A Note to Wormwood from the desk of Screwtape

Note: This entry is written using the characters and settings described in C.S. Lewis' book, The Screwtape Letters. If you are not familiar with this book, Screwtape is a devil, advising his nephew (Wormwood) on how best to secure the souls of humans to Hell. None of the characters described here are mine, nor do I own any rights to them.

Wormwood-

            Never let the humans realize that they mean two things when they talk of “deserving” something. A man prone to pride can be made to think that he deserves something he ought not to have. By this he means that he has some claim or has paid some due which warrants him taking a portion of the forbidden thing. This is all well and good, but our discussion is on a second kind of man. A man prone to despair can see the pride of our previous man and, with some direction towards the right scriptures, decide that he must not deserve anything. By this, he means that he should do his best to use nothing, enjoy nothing, and make claims on nothing. This, of course, is impossible, and the more the man tries to follow this, the more he will fail, and the more undeserving he will feel.

We, of course, see the fallacy in the idea of the Enemy’s creating everything for man only to deny it to Him. But if you do your job well, your man may be more convinced day by day that to feel deserving is the same as to make any kind of claim on any thing, affection, or person here on Earth. From this, it is a very small nudge to the belief that the Enemy wants your man to make no claim on Himself either, and once a human tries to follow Him without His help, the soul is ours.

            What he must never realize is that the Enemy entices him to enjoy all without coveting any. He wants the loathsome creatures to be so enamored by creation that they can take of it, and find true joy in the taking, without ever becoming dependent on anything on Earth, whether it be drink, food, affection, praise, or approval. When they can do that, and even when they learn to desire it, the Enemy is well-pleased, and it is a hard struggle to win such a soul back to Our Father Below.