‘Screwtape Letters’ teaches lessons of evils

I’d like to spend a little time talking about demons, Christianity, and C. S. Lewis – which is a great combination and very much related, at least to me. This fall, I am leading a book discussion on Lewis’ “The Screwtape Letters” during Discovery at Arctic Warrior Chapel, and there are lessons we can take from the book no matter what your faith background may be.

C. S. Lewis, perhaps best known for his “Chronicles of Narnia,” has been dead for more than 50 years, but still creates a stir in Christian circles. Evangelicals, Protestants, and Catholics all lay claim to his writings.

Many children grow up reading “The Chronicles of Narnia” and eventually move into reading Lewis’ deeper works of theology and apologetics: “Mere Christianity,” “Miracles,” “The Four Loves,” and “Surprised by Joy.”

“The Screwtape Letters,” however, remains one of Lewis’ most popular works.

Continuously in print since it was first published in 1942, it has been adapted into plays, made into comic books and cartoons, and recorded as a drama by John Cleese. With so many other distractions, I wonder what makes this book about demons and temptation so wildly popular seventy-five years after it was first published.

Its appeal, I think, comes from Lewis’s talent for writing for the common person and putting Christianity into everyday terms. Unlike those other masters of demonic themes and hell, Dante and Milton, Lewis avoids grand theologies of hell and the universe and focuses instead on common, normal, and routine temptations of life. “The Screwtape Letters” features a senior-level demon called Screwtape, writing letters to his woefully inexperienced nephew, Wormwood, who is desperately trying to win the soul of a nameless young man. This man, called the patient, is unremarkable in every sense but he fights with his mother, falls in love, and dies during an air raid in World War II. Let’s be honest, he could be any one of us.

Beginning with “My Dear Wormwood,” the creepy and yet charming Screwtape guides his nephew through the world of temptation and how to best corrupt the human soul. Ending each letter with “Your affectionate uncle,” Screwtape wants nothing but the best for his nephew, a brand-new demon uneducated in the finer methods of temptation. Screwtape is more than just a demon; he is a masterful theologian who understands the human condition.

“When two humans have lived together for many years,” he writes to his nephew, “it usually happens that each has tones of voice and expressions of face which are almost unendurably irritating to the other. Work on that.” One by one, through 31 letters of guidance and advice, Screwtape shows Wormwood the finer points of corrupting a soul.

Opportunities for sin are what fill a human lifetime. Screwtape tells Wormwood that God “cannot tempt to virtue as we do to vice” and letter by letter he reveals these temptations – common everyday objects like alcohol, which is best used as a temptation “when your man is dull and weary” than as a means of joy among friends.

Despite spending years sharing these themes through sermons, radio addresses, and other books, Lewis was never livelier than when he wrote of demons. No matter how many other ways he tried to write about faith and how to strengthen it, we still like hearing from the devil – or at least his representatives – best.

The letters are really theology in reverse – showing the love of God through the eyes and deceptions of the devil.

But no matter what you believe, the letters frame the human experience as a familiar sequence of trials, from how you make or take your tea (or coffee for Americans), what social gatherings you attend, your partner in life, and even your politics. I think the novel remains popular today because whether or not you agree with Lewis that the devil is real, the evils promoted by Screwtape – greed, gluttony, pride, envy, and violence – most certainly are.