My Dear Wormwood

A C.S. Lewis Screwtape Letter Spin-off

Note: This is a spin-off C.S. Lewis’ Screwtape Letters. It is written as if one senior devil were teaching his underling how to lure his subject away from the Lord. Since these are the words of devils, do not take everything as absolute truth.

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My Dear Wormwood,

Might I remind you that the whole of our success rests upon keeping certain realities in your subject’s peripheral instead of in the center? Or, if they are in the center, to make those realities irrelevant or seemingly insufficient for any profit?

I realize that the enemy himself has intercepted your subject’s train of thought regarding what we had previously muddled and convoluted. But all is not lost. An ignorant mind is savory, but an informed one that insists others agree or is frozen in fear and thus unable to make anything of such faith is irresistible. I’ve always been partial to a sautéed slice of knowledge with a sauce of impatience or fear.

You say she no longer believes that the Bible lays down rules to exclude women from leadership roles in the organized church. You say she now believes that the Enemy above has chosen women to be leaders in His Kingdom even if men do not. She believes that He supplies the authority to back her decisions, and that His authority is readily available for His detestable work at any time and in any quantity. An unfortunate realization indeed.

But, have you noticed, that while she may believe this, her emotions still recoil and cringe whenever any decision, big or small, arises? Out of habit, she retreats to two familiar haunts: what she knows and the patterns she observes. Therein lies her weakness and your opportunity.

I suggest you draw her attention again and again to the fact that she has only read one book and thus, doesn’t know enough to act upon this Heavenly authority. Or remind her that while power and authority are hers now, acknowledgment of this has not been a pattern among man-made institutes. Remind her again and again of this. Focus her attention on the way the Bible is used to defend the exclusion of women until you’ve drawn her attention away from the source of her newfound authority and into the mire and fog of trying to win an argument.

You should not find this hard. Temperaments like hers are always looking for meaning in symbols and earthly parallels. Merely overlay this human withholding of earthly authority to mean that her Heavenly Father too withholds spiritual authority. Overlay this human disbelief in women’s Biblical rulership to mean that her Heavenly Father also disbelieves she has the power to decide and act for her family or church or what-have-you. Do you see how simple that is?

You have done this before in her early years. Have you not? She saw herself as invisible in her family of origin and thus she believed she was invisible to her Father above. I’m afraid you pressed your advantage too much on that occasion and lost your footing when she sought answers to your questions. Was she worth anything to her Father above? Do not bring her to that point again. Obscurity, not clarity is essential.

In any case, you and I very well know that she is walking into this argument partway through, but again, this need not be brought to her attention. This will be difficult since her Father above has positioned her to daily witness her offspring’s spats. You’ve seen how it goes.

Her oldest offspring tells the younger that he has learned a new card trick. But the girl-vermin, who has developed an inferiority complex because she was second born and doesn’t have as many privileges as he, refuses to be impressed with his card trick. It’s not fair, she says, that she doesn’t have a deck of cards. Thus, she criticizes him and refuses to be a willing audience. He is hurt and lashes out. He shoves her aside and sticks out his tongue, impressing no one. In a final burst of anger, he vows never to let his sister touch his cards again. After that, the girl begs the mother for her own deck of cards and, if the mother is foolish enough not to discover the history of the spat, she gives in.

The children don’t realize that they’re sabotaging their chances of getting what they really want. The brother desires his sister’s participation, and the sister desires to be her brother’s equal. But he won’t teach her the trick unless she first plays along. And she won’t play along if not first treated equally. Children do not yet know nor believe the words of He-Who-Will-Not-Be-Named: that to gain is to give. Oh no. They still believe that they first must have in order to give.

You see the correlation. Do you not? Your subject has walked into an argument in the third act where the humans have come to believe that the intention to do good is more important than the good done.

In reality, the genetics of who leads church establishments do not matter: man, woman, black, white, Jew or Gentile. But by making them believe it does matter, we have robbed them through the ages of their cooperative power. We have disabled the very lowly from believing they can discern and act upon their Heavenly Father’s will, and we have emphasized that leaders in that detestable kingdom are something of an elite group: a pope, an aristocrat, the highly educated, the white, the wealthy, the ordained, men-only, special saints, etc.

Mix into this confusion the age-old family feud of I-know-better-than-you, and you have a misunderstanding not unlike that Elizabethan playwright Much Ado About Nothing. Have you sat down to enjoy this diverting generational play yet? The actors and actresses are so drab and gray when they get this way, all alike and weak and unfit for anything except cringing and cowering and huddling together but apart.

Aspire to bring your subject to this state, but with caution. We have reason to believe that the enemy is preparing an attack on this stronghold. He means to unite men and women. We are just not sure how.

In the meantime, absorb your subject into the cycle of tit-for-tat and the belief that she must gain to give. Draw her eye down onto what she can see to interpret what she cannot. Focus her attention on what doesn’t last and doesn’t fill instead of the everlasting fruit of knowledge, the unmatched robes of glory, the approved adoption, and the crown of rulership which is to surrender and treat others as more important than herself.

Keep the little vermin in the state of forever needing that which won’t last, instead of being able to give that which lasts forever. This will ensure that she remains enslaved to our cycle of consumption, never walks out in faith, and never becomes a vehicle to free those who have long since been stuck in the cycle before her.

Your Affectionate Uncle,

Screwtape

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