Textbook: The Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis
Imagine God lavishly blessing your life on this earth far beyond what you could ever request or imagine. Envision His gracious hand placing you in the prestigious position of being king over His people. Picture in your mind also receiving riches beyond measure, wisdom to properly rule God’s people, authority to lead them to revival, and even peace with your enemies. Moreover, imagine witnessing God perform mighty miracles to give and maintain these incredible blessings. With such abundant and constant favor being shown to you, it would naturally seem unthinkable that your trust in and obedience to God would ever waver.
However, Scripture reveals that no degree of blessings can maintain our faithfulness to God if we are not fully surrendered to Him. This is clearly seen in the accounts of kings Solomon, Asa, and Uzziah. All three were richly blessed by God with tremendous wealth, successful endeavors, and widespread popularity. Furthermore, Solomon and Asa were given peace with their enemies, while Uzziah received great victories over his. In addition, Solomon graciously received unmatched wisdom, Asa successfully led a nationwide revival, and Uzziah dramatically strengthened Judah’s military. Unfortunately, despite living these immeasurably blessed and successful lives, these three kings came to ruin towards the end because they drifted away from God. As we will learn tonight, demons can deceive us into doing likewise when we are not following Christ with our whole heart, soul, mind, and strength.
The Screwtape Letters is a collection of fictional letters written by a made-up demon named Screwtape. Each letter sees him teach various tactics to his nephew Wormwood for use against a spiritually young Christian they call “the patient.”
When studying this book, it is crucial to remember that it is satirical and fictional. Its author, C. S. Lewis, advises us, “not everything that Screwtape says should be assumed to be true even from his own angle.” The book was not written to explain how demons communicate with one another nor how they are ranked in Satan’s army. Furthermore, it is not an authoritative source on doctrines such as eternal security. Rather, this book’s purpose is to provide deep insights into the various temptations and tactics demons use against us as believers. This is a worthwhile study, for 2 Corinthians 2:11 says, “So that we would not be outwitted by Satan; for we are not ignorant of his designs.” Furthermore, Ephesians 6:11 calls us to, “Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil.” Thus, our goal in studying The Screwtape Letters is to learn how to recognize and resist demonic attacks by tying its content to the Bible’s teachings.
“Obviously you are making excellent progress. My only fear is lest in attempting to hurry the patient you awaken him to a sense of his real position. For you and I, who see that position as it really is, must never forget how totally different it ought to appear to him. We know that we have introduced a change of direction in his course which is already carrying him out of his orbit around the Enemy; but he must be made to imagine that all the choices which have effected this change of course are trivial and revocable. He must not be allowed to suspect that he is now, however slowly, heading right away from the sun on a line which will carry him into the cold and dark of utmost space.
“For this reason I am almost glad to hear that he is still a churchgoer and a communicant. I know there are dangers in this; but anything is better than that he should realise the break it has made with the first months of his Christian life. 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 recognised, sin, but only with his vague, though uneasy, feeling that he hasn't been doing very well lately.” (Lewis)
Note here the main strategy Screwtape advises Wormwood to use against his patient: compromise. While the overall goal is to make the patient fall into a cold and miserable backslidden existence, multiple small, subtle compromises coupled with justifications are used to gradually lead him down this path without alerting his attention to his wayward state. We likewise endanger ourselves to these demonic projections when our hearts, like the patient’s, are not fully surrendered to Jesus. This is because such living ignores our flesh’s co-crucifixion with Christ (Gal. 2:20), which causes us to not walk after the Holy Spirit and instead follow our flesh’s carnal desires (Gal. 5:16). In this state, our mind is set on our flesh and thus rebels against God due to its natural and irreconcilable hostility towards Him (Rom. 8:7). This causes us to forfeit the Holy Spirit’s protection of our mind, thus opening the door for demonic influence. No amount of external deeds, such as church going or Bible reading, will protect us from the spiritual dangers and potential consequences of this carnal and vulnerable state. Our only hope is a repentant, surrendered heart, as James 4:7 states, “Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.”
Although the three previously mentioned kings performed many godly works, their compromised hearts still caused them to suffer severe consequences. For example, Solomon spent much of his life chasing after the world’s pleasures and disobediently marrying foreign wives, resulting in overwhelming vanity and a shameful descent into idolatry. Also, Asa, despite previously experiencing God’s perfect protection from his enemies, forfeited his kingdom’s peace and walk with God when he faithlessly paid Ben-Haded with the treasures of God’s temple for protection from King Baasha of Israel. Finally, Uzziah pridefully attempted to unlawfully burn incense on the altar in the temple, resulting in God striking him with leprosy. All three of these kings made compromising decisions: Solomon increasingly idolized pleasure, Asa foolishly trusted in a pagan ruler over God, and Uzziah arrogantly forgot his strength and fame were from the Lord. Because their hearts were not fully surrendered to God, they gradually backslid with various compromises that eventually led to major sins with devastating consequences.
The dangers of these compromises, no matter how small, are why Jesus emphasizes the importance of the greatest commandment in Mark 12:29-30, “Jesus answered, “The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.” As a youth pastor from Fort Michelle wisely said, we must fill our hearts so much with Jesus that the flesh and the devil have no room to work in them. This is the only way we receive the Holy Spirit’s power to reject demonic temptations to justify fleshly compromises.
“This dim uneasiness needs careful handling. If it gets too strong it may wake him up and spoil the whole game. On the other hand, if you suppress it entirely — which, by the by, the Enemy will probably not allow you to do — we lose an element in the situation which can be turned to good account. If such a feeling is allowed to live, but not allowed to become irresistible and flower into real repentance, it has one invaluable tendency. It increases the patient's reluctance to think about the Enemy. All humans at nearly all times have some such reluctance; but when thinking of Him involves facing and intensifying a whole vague cloud of half-conscious guilt, this reluctance is increased tenfold. They hate every idea that suggests Him, just as men in financial embarrassment hate the very sight of a pass-book. In this state your patient will not omit, but he will increasingly dislike, his religious duties. He will think about them as little as he feels he decently can beforehand, and forget them as soon as possible when they are over. A few weeks ago you had to tempt him to unreality and inattention in his prayers: but now you will find him opening his arms to you and almost begging you to distract his purpose and benumb his heart. He will want his prayers to be unreal, for he will dread nothing so much as effective contact with the Enemy. His aim will be to let sleeping worms lie.” (Lewis)
The overall goal described here is for Wormwood to keep his patient in the flesh. As believers, our flesh (also called our carnal nature or self-life) cannot commune with God, for Galatians 5:17 states, “For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do.” Furthermore, Romans 8:7-8 state, “For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law; indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.” This state is detrimental to our walk with Christ because it renders our works ineffective and void of the Holy Spirit’s power. Furthermore, it drives us away from God by generating reluctance to have any genuine fellowship with Him.
While Christ’s Finished Work on the Cross allows us to quickly rebound from sin through confession and repentance (1Jo. 1:9), demons strive to discourage us from doing this. As described in Screwtape’s dialogue here, demons do this by burdening us with shame from our sins. 2 Corinthians 7:10 notes that while the Holy Spirit uses godly guilt to convict and restore us, holding onto shame drives a wedge between us and Christ, “For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death.” It is the latter form of grief that demons use to gradually lead us away from a meaningful relationship with God by building a reluctance to come before Him and address our sins. While this will not make us lose our salvation, it will bring unnecessary grief, make us forfeit eternal rewards, hinder our usefulness to God, and greatly damage our relationship with Him.
Fortunately, Scripture reveals two counters to these attacks. First, we live according to the truth that it is not God’s will for us to remain burdened by shame from our sins. Because Christ paid for them all on the Cross, His mercy and grace give us access to spiritual rebound, where confession and repentance allow for immediate and continuous recovery from our sins. This is why Proverbs 24:16a states, “For the righteous falls seven times and rises again.” Also, 1 John 1:9 promises, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” The second counterattack for demonically inflicted shame is having a pure and open heart before the Lord. Proverbs 28:13 notes the necessity of this, “Whoever conceals his transgressions will not prosper, but he who confesses and forsakes them will obtain mercy.” Also, Matthew 5:8 states, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” Doing this requires the courageous, transparent, and honest mindset that David demonstrated in Psalm 139:23-24, “Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!” By casting aside shame and keeping an open heart before the Lord, we can preserve our walk with Him and quickly rebound from sin through confession and repentance.
“As this condition becomes more fully established, you will be gradually freed from the tiresome business of providing Pleasures as temptations. As the uneasiness and his reluctance to face it cut him off more and more from all real happiness, and as habit renders the pleasures of vanity and excitement and flippancy at once less pleasant and harder to forgo (for that is what habit fortunately does to a pleasure) you will find that anything or nothing is sufficient to attract his wandering attention. You no longer need a good book, which he really likes, to keep him from his prayers or his work or his sleep; a column of advertisements in yesterday's paper will do. You can make him waste his time not only in conversation he enjoys with people whom he likes, but in conversations with those he cares nothing about on subjects that bore him. You can make him do nothing at all for long periods. You can keep him up late at night, not roistering, but staring at a dead fire in a cold room. All the healthy and outgoing activities which we want him to avoid can be inhibited and nothing given in return, so that at last he may say, as one of my own patients said on his arrival down here, “I now see that I spent most of my life in doing neither what I ought nor what I liked”. The Christians describe the Enemy as one “without whom Nothing is strong”. And Nothing is very strong: strong enough to steal away a man's best years not in sweet sins but in a dreary flickering of the mind over it knows not what and knows not why, in the gratification of curiosities so feeble that the man is only half aware of them, in drumming of fingers and kicking of heels, in whistling tunes that he does not like, or in the long, dim labyrinth of reveries that have not even lust or ambition to give them a relish, but which, once chance association has started them, the creature is too weak and fuddled to shake off.
“You will say that these are very small sins; and doubtless, like all young tempters, you are anxious to be able to report spectacular wickedness. But do remember, the only thing that matters is the extent to which you separate the man from the Enemy. 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. Murder is no better than cards if cards can do the trick. Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one — the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.” (Lewis)
Screwtape’s dialogue here illustrates here the end goal Satan and his demons have in burdening believers with shame and fleshly living. As they continue down this path, the pleasures of sin lose their luster. In this spiritually weakened and emotionally depressed state, believers are made vulnerable to demonically projected distractions that are not necessarily sinful, but waste their time with idle behavior. As Screwtape notes, this unhappy, uneventful, idle, and wasteful state of mind easily guides the unbeliever to Hell.
While it will not do this to believers, it allows Satan to succeed in his goals outlined in John 10:10a, ““The thief [meaning the devil] comes only to steal and kill and destroy.” Carl Stevens notes that when Satan succeeds in these goals, believers live in self-consciousness rather than God-consciousness, are cheated out of their spiritual capacity, experience a death of this capacity, and suffer a complete destruction of their walk with God (p. 7). When our lives are not fully surrendered to God, are focused on fulfilling the flesh’s lusts, and are burdened by shame, demons are free to lead us down this spiritually devastating path.
The three aforementioned kings each suffered from this path to varying degrees. For example, although Solomon eventually repented and restored his walk with God, his unrestrained pursuits for fleshly pleasure and worldly success brought many years of spiritual devastation, harrowing emptiness, and unimaginable grief. Unfortunately, Asa spent the rest of his days angry over God’s rebuke, oppressive to some of his people, and unwilling to seek God’s help for a severe foot disease. Additionally, whether Uzziah repented before dying is unknown, he was banished to an isolated home to spend his last days as a helpless leper. Because all three kings were not fully surrendered to God, fleshly pursuits and demonic influence wrought great spiritual and earthly theft, death, and destruction upon their lives.
For us today, the carnal Christian’s experience is like that of the Prodigal Son. Like the son initially choosing to feed pigs over return to his father, the shame from our sins can make us reluctant to return to God in repentance. However, like the son’s situation worsening the longer he remained outside his father’s home, the more weak, hardened of heart, and tormented we will be the more we remain in the flesh. Our only hope to avoid a catastrophic, isolated end like those of the three kings is to mimic the Prodigal Son: coming to our spiritual senses, admitting our guilt before God, and repenting from our sins. Just as the son and Solomon were, so will we be graciously welcomed into the Father’s arms to receive His unending mercy, grace, and love.
The devil’s most powerful weapons are not necessarily the most enticing temptations or darkest sins, but streams of small compromises that draw us into the flesh and increasingly away from Christ. Shame is then utilized to secure this division and discourage us from returning to Christ and dealing with our sins. While remaining this way will not affect our salvation, the accounts of kings Solomon, Asa, and Uzziah clearly illustrate the devastating consequences that can result from doing so. Thankfully, no matter how far or long we wander in the spiritual wilderness of our flesh, our loving Savior’s arms remain wide open, desperately waiting to release us from our shame, receive our confession and repentance, and restore our invaluable relationship with Him.
References:
Lewis, C. S. The Screwtape Letters. Self-published, 2025.
Stevens, Carl H. Are You Married to Your Wounds? Grace Publications, 2003.
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