The Screwtape Letters

Notes

The body influences the capacity of the mind.

• “You don’t realize how enslaved they are to the pressure of the ordinary” (Letter 1, 186)
  • A few sentences later, Screwtape makes reference to the “temptation” of grabbing lunch, showcasing how ordinary things can debase humans. This is not a contemplative understanding of “ordinary” such as the monotony of the workplace or childcare; it’s the meeting of basic, ordinary hungers of the body.
• “They find it all but impossible to believe in the unfamiliar while the familiar is before their eyes.” (Letter 1, 186)

  • When I practice Solitude to exit the ordinary hum-dum rush of life, seek the unfamiliar; God is found in quiet intention apart from the familiar things I see everyday before me.

• Gluttony is not just about excess in quantity of delicacy of the food I eat. It’s a concern because my bodily desires affect my character - “But what do quantities matter, provided we can use a human belly and a palate to produce querulousness, impatience, uncharitableness, and self-concern” (Letter 17, 233)

On Science

• Science “will positively encourage him to think about realities he can’t touch and see… don’t let him get away from that invaluable ‘real life.’ But the best of all is to let him read no science but to give him a grand general idea that he knows it all and that everything he happens to have picked up in casual talk and reading is ‘the results of modern investigation.” (Letter 1, 187)
  • The virtue of science is the practice of fixing one’s mind on things which cannot be touched or seen yet. This extra-ordinary experience can pull me out of the familiarity of ‘real life’ (the hunger-triggered lunch) and give me a perspective that I do not know all.
  • When science leads me to feel mastery over a topic - that I know everything there possibly is to know about something - I am experience a pseudo-knowledge that builds a false self-confidence.
  • ‘Real life’ is anything I can tangibly experience. It is important to remember it is impossible to understand all because I cannot experience all.

Distinguishing reality and the imaginary

• Disappointment is a big hurdle in living in reality vs my imagination. The imagination repels disappointment.
  • “In every department of life (disappointment) marks the transition from dreaming aspiration to laborious doing” (Letter 2, 189)
  • Laborious doing is the place dreams are realized. Fear prevents me from getting there because I will be disappointed in the transition

    • Artifacts are a way to trigger this progression - they make aspirations a reality and serve as a first tranche of disappointment. When something documented is different than I dreamed about, it’s disappointing. However, now there’s something to work off of and begin the process of laborious doing.

  • Disappointment in the context of church community
    • “At his present stage, he has an idea of ‘Christians’ in his mind which he supposes to be spiritual but which, in fact, is largely pictorial” (Letter 2, 189)
    • The aspirational dream of a perfectly loving community is manifested through the laborious practice of broken people gathering together and loving each other despite deficiencies.
    • Community is hard and increases exposure for disappointment - I will see more people in need of help than people who could potentially help me; people will not pull through when I depend on them; etc.
  • Disappointment in the context of personal spiritual formation
    • “As long as he retains externally the habits of a Christian he can still be made to think of himself as one who has adopted a few new friends and amusements but whose spiritual state is much the same as it was six weeks ago. And while he thinks that, we do not have to contend with the explicit repentance of a definite, fully recognized, sin, but only with his vague, though uneasy, feeling that he hasn’t been doing very well lately.” (Letter 12, 218)
• Thinking virtue and righteousness is not real righteousness; it needs to manifest into real-world acts
  • “Let him write a book about it; that is often an excellent way of sterilizing the seeds which the Enemy plants in a human soil. Let him do anything but act” (Letter 13, 223)
• Reality, and thus the opportunity for real righteousness, only happens in the present. So planning is a temptation to forego opportunities for righteousness today.
  • “The enemy wants men to think of the Future too – just so much as is necessary for now planning the acts of justice or charity which will probably be their duty tomorrow… His ideal is a man who, having worked all day for the good of posterity, washes his mind of the whole subject, commits the issue to Heaven, and returns at once to the patience or gratitude demanded by the moment that is passing over him. But we want a man hag-ridden by the Future… We want a whole race perpetually in pursuit of the rainbow’s end, never honest, nor kind, nor happy now, but always using as mere fuel wherewith to heap the altar of the future every real gift which is offered them in the Present” (Letter 15, 228)
  • This can be related to anxiety (below) but also for personal plans that prevent me from seeing what God is dong today. God blesses in the present moment, for this is reality

Formation for the sake of others

• Keep formation simple, fully focused on loving others
• “He thinks his conversion is something inside him and his attention is chiefly turned at present to the states of his own mind… Keep his mind off the most elementary duties by directing it to the most advanced and spiritual ones.” (Letter 3, 191)
  • The “elementary duties” of being a Christian is loving others. This must manifest in non-introspective action for the sake of others.
• “He can practice self-examination for an hour without discovering any of those facts bout himself which are perfectly clear to anyone who has ever lived in the same house with him” (Letter 3, 191)
  • Temptation to see the worst in others while being unable to see my own shortcomings (Letter 2, Letter 3)
  • Temptation of an over-examined rationalization of my flawed behavior that keeps me aloof from the people to love around me.
• “Make sure that the prayers are always very ‘spiritual,’ that he is always concerned with the state of his mother’s soul and never with her rheumatism.” (Letter 3, 191)
  • Over-spiritualization tends to take my view away from the physical and bodily needs of others and put overweight focus on their spiritual health. Focusing on “actions which are inconvenient or irritating” to me, can get in the way of showing God’s gracious love to the person.
  • “He will, in some degree, be praying for an imaginary person” (Letter 3, 192)
    • Hedge: Ask for very physical, bodily prayer requests. This makes a person a real person and not a figment of my spiritual imagination.
• The root expression of spiritual formation is hyper-local, directed towards immediate neighbors, not expressed outside-in through imagined outsiders
  • “direct the malice to his immediate neighbors whom he meets every day and to thrust his benevolence out to the remote circumference, to people he does not know. The malice thus becomes wholly real and the benevolence largely imaginary” (Letter 6, 201)
  • Focusing on the other creates imaginary communities that can be the object of both imaginary hatred and love. Lewis argues that imaginary hatred is not the worst, and imaginary benevolence is completely meaningless.
  • This resonates with the standards of elders in #1-Timothy. If someone cannot respectfully love their closest family, how can I expect them to love people outside of that nucleus.
  • “Think of your man as a series of concentric circles… you can hardly hope to exclude from all the circles everything that smells of the Enemy: but you must keep on shoving all the virtues outward till they are finally located in the circle of fantasy, and all the desirable qualities inward into the Will” (Letter 6, 202)

Approaching challenges

Challenges are not victories for demons. Each is a battleground opportunity to depend on something beyond human strength - either God or something else.

• “He (God) often makes prizes of humans who have given their lives for causes He thinks bad on the monstrously sophistical ground that the humans thought them good and were following the best they knew.” (Letter 5, 198)
  • The energy spent fighting, the intentionality, can be redeemed into energy invested into formation.
  • Caveat: This is not so that whatever I am putting energy into replaces the core of my faith (e.g. religious nationalism). This is instead, in earnest, focusing on putting energy into what I believe God to be speaking to me and calling me to do (similar to Bridgetown’s process for making official their stance on women in eldership)
    • “Let him begin by treating the Patriotism or the Pacifism as part of his religion. Then let him, under the influence of partisan spirit, come to regard it as the most important part. Then quietly and gradually nurse him on to the stage at which the religion becomes merely part of the ‘cause.’” (Letter 7, 205)
• “The continual remembrance of death” reminds me that I do not have the power/influence to control the length of my life. Without this uncertainty-triggered urgency, I will not replicate the passionate gusto of a revolutionary nationalist in times of war.
• “He (God) cannot ‘tempt’ to virtue as we do to vice. He wants them to learn to walk and must therefore take away His hand; and if only the will to walk is really there He is pleased even with their stumbles.” (Letter 8, 208)
  • It is in challenge moments, places where I am fully dependent on God, that I learn to be my true self - “the sort of create He wants me to be”

Anxiety

A working definition of anxiety: “maximum uncertainty, so that his mind will be filled with contradictory pictures of the future, every one of which arouses hope or fear” (Letter 6, 200)

• Uncertainty produces a fear over present realities - i.e. what will happen, now that I’m living in a new city?
  • Uncertainty is a key component of faith because present realities are things that can be prayed over; I need God’s help to face them; and I can ask God to save me in.
  • Uncertainty exists because I am far from God, as a consequence of sin.
• Contrarily, Anxiety is a future-oriented fear of possible realities - i.e. what if I’m unable to make friends in this new city I’m living in?
  • “(God) wants men to be concerned with what they do; our business is to keep them thinking about what will happen to them.” (Letter 6, 200)
  • Anxiety blocks my ability to seek God’s offer to help today, because I’m overly focused on tomorrow’s potential suffering. I cannot fully submit in the present, asking God for help today while praying for something that may happen to my future self.

• Another thing to integrate into Solitude practices - what are my present anxieties and suspenses that I need to practices fortitude and patience in.

  • This is a practice of pruning unnecessary anxieties that are sapping my body’s capacity to put formative energy into fortitude and patience- “for real resignation, at the same moment, to a dozen different and hypothetical fates, is almost impossible” (Letter 6, 200)
  • Optimism can be detrimental if it obfuscates my discernment of my current situation, for if I cannot see my current need for God, then I do not discern the places I need to ask him for help in
    • “make him acquiesce in the present low temperature of his spirit and gradually become content with it… a moderated religion is as good for us as no religion at all” (Letter 9, 210)

The dangers of an NPC-Life

• C.S. Lewis describes NPC life as - “Nothing is very strong: strong enough to steal away a man’s best years not in sweet sings but in a dreary flickering of the mind over it knows not what and knows not why” (Letter 12, 219-220)
  • Unintentional living is the hallmark of the NPC-life. Can I answer why I engage with things that make up my life - if not, then I’m likely falling prey to NPC-life
• The danger of NPC life is that… “It does not matter how small the sins are provided that their cumulative effect is to edge the man away from the Light and out into the Nothing” (Letter 12, 220)
  • When I am deep in “Nothing” I am apart from God, for God offers a full and abundant life. “Murder is no better than cards if cards can do the trick.” (Letter 12, 220)
• Social ambition is part of the NPC life
  • “You should always try to make the patient abandon the people or food or books he really likes in favor of the ‘best’ people, the ‘right’ food, the ‘important’ books. I have known a human defended from strong temptations to social ambition by a still stronger taste for tripe and onions” (Letter 13, 223)
  • Social ambition (or the lust of the eyes) is manifested in the search for the “correct” answers in the world and the validation that I receive from others for finding the correct answer or doing the right things.
  • Being confident in how I’m uniquely made and the unique taste that I’ve been given is a strong hedge against NPC-life temptations.

Thoughts on looking for a church

• Heavy emphasis of Letter 16
• Church-hopping is not healthy for the individual for two reasons: the breaking of unity and the unteach-ability of a critic
• On unity
  • Churches are already challenged because they are designed to bring people of different backgrounds, classes, and interests together - this brings God joy. However, it is in our human nature that we create clubs or factions that are of one kind; church-hopping is an expression that I am not like these people and can only be with people similar to me.
  • “The real fun is working up hatred between those who say ‘mass’ and those who say ‘holy communion’ when neither party could possibly state the difference between Hooker’s doctrine and Thomas Aquinas’, in any form which would hold water for five minutes.”
• On teachability
  • “the search for a ‘suitable’ church makes the man a critic where the Enemy wants him to be a pupil” (Letter 16, 230)
  • The same spirit of teachability – “does not waste time in thinking about what it rejects, but lays itself open in uncommenting, humble receptivity to any nourishment that is going” (Letter 16, 230) – should be modeled by the church and its leadership
    • “We are thus safe from the danger that any truth not already familiar to him and to his flock should ever reach them through Scripture.” (Letter 16, 230)

    • Learning new things of God is sign of spiritual maturity. Similar to On Science, personal formation requires consistently iterating and expanding what I understand of the infinite. Each step deeper should lead to more awe and more questions.

Misc

• Love is all about being united, committed to those different than me - “For the members (of a family) are more distinct, yet also united in a more conscious and responsible way. The whole thing turns out to be simply one more device for dragging in Love.” (Letter 18, 237)