Lessons from Screwtape is a series of posts based on C.S. Lewis’ book, The Screwtape Letters, in which a principle demon, Screwtape, converses with a lower demon about their tactics to prey on humans.

Our post-Christian era is defined by a diverse population with a plurality of ideas and values. One major obstacle to faithfulness for the modern Christian is our proximity to non-Christian beliefs and practices. Look around and we find a world that values selfishness, indulgence, vanity, lack of control, destructiveness, secularism, and individualism. But are we always quick to acknowledge when we come face to face with such anti-Christian sentiments? More importantly, do we realize when we are affected by people that lure us away from faithfulness?

If we can learn from Screwtape (C.S. Lewis’ fictional demon), we would see that the human will is such that it looks to be agreeable with those around us. Screwtape speaks about a Christian whom the demons are working on and the “new acquaintances” he has met. He shows that humans look to connect with people they meet, sometimes unaware of the effect of such connections:

Did he commit himself deeply [to his new friends]? I don’t mean the words. There is a subtle play of looks and tones and laughs by which a mortal can imply that he is of the same party as those to whom he is speaking.

Screwtape explains that the “new acquaintances” easily become an influence on the Christian, and that once he realizes the effects, he will try to maintain his friendships even though they oppose his faith:

No doubt he must very soon realise that his own faith is in direct opposition to the assumptions on which all the conversation of his new friends is based. I don’t think that matters much provided that you can persuade him to postpone any open acknowledgement of the fact, and this, with the aid of shame, pride, modesty and vanity, will be easy to do. As long as the postponement lasts he will be in a false position. He will be silent when he ought to speak and laugh when he ought to be silent. He will assume, at first only by his manner, but presently by his words, all sorts of cynical and sceptical attitudes which are not really his. But if you play him well, they may become his.

Its funny how easily us Christians will try fit in with unbelievers. Like a school girl in front of her crush, we may shy about asserting truths regarding God, holiness, morals, and virtues. We may fear being seen as weird or an outsider; so we are silent when we ought to speak, and laugh when we ought to be silent. Screwtape says that we fool ourselves into thinking that we can balance two lives, pretending to go along with beliefs and practices that are not our own, until they become our own.

But how can we be so passive and blind so often when many of us were raised to be weary of the non-Christian world; to be “in but not of”?

Since the Enemy’s [God’s] servants have been preaching about ‘the World’ as one of the great standard temptations for two thousand years, this might seem difficult to do. But fortunately they have said very little about it for the last few decades. In modern Christian writings, though I see much (indeed more than I like) about Mammon, I see few of the old warnings about Worldly Vanities, the Choice of Friends, and the Value of Time. All that, your patient would probably classify as ‘Puritanism’—and may I remark in passing that the value we have given to that word is one of the really solid triumphs of the last hundred years? By it we rescue annually thousands of humans from temperance, chastity, and sobriety of life.

Screwtape helps us see our deep fear of being labeled a (gasp) Puritan. A prude or uptight. Maybe even “religious”!