“What would Jesus tweet?”

* an adaptation from C.S. Lewis book title “The Screwtape Letters”

(The following is an excerpt from an instructional letter sent by a senior devil named “Screwtape” to an apprentice devil named “Wormwood” regarding a Patient named Brian Worrad for whom he is responsible to beleaguer and secure for Hell’s residence) 

My dear Wormwood,

              I am most excited to hear about the use you have made of the disease humankind commonly refers to as “Covid19”. It seems that you have made good use of this disease to create a myriad of distractions which have the effect of confusing your Patient, Mr. Worrad.  

              My concern was that the use of such a disease would alert your Patient to matters which are beyond his control and drive him to the insufferable practice “Christians” have of praying to the Enemy (their “Heavenly Father”). However, you have matured in the art of distraction and have presented to him several associated concerns which appear to him as “controllable” and, for that reason alone, have distracted him from engaging with the Enemy in prayer for which we were concerned. I applaud your deviousness to make use of your Patient’s Achilles Heel……. namely, his self-reliance, and have used that trait to distract from his relationship with the Enemy. Convincing him to forego prayer to the Enemy because he has become too busy addressing concerns which are under his control is a win for us even when he purports to be addressing those matters in a way which should honour the Enemy.

              I note how adeptly you cloaked the distraction or your Patient from the Enemy by convincing him that he was entirely motivated to do the Enemy’s work. His focus on what he could do for the Enemy and not what the Enemy could do through him was a subtle change which made all the difference. These humans often forget that they do not wrestle with us spirits. The Enemy clearly reminded them in his letter to the Ephesians at 6:12 that they “wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the ruler of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” Notwithstanding the Enemy’s warning, they invariably focus on the material world. To a certain extent, Covid19 has helped to place their focus on the here and now and I can only hope that we will not present such concern that they are motivated to reach out to the Enemy. 

              In particular, I note your use of the internet and the breadth of information to accomplish this distraction. I am always fearful of the internet as a medium which the Enemy can use to advance His message of love and was not excited that Covid19 presented an opportunity for your Patient to spend more time using it. As I have pointed out to you before, the internet can be a place for great distraction but at the risk of providing an abundance of our Enemy’s resources communicating his saving message and the lives it has impacted. As you have rightly pointed out, the key is to manage your Patient’s heart before he enters the internet. 

              The risk of the Enemy’s being able to impact your Patient through the internet is minimized and even eliminated when your Patient accesses it through either apathy or self-indulgence. Apathy and self-indulgence allows/motivates your Patient to enter into the internet for innocuous reasons such as checking in on old classmates, friends, colleagues or relations, reviewing random pictures of places or people he knows or even ones he doesn’t know, reviewing articles about politics or entertainment or posting/replying about any or all of the above. All of these allow us to focus our Patient’s attention on material matters. Even when your Patient chooses to appreciate such things as gifts from God, senior devils used to remind me constantly of the hope we have in the Enemy’s letter written to the Romans at 1:25 where the Enemy reminded the Romans not to “change the truth of God into a lie, and worship and serve the creature more that the Creator, who is blessed forever”. 

              The sheer amount of time available during Covid19 would have allowed your Patient to not only appreciate the creation but, much to our chagrin, to praise the Enemy who created it.  However, I applaud you Wormwood for using the endless amount of material available on the internet to not only fill the time available but to firmly establish a practice of not setting aside any time for appreciation of the Enemy. To win this battle, it was not necessary to eliminate in your Patient an appreciation for the Enemy, it was only necessary to let that appreciation fall on the heels of an appreciation of the material online. Eventually, your Patient’s appreciation was more tied to the images, sounds and thoughts expressed through the internet than it was to presence and character of the Enemy.

              While this was good, our situation becomes much more tenuous when your Patient is purposeful in his use of the internet. The motivation towards those sins listed in the Enemy’s letter to the Romans at 1:29-30 (wicked, evil, greedy, depraved, envious, murderous, deceitful, malicious, debate, gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful, disobedient and lacking understanding) find easy outlets on the internet. No matter how benign the sinful tendency in your Patient is, it can be easily enhanced on the internet and it is in this venue where we have the upper hand. Never before have we been provided with such a powerful and adaptable tool than the internet. Your job is to continue to maintain whatever semblance of sin you can before the Patient enters onto the internet and provide him with whatever rationalization is necessary to provide him license to embark on this endeavor. Under proper supervision the internet can provide your Patient with everything he needs to be sinful. If we were back in the Garden of Eden, it would be both the serpent and the fruit.   

              However, the foregoing battle is more tenuous because it can only be fought on our terms if the heart of your Patient is swayed away from the Enemy’s love and truth before your Patient enters the internet. Should his heart be purposefully driven by the insufferable truth the Enemy continues to spew, our situation becomes perilous. For all the reasons the internet provides an unending supply of temptation, it can also supply an unending message of truth and encouragement. Our only hope at this point is for you to convince your Patient that he is the master of his own spiritual walk…..the shepherd of his own faith. I have found that the best way to do this is to invert a phrase coined by one of the Enemy’s chief apologists J.I. Packer when he stated that “A little knowledge OF God is worth more than a great deal of knowledge ABOUT him.”

              If we can continue to convince your Patient that his time on the internet is best used to know about the Enemy, we can use such pursuits to reduce both time and hopefully inclination to actually know the Enemy. Knowing the Enemy will not only cause your Patient to seek him more earnestly, but it will open his heart up to the spiritual message of the Enemy. Meditation on what the Enemy has done in the life of your Patient should be avoided at all costs. Try to make his study on the attributes of God be theological and not personal. Theology is most dangerous when it roots itself in the life of your Patient. Once it becomes personal, the Spirit of the Enemy has a habit of speaking to the heart of your Patient. 

              In the Enemy’s first letter to the Corinthians at 2:13, he explains that His truth is spoken “not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual realities with Spirit-taught words.” Our ranks are well-versed in the struggles caused by the Spirit of the Enemy. To the extent that you can continue to fill your Patient’s eyes and ears with information about the Enemy the hopes are that he will lose focus and will forget to seek out the truth imparted to his heart by the Spirit of the Enemy. Let him read and sing and post about the love, grace, mercy and many other attributes of the Enemy but make sure that the time he spends doing so is at the expense of realizing those attributes in his own life.

              Should this battle be lost, our ranks are doomed to failure.  Not only will the internet provide your Patient with the resources to excite the truth already embedded in his heart but he will be given a platform to communicate that truth to others whose hearts may also be inclined to hear the Spirit of the Enemy. Your only hope at that point is to convince your Patient to appreciate his own efforts to know more about the Enemy and to not consider the Enemy’s love and appreciation for him. And if he does consider the Enemy’s love and appreciation for him, let it remain as much as possible, a theological concept and not a matter of the heart. Hopefully, this will quell any desire he may have to know the Enemy in a more personal and impactful way. A “saint” who is busy filling his mind, eyes and ears with knowledge of the Enemy is much less troublesome than a humble disciple whose heart is actually filled with the presence of the Enemy.

              Overall, Wormwood, I am happy with the progress you have made. You managed to keep your Patient from turning to prayer to address the threat of Covid19 by directing his attention to matters where he felt he could exert some control. At the same time, you kept your Patient from using the time available to grow deeper in his relationship with the Enemy by busying it up with the internet. What was most important however, was that it was accomplished in the fluidity of life and any appreciation your Patient could have had for spiritual rejuvenation was otherwise a victim of either distraction or busyness. Remember that we want neither times which shake your Patient’s confidence nor times which prick his conscience. As I have said in my earlier letters to you, “Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one—the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.”

Your affectionate uncle

SCREWTAPE