Stand on your head and look at this logo…
I’ve been re-listening to the Screwtape Letters by Focus on the Family Radio. It is a phenomenally good production, as you can glimpse from this behind the scenes video:
For those who don’t know, The Screwtape Letters are a fictional series of letters from an older devil (Screwtape) to his nephew (Wordwood), a young tempter on duty with his first patient, John Hamilton, giving advice on how to trip his patient up enough to hopefully recapture his soul for ‘our Father below’.
Given that the original letters are written in first person and without other dialogue it was going to be a challenge turning it into a radio drama. I’m happy to say that I’m convinced they have done the letters justice. It’s truly an epic production.
Here’s some gold from the letters which I think come across strongly in the audio drama:
On the Church (after Wormwood’s patient becomes a Christian):
One of our great allies at present is the Church itself. Do not misunderstand me. I do not mean the Church as we see her spread but through all time and space and rooted in eternity, terrible as an army with banners. That, I confess, is a spectacle which makes I our boldest tempters uneasy. But fortunately it is quite invisible to these humans. All your patient sees is the half-finished, sham Gothic building. When he goes inside, he sees the local grocer with rather in 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 hymn book containing 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 avoided. You want to lean pretty heavily on those neighbours. Make his mind flit to and fro between an expression like “the body of Christ” and the actual faces in the next pew. It matters very little, of course, what kind of people that next pew really contains. You may know one of them to be a great warrior on the Enemy’s side. No matter. Your patient, thanks to Our Father below, is a fool. 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.
On ‘daily pinpricks’:
In civilised life domestic hatred usually expresses itself by saying things which would appear quite harmless on paper (the words are not offensive) but in such a voice, or at such a moment, that they are not far short of a blow in the face. To keep this game up you and Glubose must see to it that each of these two fools has a sort of double standard. Your patient must demand that all his own utterances are to be taken at their face value and judged simply on the actual words, while at the same time judging all his mother’s utterances with the fullest and most oversensitive interpretation of the tone and the context and the suspected intention. She must be encouraged to do the same to him. Hence from every quarrel they can both go away convinced, or very nearly convinced, that they are quite innocent. You know the kind of thing: “I simply ask her what time dinner will be and she flies into a temper.” Once this habit is well established you have the delightful situation of a human saying things with the express purpose of offending and yet having a grievance when offence is taken.
On the trough periods of faith:
Sooner or later [God] withdraws, if not in fact, at least from their conscious experience, all those supports and incentives. He leaves the creature to stand up on its own legs—to carry out from the will alone duties which have lost all relish. It is during such trough periods, much more than during the peak periods, that it is growing into the sort of creature He wants it to be. Hence the prayers offered in the state of dryness are those which please Him best. We can drag our patients along by continual tempting, because we design them only for the table, and the more their will is interfered with the better. He cannot “tempt” to virtue as we do to vice. He wants them to learn to walk and must therefore take away His hand; and if only the will to walk is really there He is pleased even with their stumbles. Do not be deceived, Wormwood. Our cause is never more in danger, than when a human, no longer desiring, but intending, to do our Enemy’s will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.
On Church hopping:
You mentioned casually in your last letter that the patient has continued to attend one church, and one only, since he was converted, and that he is not wholly pleased with it. May I ask what you are about? Why have I no report on the causes of his fidelity to the parish church? Do you realise that unless it is due to indifference it is a very bad thing? Surely you know that if a man can’t be cured of churchgoing, the next best thing is to send him all over the neighbourhood looking for the church that “suits” him until he becomes a taster or connoisseur of churches.
…
I think I warned you before that if your patient can’t be kept out of the Church, he ought at least to be violently attached to some party within it. I don’t mean on really doctrinal issues; about those, the more lukewarm he is the better. The real fun is working up hatred of styles and approaches to worship. Stand or sit or kneel, lower the head, raise ones arms, traditional or modern music. These issues are an admirable ground for our activities. Without them the church might have become a positive hotbed of charity and humility!
Lewis’ insights are just penetrating.
But also a word of warning. The original published letters were fairly dense in of themselves. While the radio drama has sought to simplify some of the language and arguments the bulk of Lewis’ work remains, thankfully, intact. Given that the letters were meant to be read and reflected upon their translation to audio drama does mean that quite a few of the letters are very dense to listen to. A couple of re-listens will be necessary, but a joy in of itself.
Comments are closed