The Screwtape Letters

Right now I am finishing up this wonderful book by C.S. Lewis. It's about a "wise" demon, Screwtape, instructing his nephew Wormwood in tempting and deceiving Wormwood's "patient", a young man, and ultimately keeping him out of the clutches of "The Enemy" (God). It has been so eye-opening to me! The book has definitely helped me think of temptations and That Little Voice in the Back of Your Head in an easier-to-understand way.

Of course, The Screwtape Letters is a human's idea of what it might look like in the Satanic world, so you certainly can't "believe" what you're reading is how it all actually works. But it is definitely a great, imaginative idea of how it might be! For instance, here's Screwtape explaining to Wormwood a way to misguide his young man:

"Another possibility is that of direct attack on his faith. When you have caused him to assume the that trough is permanent, can you not persuade him that 'his religious phase' is just going to die away like all his previous phases? Of course there is no conceivable way of getting by reason, you must rely on. The mere work phase will very likely do the trick. I assume that the creature has been through several of them before - they all have - and that he always feels superior and patronising to the ones he has emerged from, not because he has really criticised them bus simply because they are in the past. (You keep him well fed on hazy ideas of Progress and Development and the Historical Point of View, I trust, and give him lots of modern Biographies to read? The people in them are always emerging from Phases, aren't they?)"

So you see, while this book is all fiction, it can surely be used to the Christian's advantage point by unveiling very real lies of the devil and encouraging in resisting temptation, big or small, in whatever form. A wonderful read!