/christian/ - Christian Discussion and Fellowship

>>259849

> MY DEAR WORMWOOD,

>I have been in correspondence with Slumtrimpet who is in charge of your

patient's young woman, and begin to see the chink in her armour. It is an

unobtrusive little vice which she shares with nearly all women who have grown up

in an intelligent circle united by a clearly defined belief; and it consists in

a quite untroubled assumption that the outsiders who do not share this belief

are really too stupid and ridiculous. The males, who habitually meet these

outsiders, do not feel that way; their confidence, if they are confident, is of

a different kind. Hers, which she supposes to be due to Faith, is in reality

largely due to the mere colour she has taken from her surroundings. It is not,

in fact, very different from the conviction she would have felt at the age of

ten that the kind of fish-knives used in her father's house were the proper or

normal or "real" kind, while those of the neighbouring families were "not real

fish-knives" at all. Now the element of ignorance and naпvety in all this is so

large, and the element of spiritual pride so small, that it gives us little hope

of the girl herself. But have you thought of how it can be made to influence

your own patient?

>>259850

> It is always the novice who exaggerates. The man who has risen in society is

over-refined, the young scholar is pedantic. In this new circle your patient is

a novice. He is there daily meeting Christian life of a quality he never before

imagined and seeing it all through an enchanted glass because he is in love. He

is anxious (indeed the Enemy commands him) to imitate this quality. Can you get

him to imitate this defect in his mistress and to exaggerate it until what was

venial in her becomes in him the strongest and most beautiful of the

vices—Spiritual Pride?

>>259851

> The conditions seem ideally favourable. The new circle in which he finds himself

is one of which he is tempted to be proud for many reasons other than its

Christianity. It is a better educated, more intelligent, more agreeable society

than any he has yet encountered. He is also under some degree of illusion as to

his own place in it. Under the influence of "love" he may still think himself

unworthy of the girl, but he is rapidly ceasing to think himself unworthy of the

others. He has no notion how much in him is forgiven because they are charitable

and made the best of because he is now one of the family. He does not dream how

much of his conversation, how many of his opinions, are recognised by them all

as mere echoes of their own. Still less does he suspect how much of the delight

he takes in these people is due to the erotic enchantment which the girl, for

him, spreads over all her surroundings. He thinks that he likes their talk and

way of life because of some congruity between their spiritual state and his,

when in fact they are so far beyond him that if he were not in love he would be

merely puzzled and repelled by much which he now accepts.

He is like a dog which should imagine it understood fire-arms because its hunting instinct and love for its master enable it to enjoy a day's shooting!

>>259852

> Here is your chance. While the Enemy, by means of sexual love and of some very

agreeable people far advanced in His service, is drawing the young barbarian up

to levels he could never otherwise have reached, you must make him feel that he

is finding his own level—that these people are "his sort" and that, coming among

them, he has come home. When he turns from them to other society he will find it

dull; partly because almost any society within his reach is, in fact, much less

entertaining, but still more because he will miss the enchantment of the young

woman. You must teach him to mistake his contrast between the circle that

delights and the circle that bores him for the contrast between Christians and

unbelievers. He must be made to feel (he'd better not put it into words) "how

different we Christians are"; and by "we Christians" he must really, but

unknowingly, mean "my set"; and by "my set" he must mean not "The people who, in

their charity and humility, have accepted me", but "The people with whom I

associate by right".

>>259853

> Success here depends on confusing him. If you try to make him explicitly and

professedly proud of being a Christian, you will probably fail; the Enemy's

warnings are too well known. If, on the other hand, you let the idea of "we

Christians" drop out altogether and merely make him complacent about "his set",

you will produce not true spiritual pride but mere social vanity which, by

comparison, is a trumpery, puny little sin. What you want is to keep a sly

self-congratulation mixing with all his thoughts and never allow him to raise

the question "What, precisely, am I congratulating myself about?" The idea of

belonging to an inner ring, of being in a secret, is very sweet to him. Play on

that nerve. Teach him, using the influence of this girl when she is silliest, to

adopt an air of amusement at the things the unbelievers say. Some theories which

he may meet in modern Christian circles may here prove helpful; theories, I

mean, that place the hope of society in some inner ring of "clerks", some

trained minority of theocrats. It is no affair of yours whether those theories

are true or false; the great thing is to make Christianity a mystery religion in

which he feels himself one of the initiates.

>>259854

> Pray do not fill your letters with rubbish about this European War. Its final

issue is, no doubt, important, but that is a matter for the High Command. I am

not in the least interested in knowing how many people in England have been

killed by bombs. In what state of mind they died, I can learn from the office at

this end. That they were going to die sometime, I knew already. Please keep your

mind on your work,

Your affectionate uncle

SCREWTAPE

>>259849

Why did you post the text in the picture and in text? A lot of this doesn't even seem relevant to this board, even though Screwtape Letters is a great book. Instead of just spamming text from the book, explain what that's supposed to mean for us. IC XC NIKA