“My dear Wormwood, I note what you say about guiding your patient’s reading and taking care that he sees a good deal of his materialist friend. But are you not being a trifle naive? It sounds as if you supposed that argument was the way to keep him out of the Enemy’s clutches. That might have been so if he had lived a few centuries earlier. At that time the humans still knew pretty well when a thing was proved and when it was not; and if it was proved they really believed it. They still connected thinking with doing and were prepared to alter their way of life as the result of a chain of reasoning.”

So begins The Screw Tape Letters, C.S. Lewis’ 1942 novel depicting letters written from senior devil, Screwtape, to his nephew, junior tempter, Wormwood. The book presents a tour de force of Christian apologetics via negativa, making the claim for the faith by showing how these devils are working to undermine their “patient’s” salvation through temptation, distraction, and obfuscation.

In December 2010, Sally and I had slipped away to New York City for a few days, running around Times Square, Central Park, and Rockefeller Center; the Big Apple in Christmas-time is truly magical. While there, we had the opportunity to see a stage production of The Screwtape Letters at the Westside Theatre, off-Broadway. In my memory it was opening night but the production actually premiered in May. I had recently read Screwtape as my first exposure to C.S. Lewis and was curious how they would depict what is basically a no-action monologue. We loved it.

Last night, we experienced Screwtape again as the production returned to Clowes Hall in Indianapolis. The stage adaptation is very well done, honoring much of the original artistry of Lewis in the monologue even as it keeps the story moving along within the limits of its simple set and minimal action. Watching the performance, I was struck by how surprisingly relevant the 82-year-old letters are to our contemporary world. Written in the dark shadow of World War II, Lewis managed to capture the timeless dangers to the human soul as well as the eternal hope of his Christian faith.

Though the book itself is explicitly Christian, the devious ploys of the tempters are highly instructive in showing many practical barriers to modern temporal happiness. Open almost any page of the book and one finds scenarios that we all experience, killing joy and preventing flourishing. Consider this gem:

“When two humans have lived together for many years it usually happens that each has tones of voice and expressions of face which are almost unendurably irritating to the other. Work on that. Bring fully into the consciousness of your patient that particular lift of his mother’s eyebrows which he learned to dislike in the nursery, and let him think how much he dislikes it. Let him assume that she knows how annoying it is and does it to annoy. And, of course, never let him suspect that he has tones and looks which similarly annoy her.“

As I listened to this particular passage spoken aloud, I thought of all of the petty things that trip us up in our interactions. Especially with those closest to us. Tones and looks. How often have those burdened our encounters? The road to hell on earth is paved with such pettiness and our own belief that we are innocent of it even as the other is intentionally antagonizing us.

Later, Screwtape provides insight on stealing joy through interruption:

“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. It is the unexpected visitor (when he looked forward to a quiet evening), or the friend’s talkative wife (turning up when he looked forward to a tete-a-tete with the friend), that throw him out of gear. They anger him because he regards his time as his own and feels that it is being stolen.”

If anything, time in our hamster-wheel-world has become even more precious as we juggle the demands of modern life. Screwtape suggests that getting the patient to believe that ‘my time is my own’ will distract him from the fact that he “can neither make, nor retain, one moment of time; it all comes to him by pure gift; he might as well regard the sun and moon and his chattels.” Lewis’ clever insight is profoundly timeless to we citizens of the hyper-paced, 24-hour life of the 21st century, challenging us to consider what is truly ours and what really matters.

In the spirit of my “tour de force” description earlier, let’s do a rapid fire run-down of a few more quotations that capture a bit more of Lewis’ brilliant insight into our humanity:

“It is funny how mortals always picture us as putting things into their minds: in reality our best work is done by keeping things out.”

“The more often he feels without acting, the less he will be able ever to act, and, in the long run, the less he will be able to feel.”

“Gratitude looks to the Past and love to the Present; fear, avarice, lust, and ambition look ahead.”

“Prosperity knits a man to the world. He feels that he is finding his place in it, while really it is finding its place in him.”

Though Lewis heart and mind are bent toward the eternal, The Screwtape Letters provides a powerful playbook for finding happiness in the temporal. Watching the performance last night, I found myself laughing out loud even as I cringed at Screwtape’s insights and counsel. The devils’ mission was to keep the patient from making it to heaven, but the crazy thing is that their efforts to encourage his own desires and inclinations, seemingly toward happiness, first created hell for him on earth.

As a final thought to consider, I’ll close with a commentary from C.S. Lewis in the preface of the book:

“I live in the Managerial Age, in a world of “Admin.” The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid “dens of crime” that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voices. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the office of a thoroughly nasty business concern.” C.S. Lewis, 1942