I'm currently re-reading The Screwtape Letters, by C.S. Lewis. I'm also listening to the audiobook again while I'm driving because, hey, John Cleese.
I've been carrying the book around in my bag, and pulled it out on Tuesday while I was on the train to go pick up my car, which now has fabulous new brakes and a non-glowing engine light (naturally, the computer showed nothing wrong to cause the light to come on in the first place, so my mechanic just reset it). Since I've read it a couple of times already, I tend to just flip to a letter at random.
This missive from demon Screwtape to novice tempter Wormwood struck me:
You must have often wondered why the Enemy does not make more use of His power to be sensibly present to human souls in any degree He chooses and at any moment. ..Merely to override a human will (as His felt presence in any but the faintest and most mitigated degree would certainly do) would be for Him useless...He is prepared to do a little overriding at the beginning. He will set them off with communications of His presence which, though faint, seem great to them, with emotional sweetness, and easy conquest over temptation...Sooner or later He withdraws, if not in fact, at least from their conscious experience, all those supports and incentives. He leaves the creature to stand up on its own legs--to carry out from the will alone duties which have lost all relish. It is during such trough periods, much more than during the peak periods, that it is growing into the sort of creature He wants it to be. Hence the prayers offered in the state of dryness are those which please Him best... 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. Do not be deceived, Wormwood. Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy's will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.
My favorite thing about Screwtape is that it is such a slight and funny book, which will kick your ass if you let it penetrate your mind even a little bit. Here's an especially nasty bit:
When you have caused him to assume that the trough is permanent, can you not persuade him that "his religious phase" is just going to die away like all his previous phases? Of course, there is no conceivable way of getting by reason from the proposition "I am losing interest in this" to the proposition "This is false." But, as I said before, it is jargon, not reason, you must rely on. The mere word "phase" will very likely do the trick. I assume that the creature has been through several of them before--they all have--and that he always feels superior and patronising to the ones he has emerged from, not because he has really criticised them but simply because they are in the past...You see the idea? Keep his mind off the plain antithesis between True and False. Nice shadowy expressions--"It was a phase"--"I've been through all that"--don't forget the blessed word "Adolescent."
Ouch. Um, I think I see something shiny over there. Must go investigate. Cannot continue conversation, as you are clearly not describing any thought process I've ever had. Nope. We have nothing to talk about.
