#7 Screwtape Letter: Existence of Demons and Factionalism

This letter, more than any we’ve seen so far, really breaks itself down into two separate letters. The first half is devoted to the question of whether or not Wormwood should put special effort into keeping the patient ignorant of his existence. Screwtape answers that the question has been answered by the High Command to keep ignorant but he explains that both ignorance and belief have their drawbacks:

“When the humans disbelieve in our existence we lose all the pleasing results of direct terrorism and we make no magicians. On the other hand, when they believe in us, we cannot make them materialists and skeptics.”

That is, the existence of demons and Satan points us to a spiritual world in which materialism does not make sense. Without belief in this existence, it is easier for Wormwood to direct the patient towards world in which there is only matter, a world in which things like Truth and Morality start to lose meaning. On the other hand, belief in spiritual world is not enough for conversion but only heightens the stakes. Sure, belief in God can come but it can also be used for a more potent evil. Think of Star Wars for a minute (hey, you didn’t honestly think I was going to write about 31 letters and not refer to Star Wars once, did you?). Darth Vader and Emperor Palpatine both believed in the Force very strongly, but that belief did not translate into goodness. Instead, they manipulated this secret force for their own ends and became much more powerful than a legion of storm troopers. A similar thing can happen for those who see spirituality but misinterpret it or pervert it. Planned Parenthood is doing this right now at LSU with their Spirituality and Sexuality Series in which they claim that it is acceptable and perhaps even mandatory to be both spiritual and pro-abortion, pro-contraception, and pro-sexual liberation. So while we have to recognize that getting people to recognize the spiritual world is a crucial step towards lifting people out of the indifferent and hollow world of the materialists, it’s not the end of the journey. (Speaking of those Planned Parenthood people, 7:00 PM in the Atchafalaya Room in the Union on Thursday is the finale of their series. Please attend if you can. Now back to our regularly scheduled programming)

Screwtape mentions one more thing that is helpful for us to recognize. He tells Wormwood:

“The fact that ‘devils’ are predominantly comic figures in the modern imagination will help you. If any faint suspicion of your existence beings to arise in his mind, suggest to him a picture of something in red tights, and persuade him that since he cannot believe in that…he therefore cannot believe in you.”

We need to be careful in how we describe the forces of evil both to others and to ourselves, lest we make them too anthropomorphic as to be ridiculous. Satan and his servants existence, but images of pitchforks and horns help Screwtape more than they help us.

Now we get to the second half of the letter in which Screwtape address the issue of whether or not Wormwood should try to make his patient an extreme patriot or extreme pacifist. Surprisingly to us who live in a world in which support or dissent of the Iraq War seems to be the prime litmus test, Screwtape says it doesn’t really matter. As he says,

“All extremes, except extreme devotion to the Enemy, are to be encouraged…Some ages are lukewarm and complacent, and then it is our business to soothe them yet faster asleep. Other ages, of which the present is one, are unbalanced and prone to faction, and it is our business to inflame them. Any small coterie…tends to develop inside itself a hothouse mutual admiration, and towards the outer world, a great deal of pride and hatred which is entertained without shame because the ‘Cause’ is its sponsor and it is thought to be impersonal. Even when the little group exists originally for the Enemy’s own purposes, this remains true. We want the Church to be small not only that fewer men may know the Enemy but also that those who do may acquire the uneasy intensity and defensive self-righteous of a secret society of a clique”

That’s a pretty long quote so there’s a lot to unpack from it. The first is an obvious preference for moderation in beliefs. Note however that this does not mean indifference or a rejection of both patriotism and pacifism. Instead, it’s recognition that extreme beliefs can become consuming and as such take us away from Christ. Second, it shows a danger to anger that we as Catholics in the university and more importantly as Catholics in the world face. We are a small group and therefore have a real disposition to the “us/them” mentality. This is particularly challenging for us as Parousians and as the laity under the New Evangelization of John Paul II. We are called to engage a university which is hostile to us and we probably will need to rely strongly on others and on our Catholic community as well as Christ’s grace to make it through it, yet we cannot become so entrenched in our community as to become disdainful of anything outside of it. This primarily means loving those who would appear to be our enemies, including those at Planned Parenthood (and I’m writing this as much to me as I am to you. Told you Lewis had a knack to skewer everybody, even bloggers). Third, we have to watch out for factionalism in our communities. “Divide and conquer” is the old saying and it can wreak havoc. Not even the Church is immune; see those who hold hands at the Our Father and those who don’t as a good indicator that our Church is not as united as it should be. When we disagree then, one of our goals in disagreeing should be a greater unity then before instead of simply another faction.

You may have wondered how what seemed to be a discussion on war and pacifism versus patriotism turned into a discussion of factions. Lewis generally isn’t concerned with the correct stance on war as he is about our attitudes to it and how war as an especially trying emotional and spiritual experience can lead us closer to either Hell or Heaven. He is especially concerned with concern about the war becoming the central point of our existence and especially of our faith. Screwtape writes,

“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,’ in which Christianity is valued chiefly because of the excellent arguments in can produce in favour of the British war-effort or of Pacifism…Once you have made the World an end, and faith a means, you have almost won your man, and it makes very little difference what kind of worldly end he is pursuing. Provided that meetings, pamphlets, policies, movements, causes, and crusades matter more to him than prayers and sacraments and charity-he is ours.”

That’s fairly harsh, and as a group devoted to many causes we need to pay close attention to what Lewis is trying to tell us here. He’s not telling us to back away from causes,-he wouldn’t have been so involved in popular apologetics if he didn’t think that the world needed to be told to wake itself up-he’s telling us that that shouldn’t be the focus. Instead, religion should be the focus and the causes derived from it. We seek pro-life changes because God has told us that we should respect the dignity of human life; we should not seek God b/c we’ve decided to be pro-life and need back-up. The same applies to all issues, not just issues of war. We follow causes because in them we follow God; we shouldn’t follow God because He takes us farther in our quest for the cause.

I want to close with a quote from Richard Nixon. Odd source for inspirtational quotes, I know, and I’m not a big fan of the man myself. However, this quote was a favorite of my father’s and so I’ve come to like it too.

“Always remember others may hate you but those who hate you don't win unless you hate them. And then you destroy yourself.”

N.B. I realized about mid-way through this that there are some who might not like the dichotomy between Patriotism and Pacifism, as many today are easily angered by the association of opposition to the war with being unpatriotic. First, those are Lewis’s word’s, not mine. Second, I don’t think Lewis was trying to imply that; he’s certainly not one to join in the chorus of those today who claim opposition to the war in Iraq is necessarily unpatriotic. Remember, Lewis was friends with J.R.R. Tolkien, who was a pacifist in some respects (though he saw the war with Germany as a necessary evil as he wrote to his son, who fought in the war). Both Tolkien and Lewis served in WWI and had problems resulting from it so I highly doubt that Lewis demands support for war in order to be patriotic. It should also be noted that the patient never fights in the war and Lewis does not argue that it is a victory of Screwtape that he stayed home.