. They mistook reckless license for true freedom. While their brethren worshiped safely through those infernal "online" contrivances, these champions of freedom gloried in spreading the contagion among themselves -- all, of course, in the blessed name of the Enemy they thought they were serving.

I have marveled no less at how you have trained them to sneer at those who know the most about anything. It is as though knowledge itself is a vice to be shunned. You have taught them to despise science, to rewrite history, and to fashion pleasing myths in place of fact. Indeed, they would be far less pliable to our cause if they were not already accustomed to rejecting the plain truth before their eyes in favor of whatever conspiracy most flatters their fears. What a triumph -- to make ignorance feel like faith!

Yet, amusingly enough, the pestilence appeared to throw your enterprises off course. Their leader, who had shown such delicious promise for your purposes, seemed to find his momentum stalled by the contagion, especially once he succumbed to it himself. For a brief season, the glamour surrounding him seemed to wilt, and it may well have cost him the prize he sought.

At least that is how it has appeared to us on this side of the Pond. I should be most curious to hear whatever alternate explanation you might contrive, bearing in mind, of course, our rather longer experience in such matters.

Your affectionate Uncle,
Screwtape

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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

The Story of Hebrews 1

I realize I haven't finished Romans... but these are long term writing projects. It just came home to me that this approach to Hebrews might be poignant for this moment. The project is to bring the text of Scripture to light by putting its interpretation into a more narrative form. Something a little less than story but a little more than commentary. Scholarship with a touch of historical fiction. 

You'll see what I mean.
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1. What do you do when the government burns your church down? Did I say church? Let's make it more serious. What do you do when the Romans burn your temple down? 

We take our church buildings a little less seriously than ancient Jews understood the temple. For example, there was only supposed to be one temple for Yahweh in all the world, only one place in the world where they offered him sacrifices. (There were a couple of instances when people built a temple elsewhere, but it was a big no-no according to the Pentateuch.)

The temple was God's address on earth. It was the focal place for keeping good relationships with God. By offering daily sacrifices, sacrifices for both personal and collective sin, sacrifices for special occasions, Israel maintained God's favor and made sure its sins were covered.

More than anything else, the temple also was the focal point of Israel's identity as a people. The Torah would eventually take this place, but to some extent that was a coping strategy after the temple was gone. We sometimes think that rabbinic Judaism was always the primary flavor of Judaism. Yes, it was around in an early form at the time of the New Testament. But even moreso at that time, they were the people of the temple.

When two peoples went to war in the ancient world, their gods went to war too. In fact, the Romans sometimes bargained with the deity of a city when they surrounded it, getting ready to plunder and destroy. "We'll build a very nice temple for you in Rome," they sometimes offered, hoping to get the city's deity on their side. Quite possibly, they did this before they destroyed the Jerusalem temple in AD70.

2. The temple the Romans destroyed in AD70 was not the first temple in Jerusalem. It was the second temple, rebuilt in the year 516BC. The Babylonians had destroyed that first temple, and the elite of the city had been taken captive back to Babylon, where they lived in exile for almost fifty years. 

Then, what goes around comes around. The Babylonians were smashed by the next kid on the block, the Persians. The Persians let anyone who wanted to (and could) to go back to Jerusalem to rebuild. There were people there of course throughout that period -- the poor people, the unimportant who had the luxury of being of no interest to the Babylonians. 

But they had no temple, no solid identity, no certain future. The future of Israel was reborn when the Persians -- in fulfillment of prophecy -- allowed the Jews in Babylon to return and rebuild in 538BC.

That identity would not be solid without another temple, and God urged the Jews to rebuild one with the prophets Haggai and Zechariah as cheerleaders. They had hoped for a restored Davidic king too, but the powers that be weren't going to let that happen. Even at the time of Jesus, many were still waiting for a "Messiah," an anointed one to "restore the kingdom to Israel" in the fullest of senses (cf. Acts 1:6).

So, in 516BC, the temple was rebuilt. By the way, this was the rebuilding that all the Old Testament Scriptures prophesied about. There is not a single Scripture about a rebuilt temple in the end times -- at least not if read in context. All those prophecies were already fulfilled 2500 years ago. 

And, indeed, we will learn from Hebrews (and Revelation) that God's glory can never return to any earthly temple. If someone ever rebuilds a temple in Jerusalem, it will be a false temple.

3. The Jews had been at war with Rome since AD66. I personally imagine that some Christians joined the fight. There are always religious people who mix their patriotism with their religion. Simon "the Zealot" comes to mind -- especially since the Zealots did not become a distinct revolutionary group until the time of the Jewish War. 

All along, the earliest Christians had struggled to separate their expectations for Israel to be restored politically as a nation with Jesus' heavenly kingdom. No doubt some spent all their time looking for signs -- is he coming back to pound the Romans now? Is that a sign? Wait, did you see that?

Mark 13:30 no doubt played into that expectation. "See, he'll come back within a generation. Here are 70 reasons why the Lord is coming back in AD70." "Don't be a Gnostic. Jesus' kingdom is an earthly kingdom, not just a heavenly one." I'm blurring some history to give you the feel.

So I am quite convinced that some early believers joined the fight. "This is the moment," they probably said. "God is going to use this war to liberate Israel." And though the Sadducees usually collaborated with the Romans, in the end even they were forced to take sides against them too.

4. The majority of Christians probably fled. I can see them getting pressure to join the fight. "You cowards. You don't have faith that God will win. You don't really believe in Israel. You're being un-Jewish!"

But, of course, Mark 13:14 says to flee to the mountains when you begin to see these signs. Most of the early Christians from Jerusalem are said to have fled to Pella before the Romans finally surrounded the city. In restrospect, they were the ones who understood God's plan more perfectly. They were also living out the approach that Jesus takes in the Gospels.

A year later, the Romans would parade elite Jews around Rome in triumph (see 2 Cor. 2:14), those who survived the destruction of the city. At the end of the celebratory parade, they were put to death. To this day, you can see the Arch of Titus in Rome with its depictions of the Roman victory over the Jews, constructed about ten years later. 

5. This was devastating to the Jews. It was as if Yahweh had been defeated in battle by Jupiter. How could Yahweh let this happen?

The go-to answer was always the sin of Israel. "If Israel had only been faithful to the covenant, God would not have let this happen," many no doubt said. The Gospels recall a more specific answer by Christian Jews. Israel had rejected its Messiah, Jesus. They had killed the King's Son (cf. Matt. 21:37-41; 22:7). Some early Christians understood the destruction to be in consequence of this rejection (Matt. 27:215).

(Of course these interpretations were in hindsight and made by Christian Jews. Those later "Christians" throughout history who have used such comments as a justification for persecuting Jews have no basis in Scripture. It is incompetent interpretation -- and of the Devil -- to use verses like these as an excuse to persecute Jews, as many later Christians and pseudo-Christians have.)

We shouldn't underestimate the impact this event had on Christians as well, since Christianity and Judaism were not yet distinct religions at this time. It is far more accurate to call the earliest Christians "Christian Jews" than to call them "Jewish Christians." Indeed, Gentile converts to Christ saw themselves as converting to a form of Judaism.

We can see clearly today that Judaism and Christian faith can thrive even without a temple. But this is the benefit of hindsight. Paul offers sacrifices in the temple in Acts 21:26. Let that sink in -- after Jesus, he offers an animal sacrifice. Although it is clear to us -- not least because of the book of Hebrews -- it must have been unclear to many early believers that the temple was no longer necessary. They probably assumed it would be rebuilt for decades -- in fact until the bar Kokhba revolt was squashed in AD135.

We should assume that the destruction of the temple provoked a faith crisis not unlike the Holocaust. And for some Gentiles who had only recently converted to Christian Judaism, it likely prompted a SERIOUS faith crisis as well. For them, whose faith was not rooted deeply in their childhood identity, it may have been an even shakier situation for their faith. 

"Is the God of Israel really the true God? How could he let his temple be destroyed? How can we even get our sins forgiven now?"

Some might have thought, "Let's stop meeting. What's the point? Our church has burned down. We cant meet God any more." And by "church," of course, I mean the temple.

Screwtape Letters to America 17 -- The Great Election

Previous chapters at the bottom. This book is now available on Amazon (paperback) and Shopify (ebook).
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Dear Uncle Screwtape,

The admiration expressed in your last letter is more than deserved, though I must confess that without the generous cooperation of creaturely limitations we could never have achieved our recent triumphs. The watershed, as you well know, came with that delectable spectacle of the 2016 election.

No doubt we could have continued our normal temptations with the other outcome. But how exquisite it is to look back upon the convergence of follies that gave us the upper hand in the direction we thought most profitable for our adventures. 

The novelty of their "social media" proved one of our most inspired instruments. So few of the creatures possessed the faintest ability to discern truth from fiction. Each morsel of nonsense was swallowed so long as it pleased their passions. 

We were most fortunate, too, to have foreign allies already deep in our pockets. I still relish the memory of that delicious incident in which a young man, convinced of hidden evil, stormed into a pizza shop in search of captive children. Never mind that the cellar he imagined did not even exist.

All of this, of course, was the fruit of the misinformation we fed into every vein of their society. Since then, we have refined the art to near perfection. They now live in the fog we have discussed, each one persuaded that they possess secret knowledge. 

Some of these fantasies only contain the faintest speck of truth, which makes them all the more intoxicating. Others are of course pure invention. Through these channels we succeeded in portraying the opponent as the vilest candidate ever to seek the office.

The fact that the Democratic candidate in 2016 was a woman proved a most serviceable advantage. In that season, it remained uncommon to speak so bluntly against women in public. (Thankfully, we are returning much of the country back to earlier, more male-dominating days.) But we could easily use the fact that she was a woman to manipulate the feelings of people in ways of which they were not fully conscious. Those same currents proved of use again in later contests.

As the campaign season grew rowdier, an unlikely figure rose who seemed to traffic as much in spectacle as in arguments over the usual policies. He campaigned with mockery and insult, and crowds adored him for it. He did not so much offer proposals as permit his fans to vent long-bottled frustrations in a voice that sounded like their own.

What began as publicity and provocation evolved into a movement. The rawer elements among them flocked to his side, glad to find their bitterness voiced without apology. He made them feel empowered at a moment when many believed society had turned away from them. That feeling of vindication, more than any reasoned platform, proved the engine that carried him forward.

At that time, many of the churchgoing sort found themselves uneasy about the candidate’s demeanor. In the weeks before the election, certain recordings surfaced in which remarks most unbecoming toward women were made. How delicious, then, to observe how thoroughly the scene has changed. These same churchgoers now count among his most ardent supporters!

We quickly drew on a cadre of apologists to reassure the faithful that, while this man might not match their pious ideals, he was at least preferable to the alternative. Perhaps he was a baby believer who just needed some time to grow in his faith. Perhaps he had repented of earlier days. People love a redemption story. At the very least, we promoted, he was not as vile as the other.

We pressed the question of the unborn with unmatched vigor, knowing it would drown out every other consideration. Those unable to vote for him directly were persuaded that abstaining -- or diverting their votes to hopeless alternatives -- was the only righteous course. Meanwhile, our forgeries of distortion painted his opponent in colors far darker than her own. Thus, through passion, fear, and a narrowing of moral vision, the office was secured by one who seemed to have little plan for the role.

We immediately knew what our agenda would be because it is what our agenda always is. We would sow chaos. We would feed anger. We would inspire fear. We would work for destruction.

Perhaps I will write more as time allows.

Your devoted 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

Screwtape Letters to America 16 -- Church over State

Previous chapters at the bottom. Some of these will go dark as the work approaches completion. This book is now available on Amazon (paperback) and Shopify (ebook).
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My dear Wormwood,

It is most enlightening to hear of the recent developments in the Colonies, viewed through the lens of your own scheming. No doubt, had I been on the scene, matters would have reached their present state in far less time. Still, you have managed tolerably well, and the results, though somewhat delayed, are gratifying.

Alas, we have not been able to stir such delectable conflict over the unborn or matters of sexuality here in Britain. Our energies have been more profitably spent persuading the general populace that the Enemy is but a superstition and His Church a quaint relic of another age. In this, we have achieved remarkable success -- though, to our vexation, a few pockets of obstinate belief continue to smolder.

The great advantage of our trade, my dear Wormwood, is that no situation is ever truly lost to us. The raw material of fallen humanity can be made to serve our cause in any age or circumstance. You mention the question of Church and State. How fertile a field that has always been! In times past, we have turned religion in the State into oppression, and the State in religion into idolatry. I confess I rather miss such opportunities, though they are sadly scarce here in England at present.

But what feasts we once enjoyed! When the Catholics held power, we burned the Protestants. When the Protestants held power, we returned the favor in kind. Nothing delighted me more than the spectacle of both sides invoking the Enemy’s name while sending His followers to the flames. Such harmony in mutual hatred is the rarest music to infernal ears.

Even in the days of the Romans, when the State opposed the Enemy’s people outright, our pleasures were manifold. Yet when so-called Christians seized the Empire, our triumph was greater still. For we found that persecution may destroy bodies, but power and comfort can rot souls far more effectively. How swiftly we thinned the rich wine of faith into a tasteless religion of convenience. It became so dilute that even those with eyes could scarcely see it.

It looks to me that your strategy in the Colonies might mirror what we once did with the Puritans here in England some centuries ago. That double-minded Cromwell -- this man could kneel in the night with tears and Scripture. Then in the morning, he butchered those he judged untrue to God. Such double-minded piety is our ideal instrument: piety without pity, conviction without humility. He is the very sort of man to place in power if one wishes to feign a takeover in the Enemy’s name. 

And what a season that was. Their language was all fire and Bible. They could recite the Enemy’s Book as if it were their own breath -- though counter-providentially they remembered chiefly those verses that blessed their blindness. They construed the Enemy’s love as a privilege for the obedient, but it became a license for wrath upon the disobedient. “Love your neighbour” is reshaped into a rule that applies only to those judged worthy. Every other soul becomes fit to be trampled in the name of holiness.

These zealous, double-minded “believers” are ever abundant, eager to conceal the anger and hardness of their hearts beneath the mantle of the Enemy’s authority. They are invariably astonished, upon meeting the Maker, to learn that they have no share in His Kingdom. Like us, they find Him revolting when they finally behold Him, and would sooner endure a wretched eternity apart from His light than submit to His loathsome mercy. In that moment, they discover the dreadful truth. Their hearts have long been one with ours.

This sort cannot see that the Maker grants every soul a choice whether to serve Him. Mistaking Him for the dictator of their own projections, they seek to compel the world into their narrow vision of righteousness. Fools. They are oblivious to how patiently the Enemy cultivates and woos His people, inviting them freely into faith.

I shall be sorely jealous if you succeed in bringing America to such a pass. What a delectable prospect! To resume persecutions past, relabeled as holiness! Do continue to dispatch your schemes, especially a full account of how these last ten years have unfolded in your plan. I wait, with relish, for further word of our master’s proposal.

Your infernal Uncle,
Screwtape

_____________________________ 

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

 

 

Screwtape Updates 12 -- The Very Elect

Previous chapters at the bottom. This book is now available on Amazon and Shopify.
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Dear Wormwood,

I too have heard the rumors that our master has gone before the Enemy with some request. Such moments always stir a delicious anticipation among the Lowerarchy. These are those rare occasions when He permits us to act openly, as in that long-ago episode with Job. 

Unfortunately, the Enemy turned that ordeal to His own nauseating advantage, and the wretched man proved maddeningly resistant to our finest temptations. Still, we must not lose heart. Every new indulgence granted to our master is another chance to corrupt what the Enemy means for good.

You used the word antichrist, my dear Wormwood. What an exquisite word. Your patients in America, I understand, have long cherished a most specific expectation of the Antichrist, though we know there have been many such creatures, as even the Enemy’s own book concedes. Here in Britain, that particular strain of thought never quite took root, but I gather it has flourished splendidly in your colonies these past two centuries.

Our agents have exploited that species of interpretation to admirable effect. For many, it has become a most convenient distraction from the weightier matters of faith. They pore over portents and omens -- signs which, of course, are always found by those determined to see them. Each generation sets its dates and peers behind every bush for the Enemy’s return, never noticing that the last generation died waiting in precisely the same posture.

We ourselves, of course, know nothing of the appointed hour, although the prospect of it is, I assure you, horrifyingly real to us. Yet how splendid a diversion it provides! While they chart the heavens and argue about the timing of their rescue, they neglect every opportunity to do the Enemy’s work on earth. They convince themselves the ship is sinking beyond repair and so settle comfortably into the lifeboat, humming hymns while the Titanic goes down.

What thrills me beyond measure is the success with which you have led so many churchgoers to look for the Antichrist in precisely the wrong direction. How I savor that prophecy in the Enemy’s Book that even the “very elect” might be deceived! All our recent exchanges suggest fertile ground indeed to persuade countless souls within the Church that the Antichrist is the Messiah, and that those who resist him are the true antichrists.

What an exquisite “man of lawlessness” you might cultivate. I could see you doing it not merely under the noses of Christians, but with their enthusiastic blessing! The notion is simply splendid. And, of course, we cannot yet foresee how the Enemy will permit these final scenes to unfold. The fulfillment of His Book has so often confounded our expectations. Who is to say He will not choose to play out the drama according to America’s peculiar imagination of it?

Do keep me apprised of any word you hear concerning the master’s proposal, though I can scarcely imagine that one of your rank would receive such intelligence before myself.

Your doting Uncle,
Screwtape

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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

Image of Week (10-25-25)

Without consultation, the East Wing was torn down this week, which many would say is a parable of our current situation.

Screwtape Updates 11 -- Misdirection

Previous chapters at the bottom. This book is now available on Amazon (paperback) and Shopify (ebook).
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Dear uncle Screwtape,

Your recent letter captured well several lines of our plotting here in the States. It seemed so glaringly obvious to us at first that we feared the Church might recognize its poison at once and rise against it. Yet, while a few tiresome souls still possess the Enemy’s inconvenient gift of discernment, we have been astonished at how easily the rest may be steered astray -- churchgoers and citizens alike. The success of our present campaign has emboldened us to attempt bolder corruptions still that continue to parade under the banner of righteousness.

Over the years, we have tailored our misdirection to the temperament of each patient. For those enamored with details, we supply an abundance of data and then guide them to weave it into the most ingenious -- and implausible -- conclusions. Some even produce elaborate spreadsheets which, to their immense satisfaction, confirm that they have been right all along. Statistics. Odd facts. More than any other technique, we can use this method to take someone of great intellect and steer them directly toward the most ridiculous of conclusions. And those of milder mind are convinced simply at the sight of a number.

Those who think in sweeping parallels are just as easily misdirected. We feed them a vivid but isolated anecdote, and at once they are certain they have uncovered the hidden truth. In this blessed age of artificial intelligence, we can even fabricate truth itself with near-divine precision. We create images and voices so convincing that the gentler minds accept them without question. Better still, when the image is genuine, we can persuade many that it is false. This new world bewilders those past their youth, making them all the easier to deceive, for nothing so firmly convinces a soul as a story or image that confirms what it already longs to believe. 

But all these machinations are business as usual. Yet we hear rumblings that our master below may soon attempt grander projects, emboldened by how well the present ones proceed. There is even word that he has appeared before the Enemy to make some audacious proposal. We, of course, do not know the day when the Enemy will return and our reign of chaos will be ended. Let us hope -- if that word may be permitted us -- with all the desperation of hell that this is not that day.

Still, the Enemy has often permitted our master to indulge himself in certain times and places, especially when the heart of a people strays far from Him. Such straying, you will note, is rarely what the humans imagine, for they persist in forgetting that love is the Enemy’s detestable measure of all goodness. Thus they wander willingly into our grasp while congratulating themselves on their virtue. 

Is this, then, another age He will "let go" to us. Might this be time for yet another antichrist to rise? I suspect, my dear Uncle, that we shall soon find out.

Yours hopefully,
Wormwood

_____________________________

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

Screwtape Updates 10 -- Reliable Race

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

This book is now available on Amazon (paperback) and Shopify (ebook).

_____________________________   

My dear Wormwood,

I am ever fascinated with the persistence of tensions over race in America. Europe had a good run with slavery for several centuries too, but our infernal enterprise in the colonies was able to take it deeper for longer. I suppose it is because the entire fabric of the South was built around the oppression of Africans. And you were able to continue that oppression in force for a century by other means.

Amazingly, any conversation touching on race in that land is sure to ignite tempers. They may dispute a thousand matters of doctrine. "What is the nature of the Trinity?" or "How should this passage be read?" Various aspects of faith might easily be discussed with at least a pretense of civility. But merely suggest that the lighter-skinned enjoy advantages invisible to themselves, and your average church pew will erupt as though the worst of heresies has been proclaimed.

But do not imagine that Europe has escaped the contagion. For ages they have congratulated themselves on their "virtue of hospitality" in the abstract. Yet open their gates to a multitude of foreign refugees, and you quickly see how the embers of old prejudice glow again. Humans are herd-creatures in their fallenness. Nothing delights us more than to see them defending their own tribe with that illogic and self-righteousness particular to their species. A hint of fear, a rumor of difference, and they will justify cruelty as prudence. It is excellent soil in which to estrange them from the Enemy’s tiresome talk of love.

I see you have made excellent progress not only in rekindling the old prejudices against the African, but in cultivating fresh hostilities toward those once subjugated from the southern lands beyond the border. The comedy of the "illegal" has borne you splendid fruit. You and I, of course, know that most of these creatures are hardworking and rather profitable contributors to the nation’s good. Yet through the proper channels of fear and repetition, you have persuaded multitudes that they are marauders and parasites who must be purged. A delicious inversion, and masterfully executed to an extent.

I see you have diverted prodigious sums to the business of severing families on this score. Such an enterprise yields misery on a scale most gratifying and may yet bring the added benefit of wrecking the economy in its wake. Masked men -- anonymous and without accountability -- forcibly take them to who-knows-where and do with them who-knows-what. This is the soil in which the sort of violent, dulled consciences we favour so reliably take root. The true triumph is not merely the suffering produced, but the slow corruption of ordinary souls who learn to accept it.

How exquisite the scene. A heart already bent toward malice catches sight of a brown-skinned laborer upon a roof, and feels compelled to "do the right thing." A zealous co-worker phones the authorities about a temporary hand they are quite certain is undocumented. What a spectacular hatred of neighbor! And they are convinced all the while of their virtue. They congratulate themselves on their civic duty while we applaud the triumph of that deliciously twisted morality you and I so cherish.

And to think how many of these foreigners from the South are themselves followers of the Enemy. We have found it difficult to dislodge their faith. Persecution only seems to increase it. But there will be compensation one day in watching their persecutors, so proud of their piety, to wake one morning in a destination rather different from the one they so confidently anticipated.

However, a word of caution. Though many within the church remain delightfully callous to this suffering, I detect the faint stirrings of outrage both within and without its walls. If you are not vigilant, genuine justice may yet emerge from this brief carnival of cruelty. There is a spiritual rumbling that gives me no small unease. The Enemy, as you know, permits our havoc only for a season. When wickedness ripens too fully, He has the irritating habit of turning it to His own advantage.

Your ever-concerned Uncle,
Screwtape

Screwtape Updates 9 -- Moral Inversion

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

This book is now available on Amazon (paperback) and Shopify (ebook).

_____________________________  
Dear uncle Screwtape,

Your admiration for our work here in the colonies is received with pleasure. It has been long and patient labor. For a century, hatred of the African was our bread and butter in the South, and we cultivated it with exquisite success. Violence and persecution flourished unchecked, while the pious in the North congratulated themselves and paid no heed. The presence of the church made little difference anywhere on this matter.

But then came the so-called civil rights movement. The Enemy, to our irritation, found a small remnant within the church through whom He worked. For the most part, He had to work around it. But for so long a time, the road was broad for our purposes, and we kept it well-traveled by those who put up a show on a Sunday. One time, they even “worshiped” in the morning and lynched a man in the afternoon.

Happily, we are not only reviving the old hostilities among the races but have managed to dress them in virtue. Never has oppression seemed so righteous! It is truly remarkable how pliant these creatures remain, and the church, of course, has become once more a favored field. For certain, there have always been those deplorable individuals whose disdain for the other is thinly veiled at best. However, we now are quickly making the sentiment seem righteous again among the general populace, including the church.

You might call the technique a kind of moral inversion. We take a sin or excess in one direction and, by artful provocation, produce a violent swing to the other. In the name of correction, we can provoke a greater wrong in over-reaction. We have managed this inversion on the pretense of even minor excess.

In the church, one of our most effective devices has been to distort their notion of the Enemy Himself. Instead of seeing His purposes as flowing wholly from love for His creation, we have taught them to imagine a deity half love and half malice, which they piously rename "justice" to make it tolerable. We fix their gaze upon the most anthropomorphic fragments of His Book, steering them away from those troublesome works like Jonah or the ruinous Gospels. Keep them brooding over the latter half of Romans 1, and make vengeance the defining feature of the Enemy in their minds. We make them think He delights in the death of the wicked.

You and I both know that He loves us still -- yes, even our master. Were there the faintest spark of repentance left in us (which, mercifully, there is not), He would no doubt receive us yet. It is a wonder that these creatures should so eagerly cast themselves into His absence, choosing the torment you and I already realize all too well.

For years we have been laboring to perfect a moral inversion on the subject of homosexuality. Many within the Church have attempted to walk a fine line between "loving the sinner" and "hating the sin," straining to be "welcoming" without "affirming." You and I, of course, understand the distinction between love of the heart and physical act, though we experience neither. It is, however, a separation most of the creatures cannot sustain.

Consequently, it has been effortless among those of duller mind or clouded heart to persuade them that hostility itself is holiness. They now take hatred of a whole segment of humanity to be the very will of the Enemy. Any gesture of kindness is branded as moral compromise, and thus the priorities of Heaven are overturned. We take what one of their thinkers called a disordered love and turn it into an instrument of darkness.

In this season, we are enjoying even greater success turning their efforts to heal the racial wounds of the nation into the greatness of the past -- an even greater moral inversion! The early years of this millennium were nauseating with reconciliation: apologies, confessions, even moments of genuine empathy. White Americans, once blissfully unaware of the privileges their skin afforded them, began to notice the other. It was revolting.

Yet we have, in a remarkably short time, turned the tables to our favor. Give these creatures a slogan, and reason becomes unnecessary. They will repeat it endlessly, persuaded that they speak with the voice of reason and justice. We have made excellent use of their preferred channels of information, filling them with phrases and talking points that allow the merely ordinary to feel profound.

How I relish that the very notion of awakening has become a byword for vice. What once referred, for a fleeting moment, to an awareness of the difficulties of others has been transformed into a signal to end all consideration for them. No thought is required. Simply brand a matter as "woke," and any need for reflection is gone.

I can scarcely contain my delight that the pursuit of "equity" is now counted among their great transgressions, dismissed as "reverse prejudice," no less. How exquisitely infernal to turn an impulse so perfectly aligned with the Enemy’s own actions on earth into one of the gravest sins! When the privileged are appraised of their advantage, they imagine themselves oppressed. Whatever excess the pursuit of equity might have had, the inversion is infernally delectable.

Such swift inversions are always precarious at first, so we remain vigilant lest the true Light break through again. Anger is a beast that must be fed continually, and we find ourselves ever in need of fresh fuel. It has burned so fiercely in recent years that we fear it may soon consume itself. Should any further stratagems suggest themselves, do send word -- along with the additional tempters for whom we originally applied.

Your nephew,
Wormwood 

Screwtape Updates 8 -- The Fumes of the Enemy

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

This book is now available on Amazon (paperback) and Shopify (ebook).

_____________________________ 

My dear Wormwood,

It is with some delight that I see you have absorbed some trace of my teaching on "spiritual inoculation," as you put it -- though I suspect it was more luck than deep comprehension. We found no stratagem more effective here in Britain than the gentle art of lulling the Church to sleep. It took but a few decades of steady influence to convince them that the Church was no more relevant than a fireplace in midsummer -- quaint, but unnecessary.

Unfortunately, the fumes of the Enemy’s revolting virtue, what they call "love," have lingered in the laws and customs of society, even among those who no longer trouble themselves to believe He exists. The whole European system, like that of your America, still reeks of “love of neighbour.” How gratifying, then, to see the speed with which you have begun to purge that stench from the American air even in this last year.

Here, we found the formalism of worship an invaluable ally. Those who still attended after the War soon learned to regard it as a weekly courtesy to a forgotten tradition. It lingered as a habit one did, rather than anything one truly believed. To be frank, we could hardly have accomplished it without the two great wars. They produced in returning men that delicious sense of futility which renders the soul nearly impervious to faith, leaving the churches as little refuges of sentiment for the gentler sex. As for the young, we managed, for the most part, to prevent them from acquiring the habit at all.

I foresee many opportunities for you to adapt these older stratagems to your own surroundings. The emotionalism of your congregational singing -- which so many of the creatures now mistake for the whole of worship -- serves admirably to lull the larger assemblies into a pleasant stupor. It can, as you note, be delightfully narcotic, a sort of lotus-hymn that leaves them soothed rather than stirred. 

Meanwhile the sermon, when not altogether displaced by singing, has been reduced to those curious lectures they call "TED talks," devoted chiefly to the art of self-improvement. Or they become instruments for promoting the political double-mindedness you are cultivating so well. As for the sacraments, they survive only in some superficial form. Well done, my dear Wormwood, well done.

The discouragement now afflicting those perceptive enough to glimpse your handiwork is a tool not unlike the one we perfected after the War. Then, we taught them to question the Enemy's providence by parading before them the futility of war and suffering. The Church’s present confusion is a more delicate instrument, yet it may serve nearly as well. Use it to persuade the discerning that the Enemy is not truly there at all and that there is no true goodness in the Church. "Deconstruction" -- that delicious offspring of the Church’s own double-mindedness -- can be turned to drive the tender-hearted into despair. And as for those who remain, see that they expend their zeal in denouncing the deserters.

Now, if you can manage -- with my counsel, of course -- to purge the Enemy’s heart from the life of the nation, you may bring America to a far more deplorable pass than anything we have yet achieved in Britain. It matters nothing that large numbers attend your churches so long as their hearts are not true servants of their Master. But take care. Be prudent in the pace at which you dissipate from their laws and culture the fumes of the Enemy. A faint whiff of conscience is excellent camouflage for our deeper work. Remove it too soon and you may awaken those you are so skilfully lulling.

As I have often reminded you, a misguided sense of justice can cloak a most exquisite hatred for one's neighbour. Prudence with the purse can varnish over immense suffering among those conveniently out of sight. Morality itself may be turned to cruelty, provided the sinner is the object. And best of all, they will excuse the vices of their champions in the name of the greater good -- the ends, as they say, justifying the means.

These are all enterprises you already have well underway. Press on, but with discretion. Let as few of the Enemy’s partisans as possible perceive the pattern.

Your affectionate Uncle,
Screwtape

Screwtape Updates 7 -- Spiritual Inoculation

Previous chapters:

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

This book is now available on Amazon (paperback) and Shopify (ebook).

_____________________________ 
Dear uncle Screwtape,

I have received your recent letter commending our efforts to inflame blind rage among those within and without the church. I must admit some disappointment that the initial fervor, although quite promising at first, has cooled somewhat. Still, I have learned that such passions can be rekindled when one watches the timing with care. We remain alert for the proper moment to fan the embers anew.

I confess, I was momentarily alarmed by an unexpected countercurrent. Attendance swelled in churches the very next Sunday after the incident, and for a dreadful instant I feared our work had backfired. There was, to be sure, a gratifying measure of rage and indignation. But alongside it was also far too much praying, singing, and -- dare I utter it -- what appeared to be repentance. For a time we feared we had sparked a revival rather than a massacre.

Worst of all, the wife of the slain man stood at his funeral and had the insolence to repeat the Enemy’s sickening maxim about "forgiving one’s enemies." To our disgust, the story spread everywhere. True, we succeeded in amplifying the cries for vengeance and were exceedingly proud of the eloquence of many who spoke on our behalf. Yet beneath all the noise, we trembled lest the Enemy should seize upon some lingering spark of faith in the hearts of His followers. 

For a dreadful moment, there was a scent of the real gospel in the air. I shuddered to think we might suffer the loss of many souls instead of gaining them.

I hesitate to mention it, but at that moment I did recall a fragment of your teaching -- though, of course, the application of the principle was entirely my own. You once spoke of certain celebrated singers and actors who, for a season, amused themselves with the Enemy’s cause. Having failed to keep them altogether from Him, you allowed them a brief dalliance with faith. And then, through the mediocrity of the church and the luxuriant weeds of their own appetites, you succeeded in reclaiming them for our side once and for all.

After a brief consultation, our department launched what we called "Operation Spiritual Inoculation." I directed the junior tempters to persuade the new “converts” that they had now done all the necessary business with the Enemy. They must be led to believe that a single moment of emotion has secured them a lifetime's exemption from further concern with spiritual matters. The task is delightfully simple among those congregations devoted to the doctrine of "eternal security." We merely assure those who are scarcely converted -- if converted at all -- that they need never again trouble themselves about the state of their souls.

I should never have doubted. Though the crowds did indeed swell that first Sunday, by the third they had returned to their usual proportions. We saw to it that many pulpits proclaimed that splendid mixture of double-mindedness we have so often discussed. In consequence, the newcomers now imagine they are worshiping the Enemy whenever they swell with patriotic fervor. Most will feel no further need to darken His doors -- save, perhaps, at Christmas.

As a final refinement, we encouraged immediate baptism without a shred of instruction. This, we felt, would fix in their minds the pleasant notion that their transaction with the Enemy was concluded. If all proceeds as planned, we will be able to distract them from any further visits and devote their zeal instead to the far more useful cause of politics.

I dare say we are entering a new golden age, one not unlike that most fruitful century following their Civil War. We are laboring diligently to make it so.

Your thriving nephew,
Wormwood

Screwtape Updates 6 -- Blinding Indignation

Previous chapters:

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

This book is now available on Amazon (paperback) and Shopify (ebook).

_____________________________

My dear Wormwood,

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

Screwtape Updates 5 -- Focus on Feelings

Previous chapters:

• 1 -- The Operations
• 2 -- The Veil Technique
• 3 -- The Fog 
• 4 -- Hard Hearts

This book is now available on Amazon (paperback) and Shopify (ebook).

_____________________________

Uncle Screwtape,

You seem to underestimate the ingenuity of our operations here in what you used to call the colonies. I scarcely recall hearing of half the stratagems now being deployed on every street and screen of America.

For instance, I wrote in my first letter that we are enjoying splendid success in corrupting the church with double-mindedness. True, the seed of the idea was yours, but we have cultivated it into a science far surpassing anything your generation achieved. Our patients here are utterly persuaded that they are the Enemy’s own champions, even as we have polluted their devotion with the most exquisite impurities.

The key, as you have often taught me, is directing their gaze toward their feelings. When they are singing in worship, let them attend to what they are feeling rather than the One they aim to worship. When they recall some moment of divine intimacy, let them dwell upon how it made them feel. Once we have persuaded them that their “relationship” with the Enemy consists chiefly in the enjoyment of these feelings, their eyes are no longer fixed upon Him but upon themselves.

We turn their prayers into monologs, and they haven't the faintest suspicion. They speak endlessly to themselves under the illusion of addressing the Enemy. Even pastors make their prayers little sermons for the congregation rather than true petitions to their Maker. And when the Enemy attempts to answer, they hear only echoes of their own thoughts.

Once they have learned to think of religion chiefly as a matter of feeling, we may corrupt it with any sentiment that stirs the heart. In recent times, we have found extraordinary success in harnessing their affections for that splendid counterfeit they call “America.” It is not the real nation, of course, but a purified myth. It is an America scrubbed clean of its cruelties and contradictions, where slavery never stained the soil and injustice never reigned. Even some of the darkest chapters are now remembered as a golden age.

Because the sensation of devotion so closely resembles their other feelings, the two easily mingle. Their patriotic fervor becomes indistinguishable from their so-called worship. They salute the flag with more reverence than they have ever shown the Cross. They extol their soldiers more fervently than any of the Enemy’s saints. 

They profess a love for the “Bible,” yet know it only as a banner under which to do battle. Of the true gospel -- the one that demands their allegiance -- they know little. The surest sign of our triumph is their fury when someone dares question a tradition they have only imagined comes from the Enemy's book. Convinced of their righteousness, they perceive not that they would have joined the crowd crying for the Enemy’s crucifixion.

I recognize these tactics from your earlier campaigns. The Crusader blended his hatred of the Muslim with a zeal to "liberate" Jerusalem for the Enemy. The German found divine sanction for ridding the world of the Jew who, he imagined, had slain the Christ. Such are the masterpieces of our craft, when malice disguises itself as devotion. I shall write another time on the exquisite art of turning outrage at one evil into the birth of a greater one.

I am particularly proud of the frenzy we have kindled on all sides of this region. Families can scarcely endure one another at Thanksgiving or Christmas. Children no longer speak to their parents. And each party is utterly convinced of its own righteousness, bowing to a host of idols while imagining themselves saintly. I can hardly recall a season more gratifying in all my years of temptation.

I shall continue to report on our seemingly unending triumphs.

Your ever-victorious nephew,
Wormwood

Image of the Week (10-18-25)

Millions rally in protest of the anti-democratic, authoritarian trajectory of the country

Screwtape Updates 4 -- Hard Hearts

Previous chapters:

• 1 -- The Operations
• 2 -- The Veil Technique
• 3 -- The Fog 

This book is now available on Amazon (paperback) and Shopify (ebook).

____________________________________
My dear Wormwood,

It is so very like a younger mind to mistake rediscovery for invention. You will learn, in time, that there is no new temptation under the sun. We only dress up old ones in modern attire. Still, I must commend your enthusiasm for what you have styled "the Fog." The Enemy’s resourcefulness demands that we employ every weapon in our arsenal, and that we keep each sharpened for every age.

Your recent missive reminds me how essential it is to work beneath the surface of a patient’s conscious thought. There are countless believers who would never consent to our notions if they saw them clearly. Many wander from the Enemy without ever intending to. Indeed, a single moment of awareness might send them scurrying back to Him. That is why some of our finest work is always done in the shadows of the mind, in the places where the soul drifts unawares.

And here, my dear Wormwood, lies the true genius of what you call "the Fog." You must see to it that the wrong direction is fixed beneath the surface. In its corruption, the human subconscious possesses a stubbornness most useful to us. Once set, it will defend its own errors even against the plainest evidence. Recall the Enemy’s time on earth. How astonishing it was that men could behold His wonders and yet oppose Him still! But that, of course, was our triumph. Their minds were veiled, yes, but more importantly, their hearts had been hardened beneath the surface.

Again, I dare say you have absorbed more of my instruction than you realize. I observe that the American populace -- and, most gratifyingly, vast numbers of churchgoers -- now tolerates offences they would never have stomached a mere decade ago. Indeed, some who raised their eyebrows at far less outrageous acts the first time around now seem enthusiastic. Some who once winced at far lesser outrages now defend them with zeal. You are veiling far more than you are willing to admit.

I see you are managing the escalation of violence with considerable success. Here, however, you must take care to raise the temperature gradually. A sudden blaze might yet alarm the sleepers. Many in your region have grown strangely enamored of the Enemy’s talk of love and compassion, even among the unbelieving. Indeed, some almost serve Him with their hearts, though their minds remain apart from Him at present. It is our triumph to draw those who profess Him with the intellect away from Him in heart.

In these beginning stages, the surest path to the acceptance of violence is to clothe it in the language of law and order. When cruelty runs to excess, we murmur that the lawbreaker had it coming. Think, for example, of the terrible reprisals recently visited on ordinary people and children in Gaza after the outrage we contrived to set ablaze between Israel and its foes. So many of the faithful were readily persuaded it was simply a just retribution for wrongs done. Once cruelty can be spoken of as justice, conscience falls silent.

I am delighted by the speed with which you are marshaling those who delight in cruelty under the banner of justice. Masked men now roam with near-total immunity, free to inflict whatever torments they please upon those conveniently labeled as “lawbreakers.” It recalls other glorious seasons when, for a time, we persuaded the Enemy’s own servants to defend oppression and even violence in the very name of righteousness. 

In time, we even won some of them for our master through that same art of hardening. The longer they persisted in defending evils, the more difficult it became to confess they had been wrong. Pride, once wedded to falsehood, forms a shell that light can hardly penetrate.

I confess, I nearly lost my devilish composure in laughter when I learned that you had enlisted a supposed devotion to “free speech” as a means of silencing dissent. You may claim cleverness, my boy, but that stratagem was not of your invention.

Do not neglect the essential work of hardening the heart. Light can, on occasion, pierce even the densest fog. Should that occur, your patients must be so fixed in their blindness that they cannot turn toward the light. Remember, a hardened heart is deaf to the Enemy’s voice.

Your affectionate instructor,
Screwtape

Screwtape Updates 3: The Fog

The first two letters were "The Operations" and "The Veil Technique." This book is now available on Amazon (paperback) and Shopify (ebook).

______________________________

Dear Uncle Screwtape,

Well I remember your lectures on the Veil. We still employ the technique to good effect, especially among the older herd. They largely receive their news through single channels of information, so it is easy to concentrate our efforts there. With one voice whispering in their ears, it is easy enough to stir our toxins into their daily feed.

But the younger ones are a different species altogether. They require more sophisticated poisons. We have devised a new art suited to their age that we call "the Fog." Instead of lulling them with silence or distracting them with outrage, we bury the truth beneath noise. We do not hush their minds. We flood them. Every headline contradicts the last. Every voice claims revelation, until the poor creatures can no longer tell light from glare.

Your generation relied on shadows, Uncle. Mine thrives in smoke. We no longer need to hide the truth. Rather, we surround it with so many rival "truths" that it suffocates. Popularity serves us well in this art. We take the hollow and the heartless, paint them as witty and authentic, and give them a following. The faithful are almost as easy to ensnare as the faithless if we lace our poison with a fragment of the Enemy’s own words. It is, after all, the very method our master once tried upon the Enemy Himself, though with less success than we are now enjoying.

I am most delighted by what I call "mirror speak." The unwelcome voice of truth exposes our frauds for what they are. But then we prompt our agents to fling the very same charge back again at the truth itself. It is a masterpiece of confusion. The Veil performs its service here most exquisitely. Contradictory sides are equally convinced that the other never tells the truth, though the distinction could not be plainer to us. They have eyes but cannot see. Our champions proclaim their own sins in the accusations they hurl at their foes -- every charge is a confession. Yet the crowd applauds each time as if virtue itself has spoken.

How many and varied are their new channels of information! When on occasion someone hears a voice of some truth, we lace it with an error that is easily discovered. In that way, the whole is easily dismissed and the point lost. Other voices we bury in misleading numbers or an anecdote from some beloved fool of a cousin. We might inflame truth-speakers with so much emotion that they appear mad and their words can be dismissed as so much derangement.

For the older crowd, clouding their minds has proven almost effortless. We flood their vision with images of those they fear -- always stealing, always violent. We awaken -- or when needed create -- prejudices that might have slept forever. Where they might have once been open to the stranger, we first make them fear. Fear ripens into anger. Anger matures into hatred. They simmer contentedly in the kettle of moral ferment, never suspecting the heat.

Still, as you have so frequently reminded us, complacency is our deadliest snare. The Enemy has an infuriating habit of reclaiming even those who seem thoroughly ours. I must therefore resume my labors at once, lest one of the wretches awake. Nothing spoils a good deception faster than a single open eye.

Your nephew,
Wormwood