A Screwtape Letter

June 20, 2001

TO: Infernal Police, Treason Department, Hell

Dear Sir:

Recently I received a letter from my uncle, Screwtape. I have received numerous letters from him over the years, so at first I did not think much of it. However, when I sat down and read the letter, I was extremely alarmed. I’m only a Tempter, and am not sure what type of repercussions ideas such as his may have; but I am sure thoughts such as these can be no good for Our Father’s cause. I am submitting a copy of his letter for your department to review and decide what further actions to pursue. I hope all of this is help to you and Our Father.

Sincerely,

Wormwood

The letter reads as follows:

“Dear Wormwood,

The age is upon us, my dear nephew. The age where we finally get Our Father what he has always deserved – Lunch, of the grandest kind. Over the years, as you have grown, I realize you’ve had your ups and downs. Losing your first patient, now that was a horrible blunder and looked very bad in the eyes of those down here. Yet, I’m still hesitant to say you’ve done better as a junior Tempter over the years. In fact, the way the world looks now, I imagine you will do even better, possibly taking my place down here when I fade away.

Oh, to be young again. To be in your shoes! I can’t imagine the simplicity of it all. When I was tempting, the souls were much harder to convert. Humans had not lost all their connections to the Enemy as they seem to have presently. It would take years and countless measures such as trickery, cunning, deception, instigation and other menacing ways in order to just get a firm hold on a human soul. Now, it seems, as soon as a new human is born, its soul is already corrupted and ready for our plucking.

Our numbers down here have grown exponentially over the years. And I do say it has to do with the changing world the humans live in. In the past, men actually cared about their status with the Enemy. Men would talk, converse, share experiences and grow ties to each other making it harder to tempt them and keep knowledge away. In the present time, however, there is so much that humans can get preoccupied by that it makes our work oh so much easier.

Think about it nephew. Think about how easy it is to obtain a soul. Over the years, you and the other young Tempters have brought so much food to our table, that we actually have a surplus storage of souls waiting to be consumed. It is amazing! Maybe it has to do with all our work over the years. I don’t dare say anything else in front of my superiors for fear of the wrath of treason. But, in my old age, I am beginning to see what the secret of the Enemy is. He is letting us win! He has been letting us win all of the time. It’s as if he wants us to corrupt all his creation’s souls so they can be saved again. Look at how all the excess in the human race has come about, and it seems to be without any of our real doing at all. If you utter one bit of this information to anyone, I will swear it was not me and have you condemned for Eternity. You HAVE screwed up enough times for that to still happen.

How I mean all of this is as follows. We have worked so hard for Our Father by trying to get all the petty and miniscule ideas and propaganda to matter to the humans ever so much. And we seem to have done very well in this category. However, I don’t think it is from all of our hard work. Look at the normal course of human evolution. Look how everything IS in the new millennium. Technology, money, greed, hopelessness, depression, anguish, anxiety, etc. all abound in infinite proportions. The Enemy has let that happen. You see, I believe He wants it to get so bad, His subjects will have nothing else to do but repent and save themselves. It’s a cycle He puts them through, and it’s all by the humans’ own choice. That cursed free-will He allows them to have.

Technology is the first instance where all of this shows up, especially after the new millennium and the technological advances happening one after the other. There is so much information available to the human mind, that it learns a little about everything and not a lot about something. It is very easy for us to keep them distracted in this forum. So easy, it seems that we shall allow their politician, Gore, to take full credit for the information highway as we laugh at the normal evolution of technology. I know our Intelligence Department had a lot to do with this one, and it was the best creation they could invent in order to keep the human mind from true knowledge. There is less face to face interaction between individuals, and that helps us depersonalize what a human being actually is.

We also seem to have found ourselves in a world full of depressed, hopeless and anguished people. How better than to use this in our favor? No human is ever truly happy anymore about their lives and the direction they are going. They change careers more than they change their underwear it seems at times. Bouncing from occupation to occupation, never really understanding one thing completely. This just helps us prey on their weak minds and allows us to continue to clutter up their already cloudy minds. The drugs their Psychiatrists prescribe to treat these symptoms have been introduced by our Dependency Department. Those drugs allow us to cloud their minds even more so they are unable to truly take over their own situation and life. What more could we ask for than to be able to grab the reigns of each individual and drive them straight under the ground?

The anxiety most of the humans exibit comes from all the misunderstandings of their minds. Thank Our Father that we have been able to instill the concept of Time and Space into their feeble minds. As we well know, however, Time and Space are just a figment of their limited minds. They are constantly immersed in a deception of past and future, and forget the Eternal Present, or Now. As long as we continue to let them live worrying about the past and anticipating an unknown future, they will never truly understand the Eternal Moment and be graced with the Enemy’s presence.

We’ve created a world full of a great many Do’ers and very few Be’ers. The Do’ers are the ones who are constantly doing something. They are the “Materialist Magicians” who love a material world full of greed, money and deception. There are few Be’ers who actually grasp the Enemy’s Eternity and just enjoy the Moment. The funny thing is though, nephew, is those that Be have a very difficult time subsisting in a Do’ers world. Humans must Do to survive. It’s the was we have set up their system. Simply trying to Be will be the death of them. So, we have a paradox here. A paradox where those who truly want to BE in the Enemy’s Eternity will be eaten alive by those who DO not want to be. It’s funny when you look at it, but I am afraid it has repercussions greater than any Our Father could have imagined.

You see, nephew, Love is growing weaker and weaker in the physical world. There is more hatred, anger, wars, and chaos that will approach in due time. However, as the world gets worse, it seems the Enemy is getting stronger. We have made His humans forget how to truly live. We have helped them die when stranded or when faced with huge amounts of fear and stress. We have helped them lose all memory of the Present and His Eternity. We have sucked out the human will to live and have modified their free-will in our favor. All of those have been carefully accomplished through our Tempting and our deceptions.

Unfortunately, I believe all of this will bear no fruit for Our Father. For the Enemy has simply let this happen and has been laughing all the time. You see, we were not careful in our actions and did not preserve enough knowledge in the human minds to keep a balance in order to use it for our benefit. Now, the humans are full of needless knowledge. Knowledge of which they do not truly need to survive. This just sets up the stage for what is to come next. The Enemy is waiting! Waiting for the day when he sees all his puny creations so lost that they are ripe for the answers to come again. Waiting for the day when He knows his little subjects are fertile for his seed. And then, He will send down a Saviour, as He did in the past. And, in the past, we had horrible battles to preserve what we had done for so long and almost lost. This Saviour will once again try to show them how life is truly supposed to be – A life full of Love in the Present. If we are not careful when this happens, we will be wiped out. We will be eradicated from human minds unable to deceive them again. They will finally understand what the Enemy has been trying to tell them all along – To live a life of present eternity, and be filled with His love. How sick! How awfully sick for this to happen!

I do not dare tell the Intelligence Department these ideas, like I said before, for fear of the wrath of treason. To tell them all our work was in vain would be seen as treachery, and I am too old to be condemned to the Fire forever. I am writing you, Wormwood, in hopes that you will take my words to heart and try to inform other junior Tempters like yourself in order to stop the Enemy’s plans. This has been his secret all along, and I can’t believe I did not see it sooner. I beg of you to remember what I have said and hope you fight to keep this prophecy from happening. I leave all of this in your hands, and hope you do the right thing. Praise to Our Father!

Your affectionate uncle,

“Screwtape”