Tuesday in the 4th Week of Lent: Letter 22
The Scripture Lessons for Today are HERE!
We begin Letter 22 with 2 important events.
1. The Patient is in love
2. There is growing stress between Screwtape and Wormwood.
It seems that Screwtape has been caught. He is now under the intense scrutiny of the powers that be in the Kingdom Below and the Secret Police for certain statements made in letters to a certain nephew that seem to almost extol the virtues of the Kingdom Above and criticize the Kingdom Below.
Fortunately, Screwtape has been able to smooth things over with the demonic hierarchy.
Now Wormwood is in trouble for tuning in Screwtape and soon shall pay.
And from this I think we must assume that if demons work against each other and cannot be trusted, why would we even imagine they word work FOR us and to our advantage.
But before we get into the heart of Letter 22, we need a couple of definitions.
1. Hedonist - someone devoted to the pursuit of pleasure as the most important thing in life. This is someone who literally LIVES for personal pleasure and does so only for their own personal benefit.
2. Insipid – lacking spirit; boring.
3. Miserific Vision – this is a word Lewis made up. It is the opposite of Beatific Vision which is an actually theological term meaning “the immediate knowledge of God which the saints and angels enjoy in heaven.
4. Bourgeois Mind – Screwtape is using this as an insult saying that God has no more than a dull and common intention.
5. One Human Writer – at the end of the 3rd paragraph and it refers to a passage written by George McDonald in his book, Unspoken Sermons. Lewis often credited McDonald and his works as a key influence on his own 2nd Christian Conversion. This quote is one of my favorites in The Screwtape Letters.
6. Pshaw – is an allusion to the Irish playwright and philosopher, George Bernard Shaw who wrote extensively about the Life Force concept referenced in this letter.
7. Life Force concept – Influenced by the scientific theories of the 19th century, this thought sought to explain the evolution of life without refence to a higher or originating power. In other words, life just happened.
In Letter 22, the immediate problem is that the Patient is in love and the new girlfriend is the worst kind according to Screwtape. She is a Christian who actually lives out her faith. Screwtape describes her as:
Now only a Christan but such a Christian – a vile, sneaking, simpering, demure, monosyllabic, mouse-like, watery, insignificant, virginal, bread and butter miss.
And the problem is that it is rather hard to get rid of this kind. No longer can she be thrown into the arena of the 1st century to be eaten by the lions. Furthermore, she is the type who laughs in face of demons and temptations.
Screwtape then expresses a great deal of confusion as to why The Enemy acts the way he does when it comes to this creature. Wormwood calls God “a hedonist at heart” and you might remember that a hedonist is
It is pretty clear that demons cannot understand love so instead they look for ways to tear a couple in love apart because there is no other way to battle such a heavenly virtue. Pleasures, as learned in previous letters, are from God. Demons can only twist pleasures from their intended purpose.
Pleasures are for our joy and growth in the love of our Lord. And I think we need to be clear about what actually constitutes a heavenly pleasure. Remember what led to the Patient’s second conversion – a good book and a walk in the country. Other pleasures that come to mind are times spent with those we love, worship when we know that God is with us, and service to others. A good example is our flower ministry at Saint Luke’s. Becca put this together and each week, members of the parish take the flowers from the altar to our members who are sick, homebound, and living in Senior Communities. Certainly, this is a pleasure.
Pleasures are created by God for our joy and growth in the love of our Lord. And we need to remember from earlier letters that demons, no matter how hard they have tried, our not able to create pleasures for their own benefit, they can only corrupt the ones God creates.
Therefore, if everything begins with God and demons can only corrupt or twist, then everything can ultimately return to God. As Screwtape says: We fight under cruel disadvantages. Nothing is naturally on our side.
Screwtape returns to what he refers to as disinterested love. It seems the girlfriend’s family are as Christian as she is and this family is a perfect example of how love grows and supports others. Screwtape quotes George McDonald: The regions where there is only life and therefore all that is not music is silence.
Here we have 2 realities of heaven straight from scripture. We know from the Bible that music was first heard in heaven as the heavenly host praise God in chorus. This quote also takes us to the OT book of 1st Kings where Elijah finds God – not in the wind or the earthquake but in the shear silence.
Noise, on the other hand according to Screwtape, corrupts and confuses. Noise is all the stuff that gets in the way of our relationship with God and our neighbor. Screwtape tells Wormwood:
We will make the whole universe a noise in the end. We have already made great strides in this direction as regards the Earth. The melodies and silences of Heaven will be shouted down in the end.
So if music = praise and silence = prayer, then noise = sin.
Letter 22 closes with this strange note that Screwtape has now become a large centipede and is dictating the end of the letter to his secretary, Toadpipe. John Milton in Paradise Lost describes these transformations as periodic punishment for evil doing. In other words, you literally become what you are. Screwtape prefers, however, to think of this in terms of Shaw’s concept of the Life Force. It a reflection of a greater glory for his service to our Father Below.
Let us close today with our prayer for Tuesday in the 4th Week of Lent. I want to call you attention to the part where we ask God to flood our darkened minds with heavenly light. I could not help but remember the reference to darkened minds in Letter 21.
Let us pray
O God, with you is the well of life, and in your light we see light: Quench our thirst with living water, and flood our darkened minds with heavenly light; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.