#8 Screwtape Letter: The Law of Undulation

The eighth letter begins a few letters in which the patient starts to slip away from God’s fingers and closer to Wormwood. Wormwood is overjoyed by this prospect but Screwtape tells him to get his head on straight and not celebrate too much (apparently the devils have learned moderation?). This falling away, Screwtape tells Wormwood, might not be indicative of the patient’s falling away but instead be a natural part of the life of faith. Screwtape writes,

Humans are amphibians-half spirit and half animal (The Enemy’s determination to produce such a revolting hybrid was one of the things that determined Our Father to withdraw his support from Him.)…This means that while their spirit can be directed to an eternal object, their bodies, passions, and imaginations are in continual change, for to be in time means to change. Their nearest approach to constancy, therefore, is undulation-the repeated return to a level from which they repeatedly fall back, a series of troughs and peaks.

I think it’s fascinating that Lewis maintains that the very concept of humans played a role in Satan’s fall. I think a contrast exists between that and Jesus’s willingness to become not only a human but also to associate with sinners. Satan is one of the biggest purists, Lewis is saying, not with respect to orthodoxy but with respect to bringing the sacred to the profane as God brought the spiritual to the material. The desire to withdraw from instead of engaging the fallen culture in a sense is similar to the desire that Satan had. As Parousians, I’m probably preaching to the choir as we’re committed to a sense of faith and culture and engaging in culture in ways that we’ve done the past week (see my post: LSU Parousians Engage the Consuming Fire Fellowship and Planned Parenthood).

The other important thing is, of course, the law of undulation. Lewis is telling us that it is natural for humans to go through ups and downs. In fact, Lewis suggests that it’s necessary for us to approach the constancy which we will fully participate in when we’re outside of time. Understanding the law of undulation is a tremendous advantage for us. Every rise in joy does not mean we’ve finally triumphed nor does every fall mean we’re in a crisis of faith that requires a re-evaluation of everything. Stress and doubt are powerful tools Screwtape can use to discourage us. Screwtape goes more into how the devil can use the law of undulation for his purposes in the next letter, (#9) but he does tell us in this letter how God plans to use the troughs.

Now it may surprise you to learn that in His efforts to get permanent possession of a soul, He relies on the trough even more than on the peaks; some of His special favourites have gone through longer and deeper troughs than anyone else…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 prayer offered in the state of dryness are those which please Him best…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 on a universe from which every trace of Him has vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.

Is that something we can do? To have little hope of joy on this planet, to see everything good stripped from us and life and see only darkness in the future and to not want to walk on and yet still plunge headlong into the darkness because we believe with no reason that there is a God whose beauty and goodness will eventually shine through? That’s a lot to ask of us, yet it is that which precisely the definition of true faith is. Truth, Beauty, and Goodness may do well to show people that there’s a God, but when we can’t see those things it is then that we’re really called to be a people of faith. It is that moment on which salvation rests.

Why should it though? Why does God look for such things? Screwtape tells us it is this desire for us to choose in the troughs which divides heaven from hell and the demons from the angels.

One must face the fact that all the talk about His love for men, and His service being perfect freedom, is not (as one would gladly believe mere propaganda, but an appalling truth. He really does want to fill the universe with a lot of loathsome little replicas of Himself-creatures whose life, on its own miniature scale, will be qualitatively like His own, not because He has absorbed them but because their wills conform freely to His…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 cannot ravish. He can only woo. For His ignoble idea is to eat the cake and have it; the creatures are to be one with Him, but yet themselves; merely to cancel them, or assimilate them, will not serve.

So while the devil wants to subvert and eliminate our will, God wants to actualize it fully so that we can be fully with him. The greatest way of actualizing this is by choosing God just for God. When we’re in the trough periods, there’s nothing else. Our love for God seems to have no benefits and only pains. An unrequited love is quite painful, yet to continue in it demands great nobility on our part and even greater love for the beloved in order to persist. It is that love of God only for Him that most pleases God, and the choice by us to love God in that way is what will set us free.