S4E11 – TSL 6 – “Should I stay or should I go?”

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Matt and I discuss Screwtape’s sixth letter where he explains how the patient’s uncertain future should be exploited.

S4E11: Letter #6 – “Should I stay or should I go?” (Download)

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Timestamps

00:00 – Entering “The Eagle & Child”…
00:14 – Welcome
05:04 – Song-of-the-week
07:07 – Quote-of-the-week
07:49 – Drink-of-the-week
10:32 – Toast
11:11 – Chapter Summary
12:34 – Discussion
48:28 – Unscrewing Screwtape
50:24 – “Last Call” Bell and Closing Remarks

YouTube Version

After Show Skype Session

Show Notes

Opening Chit-Chat

  • Matt and I chatted about the change in dynamic since we have a new regular co-host and a series of guest co-hosts. I explained that I’m really excited about some of the guests scheduled. 
    • In just a couple of weeks, we’ve got your interview with Douglas Gresham, one of Lewis’ stepsons. Looking a little further ahead we’ve got Metropolitan Kallistos Ware scheduled, a well-known name in Eastern Orthodox circles, as well as Braxton Hunter, co-host of the popular Trinity Radio podcast and YouTube Channel, as well as the president of Trinity College of the Bible and Theological Seminary in Evansville, Indiana.

Song-of-the-week

  • I explained that the song-of-the-week and episode title from the Clash:

Should I stay or should I go now?

If I go, there will be trouble

And if I stay it will be double

Should I stay or should I go?, The Clash
  • Since the subject of worry is such an important topic in this letter, other possible songs I considered were:

Quote-of-the-week

  • The quote-of-the-week came from this letter:

“There is nothing like suspense and anxiety for barricading a human’s mind against the Enemy. He wants men to be concerned with what they do; our business is to keep them thinking about what will happen to them”

C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #5)

Drink-of-the-week

  • The drink-of-the-week was Clynelish 14 – single malt. It didn’t have the best score (81) (Maccallan and Lagavulin are 95).
    • Color: Bright pale orange
    • Nose: A stroll in the sand dunes
    • Body: Firm, oily and seductively smoky
    • Palate: Firm hit of cleansing flavors, coriander, orange, dry, spicy, distinctively mustardy
    • Finish: Spiciness becomes yet more perfume and exotic

Patreon Toast

  • Next, Matt offered a toast to a Patreon supporter, Ricardo Gordillo:

“Ricardo, while Satan tries to steal you away from the present moment through uncertainty of the future, may your gaze remain firmly on our Heavenly Father, truth and the present reality!“

Matt’s Patreon Toast

Chapter Summary

  • I shared my one-hundred word summary of today’s letter:

The patient may possibly be called to fight in the war. Screwtape wants the patient worrying extensively about all the different possibilities in his future.

Screwtape downplays the effectiveness of fostering hatred for the Germans. He says that goodness often shines through regardless, and it does Hell no good if the patient is, at the same time, also fostering benevolence to his neighbours.

Screwtape ends his letter by presenting a model of humanity based on three concentric circles: will, intellect and fantasy, saying that all virtue must be pushed to the edge and far away from his will.

One-hundred word summary of Chapter 6

I also commented that the C.S. Lewis Doodle for this letter is fantastic:

https://youtu.be/fFhLvycmdJ0

Discussion

Fear

Screwtape begins by saying how happy he is that it seems possible that the patient will be conscripted to fight in the war. Remember, this was a situation with which Lewis experienced firsthand. Not only did he fight in WWI, he was still only forty at the outbreak of WWII and was therefore eligible to be called up for military duty. (In the end he served in the Home Guard, patrolling the streets of Oxford) So, our patient may or may not be sent to fight… Screwtape wants to use this uncertainty towards his hellish ends:

We want him to be in the maximum uncertainty, so that his mind will be filled with contradictory pictures of the future, every one of which arouses hope or fear.

C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #6)

I love the line about “contradictory pictures of the future”. Screwtape wants him to worry about every possible future and forget that they all can’t happen! Later this season we’re going to be reading The Silver Chair and meet Puddleglum who is the master of worrying!

“Remember one is given strength to bear what happens to one, but not the 100 and 1 different things that might happen”

C.S. Lewis, Letters To An American Lady (3/8/56)

Now, one might understand why a demon would like a human to suffer, but Screwtape sees this worry as more than pure enjoyment. He says:

There is nothing like suspense and anxiety for barricading a human’s mind against the Enemy.

C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #6)
  • Screwtape is results-focussed. The only thing which matters is separating the man from God, and that’s why he wants the man to worry – it can be used to separate him from God.
  • Jesus even said this in the parable of the sower:

As for what was sown among thorns, this is he who hears the word, but the cares of the world and the delight in riches choke the word, and it proves unfruitful.

Matthew 13:22

[The Enemy] wants men to be concerned with what they do; our business is to keep them thinking about what will happen to them.

C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #6)

This is Screwtape’s main point in this letter. He’ll articulate it again (differently) at the end of the letter. Screwtape wants to keep the man thinking and away from action. He wants him worried and inert. This keeps him away from doing anything actionable.

Thy Will Be Done

Now, the patient, being a Christian, knows that he must submit to God’s will and carry his cross, which Screwtape explains means:

…primarily that he should accept with patience the tribulation which has actually been dealt out to him — the present anxiety and suspense.

C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #6)

Obviously Screwtape doesn’t want the patient to do this, so he instructs Wormwood:

It is your business to see that the patient never thinks of the present fear as his appointed cross, but only of the things he is afraid of.

C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #6)

There’s a subtlety here that’s easy to miss. The patient should regard the present fear and uncertainty as the cross. What Screwtape wants to do is for him to think that the full catalogue of possible futures are his cross – a far greater load.

  • Screwtape goes on:

…let him forget that, since they are incompatible, they cannot all happen to him, and let him try to practise fortitude and patience to them all in advance. For real resignation, at the same moment, to a dozen different and hypothetical fates, is almost impossible, and the Enemy does not greatly assist those who are trying to attain it…

C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #6)
  • What does the Bible have to say about this? Jesus speaks about anxiety concerning the ture in Matthew’s Gospel:

“Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you shall eat or what you shall drink, nor about your body, what you shall put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add one cubit to his span of life? … But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things shall be yours as well. “Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Let the day’s own trouble be sufficient for the day.

Matthew 6:25-34

Now, telling someone not to be anxious is only so helpful. It’s rather like telling someone not to imagine a pink elephant – it often has the reverse effect! I would suggest, therefore that one reduces anxiety by prayer and by contemplating the good, the true and the beautiful. As St. Paul says to the Philippians:

Have no anxiety about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which passes all understanding, will keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, do; and the God of peace will be with you.

Philippians 4:6-7

Looking at and looking along

Back to Letter #4…in the fourth paragraph there were a few sentences which were somewhat ambiguous… Screwtape reminds Wormwood of his previous letter on prayer where he says that prayers can be weakened by redirecting the patient’s attention from God to his own thoughts about God. He then says

On the other hand fear becomes easier to master when the patient’s mind is diverted from the thing feared to the fear itself, considered as a present and undesirable state of his own mind; and when he regards the fear as his appointed cross he will inevitably think of it as a state of mind.

C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #6)

Back in Letter #4, Screwtape spoke about compromising the patient’s prayers through redirection, turning his attention from God to his own state of mind. Screwtape now articulates a general spiritual rule for Wormwood:

…in all activities of mind which favour our cause, encourage the patient to be unselfconscious and to concentrate on the object, but in all activities favourable to the Enemy bend his mind back on itself.

C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #6)

Basically, they want humans to think about their state of mind only when they’re doing something good, so as to tempt them to pride. If they’re doing something bad, then it serves Hell for them to remain completely self-unaware. This is related to Lewis’ essay Meditation In a Toolshed and the distinction which he draws between two ways of knowing, contemplation and enjoyment.

Uncle S then gives some examples. He says that if the patient is insulted, that he shouldn’t realize he is entering a state of anger. If the man is attracted to a woman’s body, he shouldn’t recognize that he’s entering a state of lustfulness. On the other hand, if he is being charitable, Screwtape wants him to recognize the fact so that he looks at himself, to the exclusion of God and neighbour. Of course, the Christian response to this should follow St. Paul in 2 Corinthians 10:5 where we “take every thought captive to obey Christ”.

Hating the German Leaders

Screwtape then transitions from discussing the patient’s uncertainty about whether he’ll be called up to active service, to his general attitude about the war and the Germans. Screwtape says not to expect too much when it comes to hatred of the Germans…

…it is usually a sort of melodramatic or mythical hatred directed against imaginary scapegoats…. The results of such fanciful hatred are often most disappointing, and of all humans the English are in this respect the most deplorable milksops [pushovers]. They are creatures of that miserable sort who loudly proclaim that torture is too good for their enemies and then give tea and cigarettes to the first wounded German pilot who turns up at the back door.

C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #6)

Screwtape explains that “Their humanity gets the better of this sort of hatred”.

Redirection

Screwtape says that the patient is always going to have some benevolence and some malice. What Screwtape wants to do is to direct these impulses carefully:

…direct the malice to his immediate neighbours whom he meets every day and to thrust his benevolence out to the remote circumference, to people he does not know. The malice thus becomes wholly real and the benevolence largely imaginary. 

C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #6)

Hatred of Hitler or Osama Bin Laden isn’t as “real” as hatred of my neighbour. As we’re approaching an election here in the USA, you might say that it’s easy to have benign feelings towards the persons of Donald Trump or Joe Biden, but it’s very easy to have real hatred for the Biden or Trump supporter who lives next door. You might also consider the fact that we often have more charitable feelings towards the poor in other countries rather than those on our doorstep.

Concentric Circles

There’s a really interesting textual variant in this next section which I’m sure Andrew will discuss in today’s Skype Session, but for now let’s look at the published text… Remember in the very first letter, Screwtape spoke about a time when people connected thinking and doing? Here he gives a mental model of how Wormwood should think of his patient:

Think of your man as a series of concentric circles, his will being the innermost, his intellect coming next, and finally his fantasy. You can hardly hope, at once, to exclude from all the circles everything that smells of the Enemy: but you must keep on shoving all the virtues outward till they are finally located in the circle of fantasy, and all the desirable qualities inward into the Will.  It is only in so far as they reach the will and are there embodied in habits that the virtues are really fatal to us.

C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #6)
  • The important word here is “embodied” – incarnated – made substantial. Screwtape wants all the good and virtue at the edges, as simply ideas and feelings…never translated into action. Feel deeply about the poor – don’t actually do anything to help them. Think about sharing the Gospel – just don’t actually say anything.
  • Screwtape clarifies what he means about the will. He’s not talking about bold resolutions through clenched teeth, but what he calls “the real center”, what the Bible calls “the Heart”, the core of the man’s person.

 (I don’t, of course, mean what the patient mistakes for his will, the conscious fume and fret of resolutions and clenched teeth, but the real centre, what the Enemy calls the Heart.)

C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #6)

The chilling end…

All sorts of virtues painted in the fantasy or approved by the intellect or even, in some measure, loved and admired, will not keep a man from our Father’s house: indeed they may make him more amusing when he gets there…

C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #6)

Screwtape Unscrewed

  1. Do focus on your immediate reality
  2. Do not: waste time constantly worrying about the future!
  3. Do not: just think about doing good, act on it!
  4. Do: love your neighbour (even the guy next door!)
  5. Do: be attentive to your state of mind…but not too much.
  6. Do: combat imagined reality with truth
  • I mentioned the following Casting Crowns song:

Providence eLearning

Posted in Audio Discussion, David, Matt, Podcast Episode, Season 4, The Screwtape Letters and tagged .

David

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After working as a Software Engineer in England for several years, David moved to the United States in 2008, where he settled in San Diego. Then, in 2020 he married his wife, Marie, and moved to La Crosse, Wisconsin. Together they have a son, Alexander, who is adamant that Narnia should be read publication order.