Dear Wormwood

“If, on the other hand, by steady and cool-headed application here and now you can finally secure his soul, he will then be yours forever – a brim-full living chalice of despair and horror and astonishment which you can raise to your lips as often as you please”

– C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

My dad bought my two beautiful copies of C.S. Lewis’s, The Screwtape Letters and Mere Christianity, in the middle of high school. They sat on my shelf collecting dust for years. I only said “yes” to him buying them because he insisted that they would change my outlook on life and Christianity. 

Although I have yet to complete Mere Christianity, in the midst of turmoil and despair, I picked up my copy of The Screwtape Letters, a desperate attempt to take my mind off of everything falling apart around me.

I finished the book on June 20, 2021, a date scribbled on the first page at the top right-hand corner; a tradition and practice both my dad and I hold; a memento and reminder that I journeyed with whatever author through their remarkable story and finished my journey with them on said-date. 

As I flip through the book now, it is flooded with green highlights. (Yes, I highlight and write in my books, haha! And I am not ashamed about it, either!). The green highlights represent words I needed to hear at the time; jumping off the page at me at a time when I so desperately needed them.

A lot was happening in my life at twenty years old, and I wish to be as open as I am comfortable sharing…I didn’t realize I had an anxiety disorder until the year 2020, and it had been kicking my butt way into 2021.

Yet, Lewis’s tale, letters from an “affectionate” uncle Screwtape to his just-beginning demon nephew, Wormwood, who has been assigned to one of his first clients, a young man struggling through life, provided an insight into the enemy’s tactics in winning us over to hell, horror, despair, and turmoil.

Screwtape informs Wormwood, 

“We want cattle who can finally become food; He wants servants who can finally become sons. We want to suck in, He wants to give out. We are empty and would be filled; He is full and flows over. Our war aim is a world in which Our Father Below has drawn all other beings into himself: the Enemy wants a world full of beings united to Him but still distinct.”

The opposites of “the Enemy,” God, and, “Our Father Below,” Satan, jumped out at me. The enemy wants nothing more than to chew us up and spit us out, yet God wants a “world full of beings united to Him but still distinct.” His love overflows so much so that it has no other place to go, wants no other place to go, but into our hearts and minds. The enemy and his minions are trying desperately to deter us from that simple truth, to suck us in, to hollow us out in the same way they are hollow. 

Screwtape continues:

“He wants them to learn to walk and must therefore take away His hand; and if only the will to walk is really there He is pleased even with their stumbles. Do not be deceived, Wormwood. Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy’s will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.”

That last line hit home. 

“Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy’s will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.” 

Anxiety forces its victims to spend a lot of days questioning what happened, wondering how they could go from the top of the world, to rock bottom, questioning what these thoughts, self-insults, and internal hatred mean. Yet, through it all, just trying to rely on God, trying to pray, and still continuing to reach for that brown leather-bound Bible sitting on the nightstand is pleasing to God, and horrifying to the Devil.

This line was an encouragement, an eye-opener, that even though I still questioned, even though I was looking around upon a universe where every trace of God seemed to have vanished, I was still heading down the right path, still fumbling blindly forward, feeling forsaken, yet still reaching through that dark, trying desperately to grasp the light at the end of the tunnel. 

I return to The Screwtape Letters often, recalling what my initial journey over the summer of 2021 taught me, and many of the lessons are still applicable to me today. 

A difficult lesson to learn was that some of my mental health problems were self-inflicted, a careless attitude I had about certain things suddenly shifted and I realized how incredibly wrong I was about certain aspects of my life; things needed to improve, to change. I would like to be clear that I am not stating that everyone’s mental health problems are self-inflicted. In fact, most of the time, they are far from that. Yet, there were certain aspects of my own mental health journey I knew to be self-inflicted, and that led to a deep questioning of myself and my beliefs. But that wake-up call was encouraging, too.

The highway to hell is “safe,” and the stairway to heaven is hard.

“Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one – the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden warnings, without milestones, without signposts.”

The genius of Lewis’s work is that it provided a unique insight into how the enemy views us mere mortals in difference to how God views us. Even though there were some very come-to-Jesus moments throughout my read, Lewis threw in good news, as well, writing,

“Remember always, that He really likes the little vermin, and sets an absurd value on the distinctness of every one of them. When he talks of their losing their selves, He only means abandoning the clamour of self-will; once they have done that, He really gives them back all their personality, and boasts (I am afraid, sincerely) that when they are wholly His they will be more themselves than ever.”

The Taylor Swift lyric, “I’d like to be my old self again, but I’m still trying to find it” comes to mind.

A loss of the self is never welcome, yet sometimes it happens. Yet, God invites all of us back into ourselves when we accept His love and outstretched hand.

I can confirm that He makes us more ourselves than ever; the new version comes back stronger than the old.

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come. The old has gone, the new is here! — 2 Corinthians 5:17

Our identity is not found within ourselves, as I had led myself to believe for so many years, especially during the summer of 2021. It is found within Him. And because our identity is through Him, we become more like him. We become love, we become kindness, we become patient, we become forgiveness, we become washed clean, we become white as snow, we become more ourselves than ever. 

“The enemy wants him, in the end, to be so free from any bias in his own favor that he can rejoice in his own talents as frankly and gratefully as in his neighbor’s talents – or in a sunrise, an elephant, or waterfall. He wants each man, in the long run, to be able to recognize all creatures (even himself) as glorious and excellent things. He wants to kill their animal self-love as soon as possible; but it is His long-term policy, I fear, to restore them a new kind of self-love – a charity and gratitude for all selves, including their own; when they have really learned to love their neighbors as themselves, they will be allowed to love themselves as their neighbors. For we must never forget what is the most repellent and inexplicable trait in our Enemy; He really loves the hairless bipeds He has created and always gives back to them with His right hand what He has taken away with His left.”

Throughout the letters, Screwtape often perceives the individual as a conquest, a lamb to be led to the slaughter, a notch in the belt, another domino down, yet God sees the individual as the individual, the most glorious of all His creations, so unique, so lovely, so cherished. 

And Wormwood is trying desperately to trick his client away from the right path, yet the client is a persistent little bugger, choosing joy over and over again, choosing pathways that aid him such as continuing to go to church, continuing to love, continuing to open his Bible, even when he doesn’t understand what God is doing in his life, to begin with. It becomes clear that the client’s vanquishing of Wormwood comes from intentional acts of choosing Christ, choosing joy, choosing a more positive perspective.

It makes Screwtape sick. 

“And all the time the joke is that the word ‘Mine’ in its fully possessive sense cannot be uttered by a human being about anything. In the long run either Our Father or the Enemy will say ‘Mine’ of each thing that exists, and specially of each man. They will find out in the end, never fear, to whom their time, their souls, and their bodies really belong – certainly not to them, whatever happens. At present the Enemy says ‘Mine’ of everything on the pedantic, legalistic ground that He made it: Our Father hopes in the end to say ‘Mine’ of all things on the more realistic and dynamic ground of conquest.”

Yet, by taking the perspective of Screwtape, by acknowledging ourselves as a mere conquest of the enemy, one can become better prepared for battle. Call it reverse psychology, if you will, but if I’m a conquest, and I have to fight with an army, I’m choosing the army that’s going to win. I mean, who wouldn’t want to side with the opponent who is guaranteed absolute victory? The one of love, of a more wholesome perspective of us, the one who does not view us as a conquest, a battle to be won, but the victory itself. The battle has already taken place, death has been defeated, and the cross was not the beginning, but the end. All we have to do is step over to the winning side, no need to take up arms against an ancient enemy by ourselves, an enemy who sees us nothing as cattle being led to the slaughter or carrion just waiting to be devoured when we have the true victor so easily at our disposal.

There is no need to fight alone. There is merely a need to accept and choose that you are not alone; to accept the joy and hope and love of Jesus Christ. 

And that’s when the victory begins to take shape, the battle begins to slow.

Dear Wormwood, 

You’ve lost.