Letter #6 

 

 

Dear Blankweed,

either our esteemed training establishment has gone downhill badly, and you have no idea of the disaster you’re facing, or you have learnt your lessons in Stealth and Subterfuge all too well. What do you mean she’s joined a church group?? Did you think I wouldn’t notice that sentence thrown innocuously into the middle of a whole three pages of twaddle and nonsense? And if you’re drawing on those lessons from Professor Hellgang in Deception 101to hide things from me, can I just point out that those lessons weren’t designed to help you deceive your mentor. How can I help you when you are being intentionally deceptive? What can be achieved by such behaviour? If – Hell preserve us – your patient eventually enters that Place Which Shall Not Named, and you fall into the pit of everlasting destruction, do you think, as you fall, you will be thinking “well, at least I pulled the wool over old Screwtape’s eyes??” Do you??? Straighten up, Blankweed. You’re playing a fool’s game.

Let me remind you here that we are not playing for laughs. This is no role play. You aren’t out in the playground now, Blankweed. A whole soul is in your hands. And so is your  destiny. I hate to deal in clichés, and I hate repetition, but this is no game. And my job, as an experienced tempter, is to guide you, to protect you, to save you for further work in the perpetuation of our Glorious and Infernal Kingdom. The True Prince of this world is relying on us – you and me, Blankweed – to do His work on earth. There is no greater glory than the capture of a soul for Hell. But what is the point of appealing to your sense of honour, or your sense of gratitude for all your careful years of training,  when you have none? Let me appeal, then, to your sense of ambition and desire:  trust me, there is no greater, no more exquisite pleasure than the success of claiming a soul for Hell.

So – no more of this nonsense. I hope you have seen the error of your ways. Let’s to business. She’s joined a group at church. Could you be more precise? Has she joined the flower arranging guild? The choir or music group? Not a bible study? And most of all, please tell me she hasn’t joined a course? There are some terrible courses available in some churches. There is one – I forget its name, Alfalfa or some such thing – which has done terrible damage to our cause. It’s not that? I sincerely hope not. Please provide me with full information so that we can plan our strategic defence.

Of course it may not be a disaster. But it’s hard to tell until we know the detail. How did she come to join this group? Was she invited or was this an initiative of her own? If she was invited: by whom? If she was invited by someone she admires and respects, then we are facing a real problem. If it was her own initiative, then what was the basis of it? If she joined the choir or the flower guild because she thinks they’re ineffectual and could use her help, we’re (almost certainly) sitting pretty. If she joined because she wants to get in with some influential people, we have nothing to worry about. But if she joined because she wants to engage more deeply in the church, or she heard a sermon about service and felt a call, then…..

But no, let’s not panic yet. Tell me more. And remember that, whatever the situation, there are bound to elements we can draw on to our own advantage.

Let’s start with functional groups. In any group that has an actual function in the church (leadership team, music group, altar guild), there is always a mixture of people, motivated by various impulses. There will probably be some saints, alas. There may be some members who simply bring a talent to bear on the task – you know, choristers who simply love to sing, people who care for the linen because they love ironing, or sound system operators who love technology.  Such individuals may have no real commitment to the Enemy but you should always distrust anyone who does anything just because they enjoy it. Enjoyment (unless it is related to an actual sin) is the stuff of h------, and the Enemy will often find a way to use it to his advantage.

But there will also(probably) be those who have no commitment to the Enemy at all, and who are motivated by a desire for power and prestige. This is why you find in churches organists who make the pastor or vicar’s life a misery, vestry or leadership team members who terrorise the clergy, and florists and cleaners who make members of the congregation afraid to walk into their own church. 

 a promising power base.....

Groups who are comprised of power-mongers form cliques. They’re usually very careful about who is able to join their group, and they carefully indoctrinate new members on how things must be done. If your patient has joined a group like this, we have a very promising situation on our hands.

Then there are the groups that meet to study the bible or share their life experiences, or pray together. Such groups are utterly disgusting – the very thought of them brings the taste of bile to my mouth. They make churches very dangerous places indeed. Because if the Enemy can only bring people into a large building for one hour per week, you’re really not facing any danger. But if he can bring them together regularly for whole evenings in smaller groups, where they must connect at a personal level, to engage in discussion about the Enemy, and things can start to go very wrong. 

this is precisely what we don't want....

Be that as it may, such groups can develop their own destructive tendencies if we work carefully. If they are a cohesive group, we can work on their exclusivity, making them feel as if they’re special, and as if they alone within their church are engaging in ‘true spirituality’ or ‘true worship’. If they have any issues with the church leadership, then we can fan that flame. The aim is to make them work against rather within the church they belong to. Let them sit together in church and roll their collective eyes when a particular person gets up to preach or pray. 

No, no, no.....

But it’s far more likely that they will be an incohesive group. And, let’s face it, humans do not like difference. There’s bound to be an odd person in the group – someone who doesn’t quite fit in. Group members may come from different social groups, or different theologies. Or they may have a dominant member who plays for power. Yet these people have been brought together and made a commitment to one another, so they can’t easily leave. The Enemy likes this because it gives group members opportunities to exercise charity and perseverance, and to eventually accept, even admire and value, difference. But we are at an advantage, because all their instincts are in our favour. With just a little work on our part, such groups can become hot beds of dissatisfaction and distrust.

And then we come to courses. Well, they’re a mixed bag. Some courses are simply humanistic life courses in disguise: you know, how to be more assertive, how to get more out of life, how to manage your divorce/children, how to have a more positive attitude. They may have a churchified clothing, but that’s what they come down to. No worries at all if she’s joined a course like this. But if she’s joined a course which aims to lead her to a deeper understanding of and commitment to the Enemy we will need to bring in reinforcements. This would be a very, very dangerous situation. Again, it may not be a disaster – I’ve known leaders of such groups who are actually well in our care, motivated by hatred, or a desire for power and control. But – well, it’s best to be forewarned.

So stop writing me insignificant rubbish and let’s plan our attack. I need a complete dossier on the group and its members. Tomorrow.

Your affectionate guide

Screwtape.

Letter #5

My dear Blankweed,

                                              

                                               The problem you raise, which is that having carefully scrutinised your patient’s patterns of behaviour you cannot find her “dream”, the lifestyle she aspires to, is not an uncommon one.  What most human beings lack is focus.  Your patient doesn’t have a single dream, or lifestyle aspiration, she has multitudes.  And this is just the way we like it. A human being with a single, focused aim, is a dangerous thing. You may not think this – you might assume that as long as we take care to ensure that the human’s aspiration or ambition is something other than the Enemy’s service, all is well. And in many ways that is true, as I outlined in my last letter: someone whose aspiration is power in a single domain can easily be developed into a full blown tyrant; someone whose aim is to be seen as “the woman who has it all” can sacrifice her family to her vision, and create herself as one huge ego which cannot be restrained and in whom charity is completely eliminated. But you have to remember that a human being with the capacity to focus on a single path that seems to be angled in our favour can be turned into a human being with a single minded pursuit of the Enemy. I’ve seen it happen. You need only look at that unfortunate incident in Damascus.  But there are, sadly,  many examples.  The danger is in the capacity for single-minded focus. Yes, we can exploit such focus, and wrap it in vanity and greed, but the Enemy can also use it for His purposes. 

                                                          We want them to be divided selves.....

So, it is all to the good that your patient lacks a focus on a single lifestyle aspiration. What you can do, then, is to place different media-generated lifestyle images in front of her at irregular intervals and have her chasing all of them.  We want her buying yoga mats, incense sticks, and whole food cookery books one moment, longing for a boat and a skiing holiday the next, and telling her husband she needs an MBA and power suits the next.  In other words, we tempt her with multiple lifestyle images. The advantages are that she will spend more money she doesn’t have that way, and she can’t achieve her dreams because many of them are mutually exclusive.  You can’t, for example, become a marathon runner, a corporate business woman and an earth mother at the same time.  It can’t be done. For a start, such “lifestyles” exhibit different and conflicting values, and for another, no-one can achieve so many things simultaneously because a human being only has so many hours in the day.  The trick is to have her chasing not one rainbow but many, and wearing herself out and achieving nothing in the process. I keep telling you how much sheer pleasure there is in our job – and here is another example.

Your next question concerns just what we’re tempting your patient with here in our aim to tempt her to pursue a life style, or multiple lifestyles: is it greed or envy or vanity? Blankweed, we don’t always need labels for what we’re doing – but it is an interesting question.  In many ways it is all these things, but in the main we can call it pride. Because the focus of a lifestyle is the way it is viewed by others, then pride must be its primary concern. We’re tempting them to take pride in something that is not real: an image they think they’ve created. Of course they haven’t created it: we have created it through our manipulation and management of the media, aided by the values of consumerism. But in their ignorance and vanity, they think that they have created an image. And they’re unlikely to connect that image with the golden calf in that book the Enemy is so proud of – and it’s our job to make sure they never do.

However, I have hesitated over whether to describe this kind of aspiration as pride, because deep down it is connected to something even more powerful and desirable: self-hatred.  The human that can be tempted to aspire to a lifestyle, to the creation of an image for the sake of representation to others, finds him or herself  to be inadequate. They look in the mirror, and they see something ordinary (of course) and they wish (with a little prodding on our part) others to see them as extraordinary. And so we encourage them to create (or think they create) a fiction to hide that deplorable self. It’s the Garden of Eden and the fig leaves all over again. The Enemy, of course, declares that they are in fact extraordinary, that he has made these miserable vermin in his own image, and that they are, therefore,  a delight to his eyes, fragrant as the scent of heaven. Our job is to ensure they never suspect this for a moment, and if they do, that they don’t believe it.  If they are, even for a second, under the influence of the Enemy, encouraged to consider that the words “in the image of God” might apply to them, you only need to have them stand in front of the mirror, first thing in the morning, with their bed hair, bleary eyes,  and every line and blemish clearly visible, and the idea will seem laughable to them. 

                                                                the image of God.....

And yet – and this is one of our clearest indications that the Enemy is in fact mad, that he has no contact with reality – this person, precisely as they are, without finery or disguise, before they can put on their public face (or one of their public faces) is precisely the person the Enemy loves. He looks at them and, despite everything,  he sees both the thing he made and loves, and himself reflected back. What he wants initially is for a person to “be themselves” – to say what they think, to do what they enjoy,  to spend time with people whose company is pleasing to them, to wear what they like and eat the foods they prefer. Even if some of the things they think or say or do are explicitly sinful, He can work with them, bring them to Himself. He cannot work with or relate to a fiction. And so, our job is to grow the fiction, to develop the false self, the illusion that humans present to the world, to such an extent that the real self is entirely lost. So that a person couldn’t even tell you what they really thought or really wanted to do, because they are be too absorbed in the image they have invented (with our help) and how that image is seen by others.  

You may think this is delicate work, but it is not. We feed them the line that what they are is inadequate, stupid, ugly, and despised by others – and they will have had enough experiences in the playground, in their homes, in their interactions with others to reinforce this belief. And then we show them the solution: hide yourself. Create instead, the illusion of a self. And as the soul itself shrinks from sight, the Enemy is rendered (almost) helpless. And when the Enemy responds – as He will – with messages that they are beautiful, loved, all that they should be because He made them and redeemed them – they won’t believe it. And thus they are inoculated against salvation.  Game over.

Your affectionate friend

Screwtape.

 

Letter #4

My dear Blankweed,

                                                We’ve spent enough time for now considering how to manage your patient while she’s visiting the Enemy’s camp. It is equally important that we focus our efforts on other aspects of her life, because these will also influence whether she returns to church and what she does while she’s there.  There are many paths we might explore here, but let’s start with the bigger picture.

Your patient is, I see from the details of the dossier, middle class, well educated, and reasonably affluent. Furthermore, she’s married, with a family, and she’s at a critical point in her career.  Because of the latter point, there is pressure on her in terms of time, levels of achievement, and also, oddly enough, in terms of appearance – by which I mean her own physical appearance (right clothes, right grooming) and the appearance of her lifestyle.

There is an important distinction to be made between a life and a lifestyle. The life of an individual is experienced moment by moment by the individual themselves: waking up in the morning and feeling the warmth of the bed and the light through the curtains , deciding whether to get out of bed or not, looking out of the window to observe the weather, heading to the bathroom and so on. A life, as it is lived, is experienced in the present. And the present, as you know, intersects with eternity in ways that present specific dangers. And the Enemy wants his creatures to focus on their life, this present moment.   We have not yet managed to create life as such, but we have managed something better: the illusion of a lifestyle. This is a particular condition, experienced only by the educated and wealthy, and it is entirely our own invention, and a very successful invention at that.

While a life is experienced by an individual in the present, a lifestyle is designed to be seen by others.  When a human focuses on their “lifestyle” they focus on something – a home, a piece of clothing or furniture, - as it will be viewed and valued by other people. Let me give you an example. Imagine two women planning new kitchens for their homes. The first woman, focusing on her life, will view the kitchen by her own values: she will ask questions of herself such as will it be functional, will it be beautiful (according to how I view beauty), will it be fun for my family to cook and eat in? Whereas the second woman, who is viewing a new kitchen through the lens of a lifestyle , will primarily concern herself with whether it will be admired by others.  The former may talk about “my beautiful kitchen” but the latter will talk about “my bespoke kitchen”. 

                                                       Tempting her to the perfect, stress-free lifestyle

 We develop ideas about lifestyle primarily through the media and advertising, although the idea of a lifestyle is contagious, that is, it can be passed from one person to another like a virus through envy or greed.  Magazines are most useful in developing the idea of a lifestyle:  we encourage the editors to paint images of celebrities and their lifestyles, eg women who “have it all” – handsome successful husbands, beautiful children, large homes, fashionable clothes from the “right” shops or designers, “fairy tale weddings”, and their own businesses or endorsements. Critical to these images are photographs, which showcase the celebrities and their perfect lifestyles.  Of course these photographs present a false image:  we don’t see pictures of such celebrities screaming at their cook or nanny, weeping with tiredness,  or throwing heavy vases at the handsome husband who has come home  to the beautiful house late from the office again.  Instead the celebrity is beautifully presented, as designed by a team of the magazine staff, placed in a carefully designed context, and  posed in a position of perfect happiness.

You’d think, even with their minuscule intelligence, that they’d see through it, and at some level they do.  They know that no life is so simple or perfect, and that such an image is false, transitory and cannot be developed without a large staff. But these images are insidious – and of course they present wonderful material for us to work with. Because we can suggest, over time, gently, that they too should look like this (even though they haven’t got the money, the staff or the time) and have a lifestyle like this.

We can also lean in heavily with less obvious images. “Lifestyle” magazines present ways to develop your house to present a particular look. Advertisements show images of ideal children perfectly behaved and manicured, or women or families who look a particular way. Real estate agents design house advertisements as providing a lifestyle (“buy the house/clothes/accessories and buy the lifestyle” is the line we train them to take).  Of course, once they buy the house, the clothes, the accessories, or the art work and first editions if they’re the arty types, or the gym gear or fishing rods if they’re sporty types, they find that the lifestyle does not automatically arrive with it (and indeed it can’t, because it’s pure illusion). You’d think they’d wake up then, but this is where we do our best work:  we suggest simply that they haven’t got the right house/clothes/accessories, and so the whole cycle of spending starts again.

I’ve known humans who have bankrupted their families in pursuit of a lifestyle.  I’ve seen children ground down with the weight of parental expectations that they conform to images in the media, or confined to a small space in front of a television because they’re not allowed to play in any of the carefully designed rooms in their own home.  I’ve seen spouses of both sexes sink into depression or commit suicide because they can’t provide or live up to the lifestyle expectations of their partners or parents - or even children.  We’re so lucky in our work, Blankweed – we can have such fun! We have them chasing mirages, one mirage after another, and, handled carefully, they don’t wake up until their final moment when all mirages are seen for what they truly are.

Even the Enemy’s followers can be lured into the temptation of a lifestyle.  Christian bookshops and television programmes love to present images of the perfect life led by those who commit themselves to the Enemy’s service. Look around the average Christian bookstore and you’ll see shining images on the book covers  of broad-shouldered, suited men, with thick hair and dazzling smiles,  with an arm around a woman with perfectly groomed hair and face,  and five perfect, clean children. Read the inside covers and you’ll find that the men are heads of large corporations, the women homeschooling their five perfect children (plus three adopted from orphanages abroad), while managing a small business successful enough to support a staff of 10 happy workers.  Turn to the Enemy, these books imply, and your life will be transformed: your teeth will straighten, your husband become successful, your children become model citizens who never answer back, and you will be imbued with super-human abilities. Quelle rire!   Not only is this a mirage, but in this way we transform turning to the Enemy into nothing more than a means to an end. He’s not very keen on that.  

In some ways you could call this obsession with lifestyle greed or envy or vanity, but it’s more subtle than that. It feeds on greed and envy, but patients are generally aware of those emotions, and do not rate them highly, and so are in danger of resisting them.  But with the lifestyle mirage they won’t even be aware of the danger they’re in.  I’ve known men who consider themselves honourable, virtuous, and kind, who nevertheless ruin their families and their lives in pursuit of a lifestyle.

Now, your patient, because of her class, is eminently suited to these kinds of temptations. The poor are generally not so vulnerable because they’re too busy keeping a life together (though we’re working on it). And oddly enough the long-term wealthy are not so vulnerable to it either, because, able to buy anything they want, they become aware of the true value of possessions.  But those who are rich enough to have all they need but not all they want are perfectly positioned for the temptation to aspire to a lifestyle.

                                                       Tempt her with the country cottage lifestyle...

What we need to decide, then, is what kind of “lifestyle” is your patient most vulnerable to? She lives on the outskirts of a small town: is she therefore the type to hanker after the lifestyle cottage,  with designer gumboots at the door, a springer spaniel by her side,  and a country kitchen?  Or can she be tempted to turn her house into a small art depository or antiques museum? Can we feed her the superwoman myth: the image of a woman, dressed in a perfect suit who waves goodbye to her perfectly manicured children in the morning, manages her brilliant career during the day, and then comes home to nurture her family with homemade bread and soup and apple pie made with apples from her own garden?   

                                                        Or maybe she's more vulnerable to the Superwoman myth?

Ferret out her dream, Blankweed, and then feed it with magazines and reality TV programmes.  In such a way we can encourage her to look with distaste at her home, her furniture,  her clothes, her children and partner, and even her own image in the mirror – even though these things are, by the standards of most of the world, pleasing and desirable as they are.  We can encourage her to spend more than she can afford on things she doesn’t need, sow discord with her partner who may not share the same lifestyle dream (even better if he has a different lifestyle dream of his own!), and establish a pattern of hope and despair , and a growing bitterness, that will leave her with little time or energy to pursue her temporary, half-hearted interest in the Enemy.

Concentrate, Blankweed – and enjoy the game!

Your affectionate friend

Screwtape.

Letter #3

My dear Blankweed,

                                                Now please settle down and stop bombarding me with questions. I know you’re anxious, but this patient is young and we have time on our side. Remember, we’re playing a long game here.

I’m a little puzzled by your attitude to time, incidentally. These humans live constricted by time, not us. So I’m not entirely sure where your “what if” questions come from. However, let’s look at one of you “what if” questions as an illustration of a general principle.

“What if, “ you ask, “ she decides to go to one of the tradition services at this church she’s attending? All your advice would then not apply. What would I do?”.  Blankweed, it is all perfectly straight forward: you simply keep a level head (admittedly, something you don’t seem to find easy) and change strategy.

Human beings are forever engaging with these types of questions. Should I take this path or that? Which would be the better option? Young adult humans can get totally caught up in such questions, almost as if they believe that there is one right route for their lives which they somehow have to guess at. Even those engaged in the Enemy’s service can get caught up in these kinds of questions: what does the Enemy want them to do now?? How will they know? Should they move to this town or stay where they are? Should they go to this church or another? Ironically enough, for both the Enemy and for us, these questions are, generally, irrelevant. They’re irrelevant to the Enemy because he simply wants them to engage in the right way in any path they take. You’d think His instructions were pretty straight forward: rejoice always, pray constantly, give thanks in all circumstances sound like simple enough instructions to me.  Or love justice, show mercy, and walk humbly with your G--.  That’s all He wants. But of course we like to tangle them up in theological knots, so that even a single one of these instructions becomes complicated and fraught with difficulty.

For us, these questions are irrelevant because they simply offer different opportunities requiring different strategies. This is the principle you need to understand: any situation offers different but equal opportunities.  It simply doesn’t matter which kind of service she goes to, Blankweed.  A “low” family service and a higher or more traditional service offer the same level of opportunity for distraction and temptation: we simply employ a different strategy. The only exception to this rule is a decision to serve or not serve the Enemy. When a terrible event such as this arises, when a human is faced with this decision, we really are against the wall. But if – hopefully not when – this happens,  we’ll send back up. You won’t face such a terrible event alone.  Of course, the Enemy will employ an army. But we have armies too.  Harmwink and his staff are, as we speak, developing new weapons that will be impervious to the Enemy’s attacks.  Or so we hope.

But let us continue with an exploration of this particular case.  If your patient decides to continues to attend the family service, then we bombard her, as I outlined in my previous letter, with issues to do with unfamiliarity. As I say, humans hate feeling out of place. But if she decides to attend a traditional service, then we bombard her with temptations or distractions based on her contempt of the familiar. Because, curiously enough, while humans hate change and feeling out of place, they are also contemptuous of the familiar and immune to the dangers it presents.

When your patient sits in a traditional service, she may initially feel peacefully at home, and of course that is a very bad thing. But with a little skill, after a short period of time,  you can both distract her and/or fuel her discontent.  First, distract her. Let her revel in the poetry of the language, as if alliteration and metaphor were the equivalent of prayer.  As long as her focus is on the words themselves rather than their meaning, and her engagement with and affirmation of that meaning, then she might just as well be reading or listening to Dylan Thomas.

If you’re feeling really artful, then you could make this “love of language” the primary reason for attending church: make her an expert on ecclesiastical language if you like. Of course, there’s always danger in humans being exposed to prayer in any form, even its most turgid, but if you can get her to say the responses for the sheer joy of how they sound, or the way they transport her back to “a more innocent time” (there’s that nostalgia theme again!), or even for their theological appropriateness or subtlety, then those prayers are of no use to the Enemy at all, in fact may become actual barriers between your patient and the Enemy. Make her feel strongly about how the words should be said, so that if one service leader says the words in a way other than the way she prefers, she can be absorbed in impatience.

Alternatively, fuel the little beast with discontent. As I say, humans are, in some strange way, contemptuous of things that are familiar to them.  We work on marriages by fuelling this contempt of the familiar: a woman can be contemptuous of the man she once loved and disregard all his needs and everything he says simply because she’s seen him in his pyjamas every day for 20 years. In the same way, we can encourage people working in the same place for a long period of time to become dissatisfied with their work, even if it is, objectively speaking, interesting and well-paid work, solely on the grounds that they feel they’ve done it all before.  Even though both work and relationships are forever changing in subtle and complex ways, human beings can be made blind to this fact because they have this sense they’ve seen it/heard it all before.  Contempt of the familiar: it’s a fun tune to play!

So, if the words of the service or the hymns are familiar to her, play on her contempt. The church hasn’t changed in 30 years, so how can it possibly have anything relevant to say to the modern world? How can something couched in the language of the 19^th Century have relevance to a world imbued with technology undreamed of 150 years ago? Who are these people, sitting in the church listening to and saying the same old words week after week, and not even seeing the world change around them? Are they stuck in a time warp, some theological bubble? If you’re really playing your cards carefully, she could even sing those hymns and say those words ironically, enjoying the language but playfully delighted by her sense of their irrelevance.

With any luck, these people in the pews will generally be older than she is – in fact, most of them will probably be a lot older. We have done a sterling job over the last 50 years in the Western world of instilling in younger people (ie those under 40) a fear of the elderly. The outcome has been excellent: it means that the elderly feel side-lined, neglected, invisible, and helpless, and any wisdom the older generations might pass on to the younger ones will be entirely unheard. I’ve looked in the church report: there are some powerful members of the Enemy’s ground troops attending this service, which should present a real danger to us in regard to your patient. But there is no danger: she’ll look around the church and see a mop of grey curls and bald heads, and some very unsightly cardigans and baggy trousers, and she’ll steer well away.

You see, Blankweed, it’s all a matter of strategy. Any situation offers unique opportunities that we can exploit to our advantage. Learning to turn on a pin and think on your feet can be a very satisfying experience. And if you can’t think quickly, enrol in a remedial course in contingency planning.

Your affectionate friend

Screwtape.

Letter #2

My dear Blankweed,

                                                You ask whether nostalgia is always a good thing. I don’t know what they’re teaching you in training these days: of course it is.  When humans look back, caught as they are in time, they always do so to compare the past with the present.  We encourage them to do so through the lens of nostalgia, which throws a rosy glow over the past.  By encouraging them to remember only what was good about the past, we ensure that they are, in effect, comparing ice cream or candy floss with – well, an imperfect apple. One is artificial, unhealthy and man-made; the other is fresh but flawed.  Next to the sweetness of candy, an apple will always have a bitter edge. And thus we sow this seeds of discontent. Your patient is a little young to develop a full blown case of nostalgia, but you can encourage a taste for it now.

So, let us return to the very promising topic of your patient’s  uncomfortable experience in the Enemy’s camp.  She returned to the church based on her memory of childhood stories, and so she assumed, at some level, that the church would have remained unchanged in the last 20 years. Why she would expect this when every other aspect of life has changed is unclear and illogical – but typical of human behaviour. Of course it isn’t the same! The prayer book may have retained its essential structure, but the music is different, the delivery is different, and the behaviour of the people around her is different to the way it was 20 years ago.  Encourage her to feel some indignation about this.  Make her feel , for example, that some of the technology that is being used instead of pew sheets and hymn books is “not reverent” . I know that doesn’t make any sense at all – technology and pieces of paper are neither reverent nor irreverent, they’re just forms of delivery.  But let her bristle with indignation – place in her mind an entirely fictitious vision of the past, where people stood together in unity in the pews, sharing hymn books and smiling together, and contrast that with the “impersonal” nature of words on a screen.  If you can organise some glitch in the technology – or better still, an incompetent or inattentive operator - so much the better.

Work on her feelings of displacement. The words of some of the prayers she remembers from childhood, such as the Lord’s prayer, have been modified.  She’ll feel uncomfortable when she slips into the old style – encourage her to feel that her slip-ups are the fault of the church.  The whole language of the church has changed since she was a child, the scriptures will be read in a modern (very unpoetic) translation: since she has a “love of language” encourage those feelings that somehow the message, whatever that may be, is lost in translation, that it’s lost its poetry – and never let her wonder why she feels the Enemy , or a modern congregation, needs to speak in poetry. Never let her think “well, why would I expect the language of the 17^th Century or the 19^th Century as a suitable way of expressing worship in the 21^st?”

Not only the language, but the details of church have changed. Take clothes for example. She will have been used to the service being led by clergy dressed in full regalia – feed on her doubts: is the person leading a lay person or a church leader in mufti? And what about seating? Human beings can get very emotional about pews, you know. If the church she’s attending has chairs, you can fan a very effective rage into flames.

Of course none of these details matter in any way. People can worship the Enemy seated on pews, chairs, cushions, or sitting on the top of high buildings, if they have a mind to.  But given her longing for the church of the past, these trivial details matter to her. Just don’t let her entertain, even for a moment, the thought that such concerns are irrelevant. He’ll try to suggest it of course, but all you need to do is rock her plastic chair and she can be pushed down the path of discontent.

And while she’s feeling unsettled, she’s also, happily for us, aware that all the members of her family are unsettled by her new venture.  Her husband, a quiet solicitor by profession, fancies himself as a well-read sceptic and philosopher by nature. Of course, he’s never read any of the great philosophers himself, but by delving occasionally into modern, popular discussions of philosophy, he likes to carry himself off as an expert.  His noisy amusement at your patient’s church attendance is very helpful, and you need to liaise with Cutfroth to maximise domestic discord on this matter. The children – for whose sake these visits are ostensibly taking place – are also bored and resistant.  One of her sisters – the sophisticated city sister, the one she envies and resents – is openly scornful, while the hippy sister she pities and patronises is enthusiastic. All of these reactions she will deeply resent and you need to encourage that resentment. Make her feel it’s just too much to handle.

But best of all is the reaction of her mother.  Now this needs careful handling. As you are no doubt aware, her mother is deeply immersed in the Enemy’s faction, and has for many years been imploring the Enemy daily to bring her daughters to faith. All of which is dangerous and deplorable. With some subtle management on your part, your patient’s suspicion of anything that pleases her mother can stop her at the door of the church. Her mother is trying hard to contain her delight: but she’s human, and her excitement that the Enemy is finally showing signs of listening to her pitiful petitions will be – indeed is – difficult for her to contain. Your patient is still young enough to have a deep resistance to conforming to her mother’s wishes. I know she’s a grown woman, but it takes a good 30 years or more for an adult woman to throw off the adolescent impulse to differentiate herself as much as possible from her mother. Remind her that she doesn’t want to be told what to do by her mother. Of course, her mother isn’t telling her to do anything, but that doesn’t matter. Even her mother’s most carefully controlled, neutral questions about her experiences at the church can upset her, if you encourage her.  Keep telling her she’s her own woman and she doesn’t need her mother pushing her into anything. 

(Just as an aside here, I love that phrase that some humans are so fond of “I’m my own woman/man”. No-one is their own person: they either belong to us or to the Enemy. They’re either ours to torment in this life and devour in the next – or, or they’re…His.  To do with as He pleases. Of course, He tries to explain away his own colonisation of their puny lives as a form of “setting them free to be more truly themselves”; we know this is propaganda but even High Command has not fathomed out what this really means)

The trick is to bombard her with negative feelings – about the church and about her family. Human beings are, for the most part, at the mercy of feelings. The fact she lives a busy life will make these feelings even harder to bear. Feed her some helpful lines: do you need this on top of everything else you have to deal this? Isn’t it all too much trouble? Remind her that this was supposed to be a happy experience for her and her children, and then draw her attention to the way her children are squirming in their seats and asking how much longer they have to sit still. Let her feel the effort of keeping them quiet – without her becoming conscious of how hard they’re trying to please her and hard it is for them to sit quietly, since they’ve never had to do so before. Build those negative feelings in every way you can. Humans are blithely unaware of the transitory nature of feelings, and we need to keep them ignorant on this matter. They are also hugely impatient of the unfamiliar, without any real awareness of how quickly the unfamiliar can become familiar.

It’s just all too hard – that’s the line you need to take.

Your affectionate friend

Screwtape.