Like old times, Matt and I sit down to discuss a chapter of C.S. Lewis! In this chapter of The Screwtape Letters, Uncle Screwtape advises his nephew on how to handle the patient’s church-going…
S4E6: Letter #2 – “We are family” (Download)
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Time Stamps
00:00:00 – Entering “The Eagle & Child”…
00:00:14 – Welcome
00:00:49 – New Horn child has arrived!
00:01:19 – Song-of-the-week
00:06:26 – Quote-of-the-week
00:07:01 – Drink-of-the-week
00:09:37 – Toast
00:10:21 – Chapter Summary
00:11:13 – Discussion
00:45:54 – Unscrewing Screwtape
00:59:56 – “Last Call” Bell and Closing Remarks
YouTube Version
After Show Skype Session
I gave Andrew a call and we chatted about this week’s episode I recorded with Matt:
Show Notes
Opening
- The guest co-host on the previous episode was Trent Horn and we toasted his son who was soon to be born. You can listen to the rather unexpected birth story of little John Paul here!
Song-of-the-week
- The inspiration for today’s title:
Everyone can see we’re together
As we walk on by
(And) and we fly just like birds of a feather
I won’t tell no lie
all of the people around us they say
Can they be that close
Just let me state for the record
We’re giving love in a family dose
We Are Family, Sister Sledge
Other possibilities for this week were Jesus Freak by DC Talk, as well as They’ll know we are Christians by our love.
Chit-chat
- We spoke about Matt’s confusion between David Copperfield the magician and David Copperfield which is a book by Charles Dickens.
- Matt spoke about going to Confession this week.
Quote-of-the-week
- Matt shared the quote-of-the-week:
“Provided that any of those neighbours sing out of tune, or have boots that squeak, or double chins, or odd clothes, the patient will quite easily believe that their religion must therefore be somehow ridiculous”
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #2)
Drink-of-the-week
- The drink-of-the-week was Lagavulin 16:
- Color: Full Amber
- Nose: Sea spray, peat smoke. Stings the back of the nose
- Body: Full, smooth, very firm
- Palate: Peaty dryness like gunpowder tea. As the palate develops, oily, grassy, and, in particular, salty notes emerge
- Finish: Peat fire. Warming. A bear Hug Score: 95
Patreon Toast
- We toasted a Patreon supporter, Sam M:
Sam, whenever dryness appears in the spiritual life and emotions betray your spiritual habits, may the Lord provide the grace to persevere and get to the other side where wormwood has a harder time tempting you!
Patreon Toast
Chapter Summary
- I shared my summary of the letter:
In today’s epistle, we discover that Wormwood’s patient has become a Christian! After threats of punishment, Screwtape says that, like many previous converts, the man may still be reclaimed for Hell. Screwtape tells him to use the man’s own parish to lead him away from Christ, by fostering in him disappointment in his parish, focussed on the failings of his co-religionists, whether real or imagined. Screwtape ends his letter with a warning. If the patient makes it through this period of disappointment, he will be much harder to tempt in the future…
One-hundred word summary of Letter #2
Patient becomes a Christian
- The patient has become a Christian! Screwtape warns his nephew:
“…do not indulge the hope that you will escape the usual penalties…”
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #2)
This is the dog-eat-dog world Lewis described in the longer preface.
- Despite his threats, Screwatpe is confident that the man can be reclaimed:
There is no need to despair; hundreds of these adult converts have been reclaimed after a brief sojourn in the Enemy’s camp and are now with us. All the habits of the patient, both mental and bodily, are still in our favour.
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #2)
Matt pointed out that spiritual battle isn’t over once you become a Christian. I referred to Rev Brian McGreevy since he views The Screwtape Letters primarily through the lens of habits.
The two meanings of “Church”
- Screwtape says that, in the journey to reclaim the Patient, the “church” is going to be a great ally. However, he qualifies what he means:
Do not misunderstand me. I do not mean the Church as we see her spread out through all time and space and rooted in eternity, terrible as an army with banners. That, I confess, is a spectacle which makes our boldest tempters uneasy. But fortunately it is quite invisible to these humans.
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #2)
- What he means instead is the Patient’s local parish:
All your patient sees is the half-finished, sham Gothic erection on the new building estate.
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #2)
A “building estate” is a planned community, usually by a single developer. The church Lewis has in mind is almost certainly a Church of England parish.
Putting the church to Hellish work
- Screwtape would rather the man not go to church:
When you go to church you are really listening-in to the secret wireless from our friends: that is why the enemy is so anxious to prevent us from going
C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book II, Chapter 2)
…but if he can’t stop him going, he wants to pollute the experience. He describes the Patient’s experience of going to church on Sunday:
When he goes inside, he sees the local grocer with rather an oily expression on his face bustling up to offer him one shiny little book containing a liturgy which neither of them understands, and one shabby little book containing corrupt texts of a number of religious lyrics, mostly bad, and in very small print. When he gets to his pew and looks round him he sees just that selection of his neighbours whom he has hitherto avoided.
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #2)
The “shiny little book” was most likely The Book of Common Prayer. The full title is quite a mouthful: The Book of Common Prayer and Administration of the Sacraments and Other Rites and Ceremonies of the Church According to the Use of the Church of England: Together with the Psalter or Psalms of David Pointed as They Are To Be Sung or Said in Churches and the Form or Manner of Making Ordaining and Consecrating of Bishops Priests and Deacons. It was originally compiled by Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer in 1549. The version that would have been used by the Patient was the 1662 version, hence the reference to “archaic”.
The “shabby little book” would have been a hymnal, quite likely Hymns Ancient and Modern for Use in the Services of the Church.
All this is all reminiscent of Lewis’ own description of going to church:
I disliked very much their hymns, which I considered to be fifth-rate poems set to sixth-rate music. But as I went on I saw the great merit of it. I came up against different people of quite different outlooks and different education, and then gradually my conceit just began peeling off. I realized that the hymns (which were just sixth-rate music) were, nevertheless, being sung with devotion and benefit by an old saint in elastic-side boots in the opposite pew, and then you realize that you aren’t fit to clean those boots. It gets you out of your solitary conceit. It is not for me to lay down laws, as I am only a layman, and I don’t know much.
God in the Dock (Answers to Questions on Christianity)
I briefly mentioned how David Bentley-Hart speaks about the radical equality exemplified by the early Christian Church in his book Atheist Delusions. Matt spoke about the “Household Codes” found in St. Paul’s epistles.
Fostering Disappointment
Screwtape tells wormwood that he should draw his attention to these people sitting around him and to find them lacking in some way. He says it doesn’t matter whether the people in those pews are Saints, sinners or anywhere in-between. Thanks to the genius of Hell, the Patient can be taught to pay attention to any minor annoyance:
Make his mind flit to and fro between an expression like “the body of Christ” and the actual faces in the next pew.
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #2)
This is alluding to various passages from St. Paul:
Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.
1 Corinthians 12:27
For as in one body we have many members, and all the members do not have the same function, so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another.
Romans 12:4-5
- Matt mentioned the movie St. Vincent:
Muddled Thinking
- Screwtape says it doesn’t matter whether the people in those pews are Saints, sinners or anywhere in-between. Thanks to the genius of Hell, the Patient can be taught to pay attention to any minor annoyance:
It matters very little, of course, what kind of people that next pew really contains. Provided that any of those neighbours sing out of tune, or have boots that squeak, or double chins, or odd clothes, the patient will quite easily believe that their religion must therefore be somehow ridiculous
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #2)
Of course, this is entirely illogical! However, this just confirms what Screwtape said in the previous letter about logic, argument and modern people. What do they teach them in these schools?!
The great thing about saints is that they will not lose their faith because of bad liturgical music. They can suffer bad preaching, small budgets, poor management, and every single one of the many fools we have in this hospital for sinners. They’ll still be in the pews on Sunday, quietly winning the world for Christ, slowly transforming the Church, recruiting more saints and often fixing other problems in the process.
Matthew Warner, Messy & Foolish
- Screwtape says that even the Patient’s conception of “Christian” is attached to some subconscious romantic notion involving togas! Something he’s got from plays and movies. He says that it is Wormwood’s job to never let him realize this.
Never let it come to the surface; never let him ask what he expected them to look like… Keep everything hazy in his mind now, and you will have all eternity wherein to amuse yourself by producing in him the peculiar kind of clarity which Hell affords…
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #2)
Work hard, then, on the disappointment or anticlimax which is certainly coming to the patient during his first few weeks as a churchman.
Lewis warned us about this in Mere Christianity:
Now Faith, in the sense in which I am here using the word, is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods. For moods will change, whatever view your reason takes. I know that by experience.
C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book III, Chapter 11)
What God is doing in the disappointment
- Screwtape points out that God doesn’t necessarily intervene to prevent in the disappointment that Wormwood needs to foster in the Patient, saying that this is true of every human endeavour:
- A boy who loves stories of the Odyssey learns Greek
- A couple gets married and starts the task of learning to live together
The Enemy takes this risk because He has a curious fantasy of making all these disgusting little human vermin into what He calls His “free” lovers and servants — ”sons” is the word He uses, with His inveterate love of degrading the whole spiritual world by unnatural liaisons with the two-legged animals. Desiring their freedom, He therefore refuses to carry them, by their mere affections and habits, to any of the goals which He sets before them: He leaves them to “do it on their own”.
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #2)
This idea of sonship is found throughout St. Paul:
it is the Spirit himself bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God
Romans 8:16
We spoke about what it might mean for God to leave us to do things on our own. I suggested that this is mostly related to feelings and Matt reminded us that we can’t fully trust what Screwtape says.
- While Screwtape sees this as a fantastic opportunity, he notes that there is a real danger for Hell in this matter:
If once they get through this initial dryness successfully, they become much less dependent on emotion and therefore much harder to tempt.
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #2)
Getting through this desert season will give him perspective:
it is quite impossible—even physically impossible—to maintain any emotion for very long…. Feelings come and go, and when they come a good use can be made of them: they cannot be our regular spiritual diet.
C.S. Lewis, The World’s Last Night
This is explored further in Letter 8 when he talks about the Law of Undulation.
When Christians fail…
- Of course, if there is real, rational ground for disappointment at church, for Screwtape, so much the better!
If the patient discovers that a fellow parishioner plays too much cards, or is tight-fisted with money, or an extortion, then it’s much easier to foster disappointment.
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #2)
- However, there’s one question that Screwtape says the man must never be allowed to ask, and it relates to considering his own shortcomings and what that has to say about his new-found faith:
“If I, being what I am, can consider that I am in some sense a Christian, why should the different vices of those people in the next pew prove that their religion is mere hypocrisy and convention?”
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #2)
- This was basically my own story in my twenties. I looked around and saw a church of hypocrites and at no point did I ever consider the significance of my own failings and hypocrisy. Not once! Funnily enough, Screwtape says:
You may ask whether it is possible to keep such an obvious thought from occurring even to a human mind. It is, Wormwood, it is! Handle him properly and it simply won’t come into his head. He has not been anything like long enough with the Enemy to have any real humility yet.
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #2)
- Screwtape says that because he lacks any real humility, the patient hasn’t really got a good grasp of his own failings. What he confesses on his lips about his sinfulness is “all parrot talk”:
At bottom, he still believes he has run up a very favourable credit-balance in the Enemy’s ledger by allowing himself to be converted, and thinks that he is showing great humility and condescension in going to church with these “smug”, commonplace neighbours at all.
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #2)
Much like the Publican and the Pharisee, we like to tell God how good we’ve been.
- It’s very easy to accuse others of “smugness”, particularly if they’re making us feel uncomfortable. He’s not really “poor in spirit” yet. Think back to Mere Christianity where Lewis talks about the kind of faith we come to when we “throw up the sponge”.
…as he is thinking of claims and counterclaims between himself and God—he is not yet in the right relation to Him. He is misunderstanding what he is and what God is. And he cannot get into the right relation until he has discovered the fact of our bankruptcy…
C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, (Book III, Chapter 12)
Unscrewing Screwtape
- Do: Form good habits
- DO: Go to church – Screwtape doesn’t like it
- DO: Focus on the larger, universal church and the Heavenly worship when you attend your local parish
- DO: Demystify your liturgy by learning more about it – foster a holy curiosity!
- DO: Periodically fast so as to master yourself – start small
- DON’T: Focus on the sins of others – instead remember your own weaknesses
- DO: Expect to be disappointed with your church at some point!
- I ended by sharing something I wrote to a friend who was disappointed with the Church, specifically regarding recent scandal:
Your constant refrain concerning scandal in the Church suggests to me that this is a significant issue for you. It’s understandable. It is for many people. In fact, during the early centuries of Christianity this was an extremely important and controversial question: should those who denied Christ under persecution, or who surrendered the Holy Scriptures to be burnt, be readmitted to the Church if they repented? Should those ordained members who renounced their faith be able to return to ministry? There was a schismatic group called the Donatists who said “Absolutely not!”
At the heart of the matter was the question: what is the Church? The Donatists viewed the Church as a Museum of Saints. The Catholic Church rejected this limited and narrow understanding. Instead, She said that the Church was a Hospital for Sinners. She would therefore readmit fallen away Christians if they repented.
As a consequence, the Church often looks (and smells!) like a hospital. The Church is full of medicine, nurses and doctors, but She is also full of damaged people and the walking wounded. There are often outbreaks of disease. It often doesn’t look pleasant, but it is the best place to be for those who need healing. For this, I’m grateful, otherwise I fear I could never be admitted.
David Bates, What about church scandal?
- Matt also shared about his own spiritual journey, will, grace and habits.
