In today’s letter, Matt and guest co-host Crystal Hurd discuss how Screwtape intends to counteract a dangerous new trait in the patient – humility!
S4E28: Letter #14 – “Humble and kind” (Download)
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Timestamps
00:00:00 – Entering “The Eagle & Child”…
00:00:54 – Welcome
00:01:22 – Crystal Hurd
00:04:12 – Song-of-the-week
00:09:11 – Quote-of-the-week
00:10:21 – Drink-of-the-week
00:11:08 – Patreon Toast
00:11:49 – Chapter Summary
00:12:33 – Discussion
01:03:23 – “Last Call” Bell and Unscrewing Screwtape
YouTube Version
After Show Skype Session
No Skype Session today!
Show Notes
Opening Chit-Chat
- Matt and Crystal spoke about meeting at the C.S. Lewis Symposium:
- Matt also shared some of her biographical information:
Dr. Crystal Hurd is an educator and researcher from Virginia where she lives with her husband and three dogs.
Biographical information for Dr. Crystal Hurd
Over the past decade, she has read and researched both biographical and rhetorical aspects of C.S Lewis. Her dissertation applied Transformational Leadership theory to his life and works. She is currently working on a book titled The Leadership of C.S. Lewis, which will be published in 2021 by Winged Lion Press.
Additionally, she is the 2020 recipient of the Clyde S. Kilby Research Grant awarded by The Marion E. Wade Center at Wheaton College. Her research will be developed into a book exploring the artistic influences of Lewis’s parents and grandparents titled “Bookish, Clever People”.
- We’ll be getting Dr. Hurd back on the show again for an “After Hours” episode when her book is about to be published.
Song-of-the-week
- Since Crystal is a Virginian native, today’s episode title comes from a country song, Humble and Kind by Tim McGraw (it’s a shame she doesn’t actually like country music…):
Hold the door, say “please”, say “thank you”.
Don’t steal, don’t cheat, and don’t lie.
I know you got mountains to climb But always stay humble and kind.
When the dreams you’re dreamin’ come to you,
When the work you put in is realized,
Let yourself feel the pride But always stay humble and kind
Tim McGraw, Humble and Kind
David was tempted to name the episode after a song which Carly Simon wrote about him:
…or after a Muppet song:
- Crystal has been married for twenty years and she and Matt spoke about the institution.
Quote-of-the-week
- Matt couldn’t decide between two quotations for the quote-of-the-week:
Your patient has become humble; have you drawn his attention to the fact? All virtues are less formidable to us once the man is aware that he has them, but this is specially true of humility.”
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #14)
By this virtue [of humility], as by all the others, our Enemy wants to turn the man’s attention away from self to Him, and to the man’s neighbours.
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #14)
Drink-of-the-week
- While Crystal was drinking herbal tea, Matt was enjoying Rock Island Blended Malt Scotch…
- Color: Almost none/ white wine looking
- Nose: Coastal Peat with touches of green fruit
- Palette: sea breeze; slight spice and cracked pepper; some peat and little hints of vanilla
- Finish: salinity lasts for awhile with some peppery hints
Patreon Toast
- With no new Gold-level Patreon supporter to toast, Matt toasted all of our “Slackers” community, Silver-level supporters and above who chat with us on our Slack channel.
Chapter Summary
- Matt shared my one-hundred word summary of today’s letter:
Screwtape explains how to overcome the patient’s burgeoning humility, firstly by making him proud of it, and secondly by making him think that humility means thinking less of himself. God wants the patient to delight in all good things, including the patient himself, to give up self-love and discover a new kind of love. He will remind the patient that:
One-hundred word summary of Letter #14
(1) he’s rarely required to declare his abilities
(2) his talents will vary over time
(3) everything he has is a gift from Heaven in the first place.
Wormwood’s job is to keep such reminders out of the patient’s head!
Discussion
What is humility?
- Crystal explained that humility is not self-neglect.
- Matt spoke about the ability to enjoy the works of others:
The Enemy wants him, in the end, to be so free from any bias in his own favour that he can rejoice in his own talents as frankly and gratefully as in his neighbour’s talents — or in a sunrise, an elephant, or a waterfall.
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #14)
- He also spoke about how even self-pity and self-negativity is self-centered.
- Despite our fallenness and brokenness, God wants to dwell in us and transform us from the inside-out.
The patient’s situation
- Matt explained the patient’s situation following his repentance and renewed conversion:
…[the patient] is making none of those confident resolutions which marked his original conversion. No more lavish promises of perpetual virtue… but only a hope for the daily and hourly pittance to meet the daily and hourly temptation! This is very bad.
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #14)
- Crystal referred to The Dark Night of the Soul made famous by St. John of the Cross. Matt connected this to his own struggles during COVID and how he grew in humility!
- Matt referred to a scene from the movie On Golden Pond:
Screwtape’s attack
Your patient has become humble; have you drawn his attention to the fact? All virtues are less formidable to us once the man is aware that he has them, but this is specially true of humility. Catch him at the moment when he is really poor in spirit and smuggle into his mind the gratifying reflection, “By jove! I’m being humble”, and almost immediately pride — pride at his own humility — will appear.
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #14)
- Crystal explained that Lewis was not impervious to pride himself:
I don’t think he ever looked down on anybody, and he was always willing to learn from anybody. It always seemed to me a great pity he did not preach more often, until I learned the reason for his reluctance to do this; he told me one day that after he had delivered a sermon and had received the kind words and the congratulations of all and sundry—as always happened when he spoke in public—he began to think what a jolly fine and clever fellow Jack Lewis was and, said he, ‘I had to get to my knees pretty quickly to kill the deadly sin of pride!’
Morris cited in Como (pg. 200)
- Crystal spoke about how the Catholic poet, Gerard Manly Hopkins, gave up poetry for a time because of fears that it was rivaling his love of God and fostering his pride.
Screwtape’s Counterattack
- What does Screwtape say his nephew should do if the patient begins to recognize that he’s being tempted to pride?
If he awakes to the danger and tries to smother this new form of pride, make him proud of his attempt — and so on, through as many stages as you please. But don’t try this too long, for fear you awake his sense of humour and proportion, in which case he will merely laugh at you and go to bed.
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #14)
- Matt alluded to the quotations at the beginning of the book where Lewis quotes Luther and Moore.
Misunderstanding humility
…conceal from the patient the true end of Humility. Let him think of it not as self-forgetfulness but as a certain kind of opinion (namely, a low opinion) of his own talents and character…
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #14)
Fix in his mind the idea that humility consists in trying to believe those talents to be less valuable than he believes them to be. No doubt they are…[but the] great thing is to make him value an opinion for some quality other than truth… [W]e have the chance of keeping their minds endlessly revolving on themselves in an effort to achieve the impossible.
- Chapter 8 of Christian Behavior in Mere Christianity is titled “The Great Sin” which is PRIDE. Humility is in opposition to pride.
- Crystal connected this to leadership and Matt connected it to Brene Brown.
“The choice of every lost soul can be expressed in the words, ‘Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.’
C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce
“Hell is incessant autobiography”
Bruce Edwards
God’s plan
The Enemy wants him, in the end, to be so free from any bias in his own favour that he can rejoice in his own talents as frankly and gratefully as in his neighbour’s talents — or in a sunrise, an elephant, or a waterfall.
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #14)
- Crystal told a story about Anne Lamott.
…it is His long-term policy, I fear, to restore to them a new kind of self-love — a charity and gratitude for all selves, including their own; when they have really learned to love their neighbours as themselves, they will be allowed to love themselves as their neighbours.
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #14)
I wish I had got a bit further with humility myself: if I had, I could probably tell you more about the relief, the comfort, of taking the fancy dress off–getting rid of the false self, with all its ‘Look at me’ and ‘Aren’t I a good boy?’ and all its posing and posturing”
C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (“The Great Sin”)
His whole effort, therefore, will be to get the man’s mind off the subject of his own value altogether. He would rather the man thought himself a great architect or a great poet and then forgot about it, than that he should spend much time and pains trying to think himself a bad one.
C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (“The Great Sin”)
The Enemy will also try to render real in the patient’s mind a doctrine which they all profess but find it difficult to bring home to their feelings — the doctrine that they did not create themselves, that their talents were given them, and that they might as well be proud of the colour of their hair. But always and by all methods the Enemy’s aim will be to get the patient’s mind off such questions, and yours will be to fix it on them. Even of his sins the Enemy does not want him to think too much: once they are repented, the sooner the man turns his attention outward, the better the Enemy is pleased…
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #14)
- Matt referred to the murderer in heaven in The Great Divorce. He also spoke about the necessity to keep our eyes fixed on Jesus.
- Crystal explained that, in Tolkien’s language, we are sub-created; all good aspects about us are from God. We should take no pride in our own abilities and self-righteousness
The same principle holds, you know, for more everyday matters. Even in social life, you will never make a good impression on other people until you stop thinking about what sort of impression you are making. Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it. The principle runs through all life from top to bottom.
C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book IV, Chapter 11)
Screwtape Unscrewed
- Do love beauty & truth, wherever you find it
- Do not have a false humility
- Do not think less of yourself, but rather think of your “self” less.
Crystal Hurd
- You can find out more about Crystal on her website. She’s also on Facebook.
- She also writes for Sehnsuct and Illuminations of the Fantastic.
