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A review by thaurisil
The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis
5.0
I read this when I was younger and I stopped halfway because I thought it was too boring. My closest friend was appalled, but never told me until my birthday, when she gave it to me (rather courageously I thought) and urged me to try again.
I tried - if only to please her - and I am so glad I did. I love, love, love this book. I had never read a C.S. Lewis book apart from the Narnia series, and I wonder if they are all as guilt-inducing as The Screwtape Letters is. It comprises a series of letters from Screwtape, a senior authority in Hell, to his nephew Wormwood, a young and inept tempter in charge of ruining an unnamed man's spirituality. Screwtape is arrogant, shrewd, devoid of love and malicious to the point of being amusing, and through his letters, reveals Wormwood's multiple failures, while Screwtape offers more and more suggestions on how to attack the man from a number of aspects of his spiritual life. The man eventually dies in a war, lost to Hell forever.
What I liked most about this book is that it addresses not the obvious sins of idolatory, stealing, and so on, but rather the little sins that any faithful Christian may commit as a result of the devil's temptation. As Screwtape repeatedly says, the point is not the cause humans to sin so much that they recognise their sin and repent, but to cause us to sin just enough to keep us out of Heaven. The book spoke to me on a number of issues - church-hunting, pride, self-righteousness, envy, falling in love, the prayerful attitude and balancing our religious and secular groups of friends.
In The Screwtape Letters, Lewis has written a book that addresses temptations in the lives of Christians of all ages and generations. It is a timeless book that rips you apart and exposes secret sins you never knew you had, and I ended up guiltily examining all sorts of aspects of my faith. The scariest part is that Wormwood failed only because of his incompetence. Should a better tempter attack me, would I be able to resist it? Would I even recognise the temptations? I will end this review with a couple of passages that spoke most clearly to me, but I am sure someone else in a different place, of a different age, would be affected more by other parts of the book.
"The humans do not start from that direct perception of Him which we, unhappily, cannot avoid. They have never known that ghastly luminosity, that stabbing and searing glare which makes the background of permanent pain to our lives. If you look into your patient’s mind when he is praying, you will not find that."
When they mean to ask Him for charity, let them, instead, start trying to manufacture charitable feelings for themselves and not notice that this is what they are doing. When they mean to pray for courage, let them really be trying to feel brave. When they say they are praying for forgiveness, let them be trying to feel forgiven. Teach them to estimate the value of each prayer by their success in producing the desired feeling; and never let them suspect how much success or failure of that kind depends on whether they are well or ill, fresh or tired, at the moment."
"Now you will have noticed that nothing throws him into a passion so easily as to find a tract of time which he reckoned on having at his own disposal unexpectedly taken from him…They anger him because he regards his time as his own and feels that it is being stolen. You must therefore zealously guard in his mind the curious assumption ‘My time is my own’."
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Re-read in 2017
I agree with what I said before about this book, but I've only just realised how much focuses on works. Humans' corrupt thoughts, disguised by social acceptability, bring us to hell, he says. He doesn't leave room for the cleansing of sins through faith in Jesus' blood. I don't think this is a fault of C.S. Lewis'. He did say, in the preface, that "Not everything that Screwtape says should be assumed to be true even from his own angle."
I tried - if only to please her - and I am so glad I did. I love, love, love this book. I had never read a C.S. Lewis book apart from the Narnia series, and I wonder if they are all as guilt-inducing as The Screwtape Letters is. It comprises a series of letters from Screwtape, a senior authority in Hell, to his nephew Wormwood, a young and inept tempter in charge of ruining an unnamed man's spirituality. Screwtape is arrogant, shrewd, devoid of love and malicious to the point of being amusing, and through his letters, reveals Wormwood's multiple failures, while Screwtape offers more and more suggestions on how to attack the man from a number of aspects of his spiritual life. The man eventually dies in a war, lost to Hell forever.
What I liked most about this book is that it addresses not the obvious sins of idolatory, stealing, and so on, but rather the little sins that any faithful Christian may commit as a result of the devil's temptation. As Screwtape repeatedly says, the point is not the cause humans to sin so much that they recognise their sin and repent, but to cause us to sin just enough to keep us out of Heaven. The book spoke to me on a number of issues - church-hunting, pride, self-righteousness, envy, falling in love, the prayerful attitude and balancing our religious and secular groups of friends.
In The Screwtape Letters, Lewis has written a book that addresses temptations in the lives of Christians of all ages and generations. It is a timeless book that rips you apart and exposes secret sins you never knew you had, and I ended up guiltily examining all sorts of aspects of my faith. The scariest part is that Wormwood failed only because of his incompetence. Should a better tempter attack me, would I be able to resist it? Would I even recognise the temptations? I will end this review with a couple of passages that spoke most clearly to me, but I am sure someone else in a different place, of a different age, would be affected more by other parts of the book.
"The humans do not start from that direct perception of Him which we, unhappily, cannot avoid. They have never known that ghastly luminosity, that stabbing and searing glare which makes the background of permanent pain to our lives. If you look into your patient’s mind when he is praying, you will not find that."
When they mean to ask Him for charity, let them, instead, start trying to manufacture charitable feelings for themselves and not notice that this is what they are doing. When they mean to pray for courage, let them really be trying to feel brave. When they say they are praying for forgiveness, let them be trying to feel forgiven. Teach them to estimate the value of each prayer by their success in producing the desired feeling; and never let them suspect how much success or failure of that kind depends on whether they are well or ill, fresh or tired, at the moment."
"Now you will have noticed that nothing throws him into a passion so easily as to find a tract of time which he reckoned on having at his own disposal unexpectedly taken from him…They anger him because he regards his time as his own and feels that it is being stolen. You must therefore zealously guard in his mind the curious assumption ‘My time is my own’."
=================
Re-read in 2017
I agree with what I said before about this book, but I've only just realised how much focuses on works. Humans' corrupt thoughts, disguised by social acceptability, bring us to hell, he says. He doesn't leave room for the cleansing of sins through faith in Jesus' blood. I don't think this is a fault of C.S. Lewis'. He did say, in the preface, that "Not everything that Screwtape says should be assumed to be true even from his own angle."