Screwtape versus Wormwood - understanding the demonic strategy

One of the most important reasons for reading CS Lewis's The Screwtape Letters (and its 'follow-up', Screwtape Proposes a Toast) is to understand the difference between senior demons whose behaviour is strategic and oriented towards maximising the harvest of damned souls; and the low level minion types of demon - who are short-termist, impulsive, destructive theiving, lustful, sadistic etc. The value is that most people assume that demons work in the latter way - and thereby fundamental misunderstand and misinterpret the past six or so decades in The West.

A particular key moment in the Letters comes when the apprentice Wormwood gets excited at the prospect of war; but his 'uncle' Screwtape - the senior tempter and strategist - points out that while war is delightful in terms of human suffering, from a strategic demonic perspective war is often counter-productive, and 'peace' (comfort, convenience, idleness, affluence etc) is preferable.

When I told you not to fill your letters with rubbish about the war, I meant, of course, that I did not want to have your rather infantile rhapsodies about the death of men and the destruction of cities. In so far as the war really concerns the spiritual state of the patient, I naturally want full reports. And on this aspect you seem singularly obtuse. Thus you tell me with glee that there is reason to expect heavy air raids on the town where the creature lives.

This is a crying example of something I have complained about already - your readiness to forget the main point in your immediate enjoyment of human suffering. Do you not know that bombs kill men? Or do you not realise that the patient's death, at this moment, is precisely what we want to avoid?

[Note ' the patient' is what Screwtape calls the human that Wormwoord is trying to corrupt.]

He has escaped the worldly friends with whom you tried to entangle him; he has "fallen in love" with a very Christian woman and is temporarily immune from your attacks on his chastity; and the various methods of corrupting his spiritual life which we have been trying are so far unsuccessful. At the present moment, as the full impact of the war draws nearer and his worldly hopes take a proportionately lower place in his mind, full of his defence work, full of the girl, forced to attend to his neighbours more than he has ever done before and liking it more than he expected, "taken out of himself" as the humans say, and daily increasing in conscious dependence on the Enemy, he will almost certainly be lost to us if he is killed tonight.

[Note: The Enemy is what Screwtape calls God - since the perspective of the book is the inverted one of demons.]

This is so obvious that I am ashamed to write it. I sometimes wonder if you young fiends are not kept out on temptation-duty too long at a time - if you are not in some danger of becoming infected by the sentiments and values of the humans among whom you work. They, of course, do tend to regard death as the prime evil and survival as the greatest good. But that is because we have taught them to do so.

Do not let us be infected by our own propaganda. I know it seems strange that your chief aim at the moment should be the very same thing for which the patient's lover and his mother are praying - namely his bodily safety. But so it is; you should be guarding him like the apple of your eye. If he dies now, you lose him. If he survives the war, there is always hope.

This is vital to understand in our materialist Western world - although the junior apprentice demons may get 'carried away' with delight in human suffering; the demonic strategists have recognised that war, socio-economic collapse, epidemics, starvation and the like are counter-productive.

The infliction of mass extreme human suffering was thoroughly tried out in the early twentieth century with the Russian Revolution, Communism generally and the 1914-18 and 39-45 wars, and one major result was to trigger a massive spiritual-Christian revival - just as Screwtape warned.

Since 1945, a new demonic strategy has been in place (described in detail in '...Proposes a Toast'), Christianity has been in continual decline down to its current level of near-extinction; and the other remaining spiritual perspectives in modernity are either ineffectual, or else thoroughly assimilated to the demonic agenda - of lulling and gradualism: SDI = Subversion, Destruction and - ultimately - Inversion of The Good (Truth, Beauty, Virtue) and all positive values.

Understanding the Global Conspiracy: Screwtape proposes a toast by CS Lewis (1959)

By my evaluation The Screwtape Letters (1942) is one of CS Lewis's very best books; and the follow up 'essay' Screwtape Proposes a Toast (1959) isn't as good in a literary sense; however, it is very important and ought not to be missed.

In particular, Toast is very astute in understanding the modern (post World War II) demonic strategy - or, to put it differently, Toast tells us what the Global Conspiracy is conspiring to achieve.

I have often said that 'the conspiracy theorists' are broadly correct in diagnosing that an evil cabal lies behind the strategic direction of the modern world. Where they are wrong is that the cabal is ultimately demonic, not human; and consequently its aims are spiritual not material.

In particular, most conspiracy theorists focus on the idea that human suffering and death are being engineered by a cabal of selfish, greedy and perverted humans. But the reality is that behind these humans (who do indeed exist) and controlling them, and dictating the long term direction of evil, there are supernatural evil beings whose purpose is human damnation - not human suffering and death.

The most obvious way that this shows itself is that it is very easy for powerful people to cause suffering and death; and if that was their ultimate goal, then there would be a great deal more human suffering and death everywhere there has been over the past several decades. In fact, the human population has grown by about four billion since WWII, infant mortality has reduced, everywhere, life expectancy has increased everywhere, and there are large areas of the planet that have not suffered war for many decades, or longer.

 Clearly, the powers of evil either aren't aiming ultimately at suffering and death... or else they aren't really evil, or aren't really powerful; which I reject on these grounds. What they are aiming at, and what they have done very, very effectively; is clearly laid out in Screwtape Proposes a Toast.

The powers of evil are corrupting, not killing humanity; they are perverting not causing here and now suffering; they are working by pleasure, confusion and distraction rather than pain and focused fear.

The forces of evil have learned from the Second World War, which - in spiritual terms - significantly backfired against evil in the West and triggered a powerful spiritual and Christian revival - of which The Screwtape Letters was itself a product and a trigger.

To get clearer about this - read Toast...

Understanding the Ahrimanic distinction

The Ahrimanic-style demon Balthazar from the (enjoyable) movie Constantine (2005)

If you do not already understand the distinctively 'Ahrimanic' nature of modern evil; then I think it would be time well spent for you to look-into this.


One quick and enjoyable way - which I wrote about a couple of years ago - is to study Screwtape Proposes a Toast (1959) by CS Lewis (PDF version here) - and indeed the character of Screwtape as contrasted with his nephew Wormwood in The Screwtape Letters (PDF here).


Throughout the Letters Screwtape is recurrently trying to reign-in Wormwood's naive, short-termist and (for Wormwood) personally-gratifying evil of tormenting, frightening and playing-nasty-tricks-on his 'patient'; but losing sight of the fact that the ultimate (and proper) goal of demons is damned dead souls, not miserable living humans.

By this analysis: Wormwood's is the old-style 'Luciferic' evil; Screwtape represents the modern, totalitarian, bureaucratic, soft-sell, incremental Ahrimanic evil - much less spectacular and obvious; but in the end much more powerfully damning for exactly those reasons.


In Proposes a Toast, Screwtape comments:

The quality [of Ahrimanically-damned souls] may be wretched; but we never had souls (of a sort) in more abundance....

We are tempted to say that such souls — or such residual puddles of what once was soul — are hardly worth damning. Yes, but the Enemy (for whatever inscrutable and perverse reason) thought them worth trying to save. Believe me, He did. 

You youngsters who have not yet been on active duty have no idea with what labour, with what delicate skill, each of these miserable creatures was finally captured.The difficulty lay in their very smallness and flabbiness. 

Here were vermin so muddled in mind, so passively responsive to environment, that it was very hard to raise them to that level of clarity and deliberateness at which mortal sin becomes possible. 

To raise them just enough; but not that fatal millimetre of “too much.” For then, of course, all would possibly have been lost. They might have seen; they might have repented.


That is exactly the nature of modern Ahrimanic evil - it is pathetic in its passivity of evil-ness (it is evil minus the courage and motivation of great villains of the past); but there is such a lot of it!

Note to myself against excessive future-orientation

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I am currently listening through a dramatized version of C.S Lewis's great book The Screwtape Letters,

The excessive 'future' orientation of my blogging is just the kind of thing Lewis is warning against via the demon Screwtape's demonically bad-advice.

Note: 'We' refers to the devil and his servants, 'the Enemy' refers to God.

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From The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis, Letter 15:

http://www.ccc-nl.org/mn/ScrewTape_Letter_15_and_questions.pdf

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(1) The humans live in time but our Enemy destines them to eternity.

He therefore, I believe, wants them to attend chiefly to two things, to eternity itself, and to that point of time which they call the Present.

For the Present is the point at which time touches eternity. Of the present moment, and of it only, humans have an experience analogous to the experience which our Enemy has of reality as a whole; in it alone freedom and actuality are offered them.

He would therefore have them continually concerned either with eternity (which means being concerned with Him) or with the Present—either meditating on their eternal union with, or separation from, Himself, or else obeying the present voice of conscience, bearing the present cross, receiving the present grace, giving thanks for the present pleasure.

(2) Our business is to get them away from the eternal, and from the Present.

With this in view, we sometimes tempt a human (say a widow or a scholar) to live in the Past. But this is of limited value, for they have some real knowledge of the past and it has a determinate nature and, to that extent, resembles eternity. It is far better to make them live in the Future.

Biological necessity makes all their passions point in that direction already, so that thought about the Future inflames hope and fear. Also, it is unknown to them, so that in making them think about it we make them think of unrealities.

In a word, the Future is, of all things, the thing least like eternity. It is the most completely temporal part of time—for the Past is frozen and no longer flows, and the Present is all lit up with eternal rays.

Hence the encouragement we have given to all those schemes of thought such as Creative Evolution, Scientific Humanism, or Communism, which fix men's affections on the Future, on the very core of temporality. Hence nearly all vices are rooted in the future.

(...)


(3) To be sure, the Enemy wants men to think of the Future too—just so much as is necessary for now planning the acts of justice or charity which will probably be their duty tomorrow.

The duty of planning the morrow's work is today's duty; though its material is borrowed from the future, the duty, like all duties, is in the Present.

This is not straw splitting. He does not want men to give the Future their hearts, to place their treasure in it. We do.

His ideal is a man who, having worked all day for the good of posterity (if that is his vocation), washes his mind of the whole subject, commits the issue to Heaven, and returns at once to the patience or gratitude demanded by the moment that is passing over him.

But we want a man hag-ridden by the Future—haunted by visions of an imminent heaven or hell upon earth—ready to break the Enemy's commands in the present if by so doing we make him think he can attain the one or avert the other — dependent for his faith on the success or failure of schemes whose end he will not live to see.

We want a whole race perpetually in pursuit of the rainbow's end, never honest, nor kind, nor happy now, but always using as mere fuel wherewith to heap the altar of the future every real gift which is offered them in the Present.

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We live in a demon-dominated world - so, how come we are not Already in a global war?

For the last couple of years since the coordinated birdemic-peck program was launched, it has become obvious that we live in a totalitarian world - therefore an evil world; and the nature of this evil is increasingly extreme (as must and will happen when evil dominates - evil feeds-upon itself).

Why, then, do not the world-ruling evil powers not just get-on-with-it and launch a world war? ...Considering that so many of the political, media, bureaucratic and corporate leaders are obviously so very keen on the idea. 

The Global Establishment could easily start a war at any time, if they really wanted. So why don't they? 

Of course, it may well happen, and may happen today; given the way that the large and strong elements within the Western powers are incrementally provoking and escalating the situation - indeed, there is already more than sufficient reason, and has been for several weeks. 

But this merely emphasizes that we need to understand why it has not already happened. Given the evil of the Global Establishment; why are we still at a stage of restrained and localized conflict, of proxy war - of remote and deniable actions rather than explicit, direct unrestrained aggressive interventions? 

Surely - we may think - a world war would be the best possible way to promote evil and the damnation of Men in vast numbers? If so; why the restraint? 

The global leadership class are not at all 'restrained' in their other coercive behaviors - so why should they be restrained when it comes to war? 

  

The outline answer is, I believe, given in that wise book by CS Lewis, The Screwtape Letters. 

Screwtape, an experienced chief devil, writes to a junior demon concerning the outbreak of the Second World War (the following excerpt has been edited by me). 

Notice that Screwtape exemplifies the inverted-value system that are shared by our current world leadership - what Screwtape regards as positive and desirable, Christians regard as evil - and vice versa. 

You say you are “delirious with joy” because the European humans have started another of their wars. I see very well what has happened to you. You are not delirious; you are only drunk. 

For the first time in your career you have tasted that wine which is the reward of all our labours—the anguish and bewilderment of a human soul—and it has gone to your head...

I must warn you not to hope too much from a war. Of course a war is entertaining. The immediate fear and suffering of the humans is a legitimate and pleasing refreshment for our myriads of toiling workers. 

But what permanent good does it do us unless we make use of it for bringing souls to Our Father Below? The Enemy [God], true to His barbarous methods of warfare, allows us to see the short misery of His favourites only to tantalise and torment us. 

Because, war has certain tendencies inherent in it which are, in themselves, by no means in our favour. 

We may hope for a good deal of cruelty and unchastity. 

But, if we are not careful, we shall see thousands turning in this tribulation to the Enemy [God], while tens of thousands who do not go so far as that will nevertheless have their attention diverted from themselves to values and causes which they believe to be higher than the self. 

I know that the Enemy [God] disapproves many of these causes. But that is where He is so unfair. He often makes prizes of humans who have given their lives for causes He thinks bad on the monstrously sophistical ground that the humans thought them good and were following the best they knew. 

Consider too what undesirable deaths occur in wartime. Men are killed in places where they knew they might be killed and to which they go, if they are at all of God's party, prepared. 

How much better for us if all humans died in costly nursing homes amid doctors who lie, nurses who lie, friends who lie, as we have trained them, promising life to the dying, encouraging the belief that sickness excuses every indulgence, and even, if our workers know their job, withholding all suggestion of a priest lest it should betray to the sick man his true condition! 

And how disastrous for us is the continual remembrance of death which war enforces. One of our best weapons, contented worldliness, is rendered useless. 

In wartime not even a human can believe that he is going to live forever. 

God’s human partisans have all been plainly told by Him that suffering is an essential part of what He calls Redemption; so that a faith which is destroyed by a war or a pestilence cannot really have been worth the trouble of destroying. 

So, Lewis's impersonation of the devil Screwtape provides an insight as to why (probably, plausibly) the evil strategists of the Global Establishment have, so far, reined-in the impatient and lustful clamour of lower-level demons and sadistic humans among national politicians and in the mass media - those who see no further than gratifying their own state of delirious delight at the prospect of massive human aggression and misery. 

After all, the real and causal war is spiritual - not physical - as the senior devils well-know; and the cause of evil in the spiritual war may (as Screwtape explains) substantially be set back by a global and physical war. War may encourage net spiritual Good. 

It is likely that the high-level strategists of evil greatly prefer the current faked, proxy, manipulated media-war - promoted to The West as infotainment, and a novelty 'crusade'; an opportunity for spitefulness to masquerade as principle, virtue-signalling to pretend to boldness, and servile credulity to suppose itself wise. 

High-level Strategists of evil therefore prefer to avoid, if possible, the spiritual dangers of a war in which courage is en-couraged, and where personal experience of existential (not virtual) realities might awaken masses of people to the truths of this world, and the next. 

As Screwtape said: In war not even a human can believe he is going to live forever. 

Yet the demonic strategists are themselves very keen on inflicting extreme and widespread human misery; and at any point may prove unable to resist for longer the pressing temptations of short-term, selfish indulgence attainable from unleashing chaotic evil. 

In the long-term; the short-term will sooner-or-later prevail. 

Modern man aiming at Limbo?

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While The Screwtape Letters is deservedly a Christian classic, its 1959 sequel Screwtape proposes a toast is at a somewhat lower level of literary inspiration and seldom gets much attention.

Yet it was a clear prophecy of social and psychological trends which most people only began to perceive a decade or more later.

Lewis is, indeed, describing the End Times.

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Screwtape is a demon, by the way.

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The quality may be wretched; but we never had souls (of a sort) in more abundance.

...We are tempted to say that such souls — or such residual puddles of what once was soul — are hardly worth damning.

Yes, but the Enemy (for whatever inscrutable and perverse reason) thought them worth trying to save. Believe me, He did.

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You youngsters who have not yet been on active duty have no idea with what labour, with what delicate skill, each of these miserable creatures was finally captured.

The difficulty lay in their very smallness and flabbiness. Here were vermin so muddled in mind, so passively responsive to environment, that it was very hard to raise them to that level of clarity and deliberateness at which mortal sin becomes possible.

To raise them just enough; but not that fatal millimetre of “too much.” For then, of course, all would possibly have been lost. They might have seen; they might have repented.

On the other hand, if they had been raised too little, they would very possibly have qualified for Limbo, as creatures suitable neither for Heaven nor for Hell; things that, having failed to make the grade, are allowed to sink into a more or less contented subhumanity forever.

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...The sort of souls on whose despair and ruin we have — well, I won’t say feasted, but at any rate subsisted — tonight are increasing in numbers and will continue to increase.

...The “great” sinners, those in whom vivid and genial passions have been pushed beyond the bounds and in whom an immense concentration of will has been devoted to objects which the Enemy abhors, will not disappear. But they will grow rarer.

...Our catches will be ever more numerous; but they will consist increasingly of trash — trash which we should once have thrown to Cerberus and the hellhounds as unfit for diabolical consumption.

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...It is a change for the better.

The great (and toothsome) sinners are made out of the very same material as those horrible phenomena the great Saints.

The virtual disappearance of such material may mean insipid meals for us. But is it not utter frustration and famine for the Enemy?

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He did not create the humans — He did not become one of them and die among them by torture — in order to produce candidates for Limbo, “failed” humans.

He wanted to make them Saints; gods; things like Himself.

Is the dullness of your present fare not a very small price to pay for the delicious knowledge that His whole great experiment is petering out?

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Excerpted and edited from Screwtape Proposes a Toast - by CS Lewis, 1959

http://screwtapeblogs.wordpress.com/2009/06/30/screwtape-proposes-a-toast/


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The best neglected book? The Great Divorce, by CS Lewis (1946)

Although it is perhaps not CS Lewis's very best book (which would probably be, according to taste, The Screwtape Letters, That Hideous Strength, Abolition of Man, or the Narnia Chronicles), his fable The Great Divorce is perhaps the one that I find comes to mind more often than any other.

You can find a copy here. 

The reason I think of it frequently, is that TGD is the wisest of books concerning the most significant, yet difficult, of Christian doctrines for modern people - the nature of, and necessity for, repentance of sins. In particular, that The Problem for salvation (the choice between Heaven and Hell) is not the size of a sin (how sinful it is), but whether a person is prepared to recognise and acknowledge a particular sin as a sin. 

Thus, a repentant murderer is in Heaven; an insincere Bishop prefers to remain in Hell.

A further value of TGD is that it shows exactly and plausibly why a 'normal', everyday person might actively-choose Hell, and for reasons that would perhaps be regarded as utterly trivial by another.

The title of 'The Great Divorce' has always been the book's biggest problem - since it is both off-putting and misleading. In fact the book is an easy and enjoyable read, full of humour and satire - as well as poetry and visionary fantasy, along similar lines to The Screwtape Letters. It is also manageably brief (about 150 pages).

If you want to know a bit more before giving the book a try, I can recommend Adam Greenwood's article; which discusses the book from a Mormon Christian perspective.

But why not just read the thing! 

Who are the 'people' who have taken-over the world?

My answer would be to break the answer down into two levels: the (probable) specific human agents, and the demonic masters whose plan this truly is (and who fully intend to sacrifice the human agents, when they have performed their function).

The ultimate aim of the demonic powers is mass spiritual damnation, which is one that benefits only the (immortal, spirit) demons - and this is where secular analyses fall-down, since they always try to explain everything in terms of worldly self-interest.

To understand what I mean, CS Lewis's The Screwtape Letters and Screwtape Proposes a Toast helped me to understand the demonic perspective.

Lewis's book The Great Divorce was helpful in understanding why so many people choose Hell when they might choose Heaven; and thereby what are the strategies of the demons.

In this spiritual war - what literally-hurts demons?

In a post last month I speculated on why demons did not attack everybody, all of the time - all-out. 

And one conclusion (or suggestion) was that it hurts demons when they attacked and are repulsed; therefore they greatly prefer indirect and deniable assaults; and will only go all-out when confident of victory. 

In other words: demons try to avoid being undeniably-defeated; because this causes them intense and personal suffering. 

On further reflection - this seems to have the ring of truth; since for demons suffering is an absolute thing. When a demon suffers, there is nothing-else in his existence: suffering is total. 

 

A demon lives for his own gratification - therefore when he suffers there is no 'long-term' benefit, nothing to be learned from the experience: so that demonic suffering is absolute in a way that is alien to a Christian.

Of course, demonic powers seek pleasure - the pleasures of sin. Yet these pleasure are temporary and partial, compared with absolute nature of suffering and the desire to avoid it. 

Presumably, when tempting a soul to become a demon; the pleasures of gratifying his favourite sins are emphasized. But evil feeds upon itself, and it seems likely that after a while committed demons become more-and-more negatively-motivated. 

The demon then lives mainly to avoid suffering, much more than to experience pleasure - because demonic suffering is so much more complete and overwhelming than the (always transitory and less-then-fully-satisfying) gratifications of pleasure.

This waxing of negative-motivation as evil develops, can be seen in the demonically-inspired Leftist movement - which began as utopian - claiming to build Heaven-on-earth; but has now become (with the birdemic-peck and climate-warmism) almost wholly negative and avoidant. 

Modern Leftism is nearly-all about opposing and avoiding some (supposed) suffering; it is hardly-at-all about offering any positive satisfaction or pleasure.

Or the sexual revolution - which began with promises of untrammeled and non-responsible promiscuity with anybody you 'fancied'. But has ended in the inverted evils of the transagenda (with its mutilation, poisoning and official-grooming of children); this being 'justified' by the need to avoid and reduce human suffering!    

In sum: demons have no courage; because they have no reason to be courageous. 

They may be forced to do things they would rather not do by the threat of greater suffering. But even in their boldness they are suffering-avoidant: fearing the certain retribution of their demonic masters more than the threat of what Men may do to them.

(This progressive domination of demonic evil by negative avoidance of personal pain is neatly illustrated in the course of CS Lewis's Screwtape Letters and Screwtape Proposes a Toast.) 

Yet Men may do much to hurt demons. 

And what can be done to hurt Them can be inferred as the opposite of how demons themselves behave, and the opposite of the behaviours they encourage and enforce upon those Men who have given themselves to the service of evil: Men such as the institutional leadership class of The West.

The demons suffer, immediately and strongly, when their temptations are decisively rejected; when their assaults are thrown-back. Therefore, timidity makes them creep forward towards wickedness - one deniable-increment at a time; trying to avoid their covert evil-motivation being noticed, discerned, exposed - then rejected. 

The demonic hatred of clarity and honesty is 'visceral' - clarity and honesty caused demons actual pain. 

Therefore demons delight to cloud every issue with complexity and 'nuance'; they delight in paradox and ambiguity; a state of fearful perplexity, confusion and dread - is their ideal. 

Demonic horror arises when their activities are seen clearly, and when even their baby-steps towards evil are immediately called and exposed. When their devious policies are rapidly recognized, repulsed, mocked - this causes actual and extreme, over-whelming, suffering. 

When elaborately deceptive demonic plans are instantly seen-through and cast into oblivion... this is more than merely frustrating - it is a cause of total agony for the Beings involved. 

So, we may begin to see what we should do, and what we should avoid, in our dealings. 

It is wise to avoid getting enmeshed in the demonic agenda in any way; demons love to debate, endlessly, on their own ground.

Do not compromise or be 'strategic' with evil: what They hate most, what is most effective - is also the least 'sophisticated' response. 

Keep it simple, keep it lucid, be concise; do Not try to meet evil half-way...

What is probably best, what likely causes most rapid and extreme harm to Them; is a childishly-direct response to what is childishly-obvious to the Christian discerning spirit. 

As so often; we are called-upon to choose a 'return' to child-like simplicity - but consciously, deliberately, as mature adults. 

As so often; the highest knowledge is a rediscovery of 'the obvious'. 

The hierarchy of evil seen in the Birdemic/Peck and current wars

CS Lewis's demonic supervisor Screwtape is depicted as being strategically-motivated by damnation of humans; while the junior demon Wormwood is mostly just a sadist - enjoying the infliction of human suffering. 

There is a hierarchy of evil (or "lowerarchy", as CS Lewis terms it in The Screwtape Letters) - by which I mean there are degrees of evilness. 

This was evident in the Birdemic of 2020 and the (allegedly preventive) Peck which followed later; and is evident in the ongoing West-provoked/ escalated/sustained global wars. 

The three main levels of the hierarchy of evil can be defined in terms of motivation; and are, in ascending order of evilness of motives:

1. Profit and Pleasure

2. Sadism

3. Damnation

1. Profit and Pleasure 

These are those humans (and lower-status demonic beings) whose motives are essentially selfish and short-termist. 

They cause, continue and use events like the Birdemic to get pleasure and to avoid suffering. For instance; they aim to make money, and to get rich/ famous/ powerful/ popular. 

As example: the people who got massively wealthy from manufacturing and distributing "personal protection" products and the Peck during the Birdemic. Or in wars; the corporate types who manufacture and trade armaments, the politicians and journalists who benefit from bribery and other corruptions. 

This kind of evil is widely acknowledged as a real factor in the world; indeed for most modern people selfish short-termism is in the only kind of evil they acknowledge. They will use it to to explain everything that happens and which they dislike.   

2. Sadism

These are those whose motives are sadistic and destructive. Their main gratification is spiteful: to enjoy the suffering of others, especially when they are involved in inflicting it. 

Such a motive isn't rare; and often finds expression in resentment-fantasy, gloating and Schadenfreude. 

It can be recognized as dominant when people will sacrifice their own profit and pleasure in order to try and damage and destroy those people and entities (e.g. religions, institutions, nations) they most dislike. 

In the Birdemic the sadism-motivated were evident in their eager and sustained support of "face-coverings" and the variety of "social distancing" policies. The resulting loneliness, illness, decline and despair of the coercively-isolated was their primary satisfaction.   

In war, they are recognizable by their tenacious support of policies that have (and are, by them, intended to have) the opposite effect to that claimed. Such as "sanctions" that damage everybody, but mainly those doing the sanctioning. Or military "aid" that leads to the progressive annihilation of the people and society being supplied with aid. 

 

3. Damnation

At the highest level of evil (or more exactly, the highest level at which evil-intent coheres, and remains capable of some cooperation and a degree long-termism in aim - there is a level beyond) - the motivation is to work for the damnation of others. 

In other words, the aim is spiritual. It is to oppose God and divine creation in all ways possible, and in particular to deter or prevent people from choosing to accept the gift of Jesus Christ (i.e. resurrection to eternal Heavenly life). 

Since salvation is a matter of spiritual choice (an "opt-in"); this level of evil works on trying to shape and manipulate what people want.-

To ensure damnation of souls; it is not enough to have people Do evil stuff, they must ultimately Want evil stuff. 

In the Birdemic we saw this in the propaganda that tried to make people accept, demand, and celebrate the measures that were designed to harm them spiritually (as well as physically). 

Many people were induced to desire the escalation and permanence of lock-downs, masking, social distancing; and to advertise positively their own compliance with the Peck (IRL as well as in social media). 

It wasn't just that these things harmed them; but that they wanted the harm - they agreed to being harmed, and sought more of the same. 

And we currently see this damnation motivation among those who use untruthfulness (distortion, selection, outright lying) and knowingly-false interpretations; to depicts their actually-evil-intending (anti-Good-motivated) wars as an ideological/ spiritual conflict with the worse side presented as the better. 

Among those (many) who express such sentiments - and we may infer that these such persons have potentially embraced their own damnation as a personal ideal.  

This is the ultimate success of the demonic powers - to induce people not merely to seek their own pleasure and profit; and not only to enjoy the infliction of pain and destruction - but to hate God/ Creation? Jesus and reject the hope of salvation. 

Instead; to adopt and practice value-inversion... understanding and rejecting Good as evil, and adopting evil as the highest Good.

Because value-inversion (commonplace and official in the modern West) is the surest path to damnation - as by it, the divine is mocked, despised and hated, while the demonic is regarded as heroic, fun and "cool".

And, thereby, the people shall positively affiliate themselves with the demonic agenda of damnation - to become active agents for propagating their own miserable fate.

From the highest levels of the hierarchy of evil, such was-and-is the intent and triumph of 2020; and of the subsequent and ongoing global wars.  

Note added: In case the above induces a feeling of helpless and incipient despair in face of the vast power and influence of evil in the world (and especially the West) - it may be worth reminding oneself that this is a spiritual war I am describing. So that explicitly recognizing the relevant evil motivation for oneself, and inwardly rejecting it; counts as a personal spiritual triumph; and this is exactly the kind of spiritual learning-from-experience that is such a vital aspect of our mortal lives - one of the reasons we are here, and now.  

If you want to know why so many people choose hell - read The Great Divorce by CS Lewis

It is pretty well recognized that if you want to understand how demons think, the CS Lewis's The Screwtape Letters - followed by Screwtape Proposes a Toast - are the best source. 

It is much less widely appreciated that the best understanding of why so many reject Heaven and prefer to choose Hell can be found in Lewis's later The Great Divorce - text version here, and downloadable ebook from here.  

The story has the protagonist (Lewis himself) visiting Heaven on a holiday from Hell with a group of other (self-) damned souls, with the chance of remaining in Heaven - if only they will repent their sins.

The meat of the book is an exploration of the foothills/ outskirts of Heaven and series of encounters between Lewis and a range of representative unrepentant sinners (insubstantial ghosts - by comparison with the hardness and density of Heavenly beings and landscapes). 

What comes across - in a way that I found revelatory and unforgettable - is why people will not give-up and be cleansed-of what seem quite 'trivial' sins, even when the reward is Heaven. 

It is shown how people come to build their life and self-image around some particular sinful activity, such that they can scarcely imagine putting it aside - even when it makes them miserable. This is a fact of everyday life, found in many people around us - and we can surely see it in our-selves. 

A few examples include a 'liberal Christian' Bishop whose self esteem is so based upon his delight in debate and skeptical analysis, that he does not want to know the real answers to his questions - but only to go on showing-off his cleverness and discussing them forever, without end. 

A particularly hard-hitting instance is when a ghost from Hell meets a man who was a murderer in earthly life but repented and chose Heaven; whereas it emerges that the ghost is kept in Hell by his own consuming resentment against the murderer, and the 'unfairness' that a murderer can be forgiven. He chooses Hell rather than forgiveness. 

A woman who spent her life micro-managing her miserable husband into someone more in-line with her own wishes, wants nothing more than to be 'given him' so she can continue the process forever. Unless she can continue to tyrannize over this husband (now one of the happy and blessed in Heaven) - she insists on remaining in Hell. 

A ghost man called Frank meets his Heavenly wife who has become a saint and is followed by a joyous 'family' of those whom she loved and sustained during mortal life. But this man will not speak to his wife directly, but only via a kind of Shakesperian ham-actor 'tragedian' puppet; who is always speechifying to make her feel sorry for him. 

Lewis here quotes some deep insights about this particular sin, through the mouth of the sainted wife (slightly edited by me):

You are using pity, other people's pity, in the wrong way. 

We have all done it a bit on earth, you know. Pity was meant to be a spur that drives joy to help misery. But it can be used the wrong way round. It can be used for a kind of blackmailing. Those who choose misery can hold joy up to ransom, by pity... 

Even as a child you did it. Instead of saying you were sorry, you went and sulked in the attic... because you knew that, sooner or later, one of your sisters would say, 'I can't bear to think of him sitting up there alone, crying.' You used your pity to blackmail them, and they gave in in the end... 

"And that," said the Tragedian, "that is all you have understood of me, after all these years!..." 

"No, Frank, not here!" said the Lady. "Listen to reason. 

Did you think joy was created to live always under that threat? Always defenceless against those who would rather be miserable than have their self-will crossed? 

For it was real misery. I know that now. You made yourself really wretched. That you can still do. But you can no longer communicate your wretchedness. 

Here in Heaven, everything becomes more and more itself. Here is joy that cannot be shaken. Our light can swallow up your darkness: but your darkness cannot now infect our light. 

No, no, no. Come to us. We will not go to you. Can you really have thought that love and joy would always be at the mercy of frowns and sighs? Did you not know they were stronger than their opposites?"

This is marvelous stuff, making points I've never found elsewhere, and there is a good deal more of it; making The Great Divorce one of the key books in my Christian understanding...

Because it is a very common stumbling block that people literally cannot understand why anybody would choose hell over Heaven; and therefore they jump to the conclusion that God is keeping people out of Heaven and that our task on earth is to persuade God to let us in. 

The truth is almost the opposite. God's intention is, through the experiences of our mortal lives, to persuade us to set aside sin and accept the offer of resurrection (which leaves-behind sin) and follow (as a sheep follows the Good Shepherd) Jesus Christ to Heaven. 

Yet it seem to be the hardest thing in this modern world to persuade Men that it is worth giving up their favourite sin to receive the blessings of Heaven - which can only be Heaven when inhabited by Men who have, voluntarily and by positive choice, set-aside evil.

Probably it has not always been thus - and in the ancient world Men merely needed to be told of Heaven and believe it was possible, to wish to follow Jesus. 

Indeed, those who come to know the truth about Jesus and the possibility of Heaven only after their death, and who then recognize and love him, can also make the choice.

Anyone who loves and wishes to follow Jesus, and is prepared to pay the 'price' of repentance, is welcomed by God. 

But Modern Man does not want this - he prefers to hold onto his favourite sin (often some resentment disguised as a political 'ism'; perhaps a sexual sin - a preference for lust over love; perhaps a clinging to mortal life and the refusal to regard death as a portal to everlasting life; perhaps that despair which prefers extinction to eternal participation in creation)... and to take the miserable consequences. 

And if the above does not make sense to you; then you need to read and ponder CS Lewis's The Great Divorce. 

What happens after death is - overall - what people sincerely desire to happen to them

Every faithful Methodist that has lived up to and faithfully followed the requirements of his religion,... will have as great a heaven as he ever anticipated in the flesh, and far greater. Every Presbyterian, and every Quaker, and every Baptist, and every Roman Catholic member, - ... that lives according to the best light they have,... will have and enjoy all they live for... This is the situation of Christendom after death.

You may go among the Pagans, or among all the nations there are... and if they have lived according to what they did posses, so they will receive hereafter.

And will it be glory? you may inquire. Yes. Glory, glory, glory.

Brigham Young - President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints 1847-77. Quoted in Wrestling the Angel by Terryl Givens, 2015, p253.

Givens goes on to cite Wilford Woodruff saying 'there will be few, very few, if any, who will not accept the Gospel'; meaning at some point in the endless time of post-mortal life. And Lorenzo Snow stating: 'very, very few of those who die without the Gospel will reject it on the other side of the veil' - meaning the veil of mortal death. 


I was very pleased to see these, and other, endorsements of my own inferences about salvation (several times posted in this blog ever the past years) cited by Terryl Givens as typical of the Mormon Apostles and Prophets from the years up to the early 20th century (perhaps especially related to the Presidencies of Lorenzo Snow, and that of Joseph Fielding Smith who, in 1909, published an article called Salvation Universal); after which such near-universalist ideas of salvation became less often  articulated, or contradicted.

But it is, from our perspective more than a century later, to notice that near-universalism with respect to salvation is Not universalism; not all are saved, because always there has to be the exception of the 'unpardonable sin' of the 'sons of perdition' - which recognises that human agency (or 'free will') means that a choice in favour of damnation may be made by a person; 'in perfect clarity and understanding' (p252).

As Givens says: 'It is unforgivable not because [the sin] is so grievous or offensive, but because it is the only sin a human can make with no mitigating circumstances that could be the basis of re-choosing under different conditions... Only the choice of evil made in the most absolute and perfect light of understanding admits of no imaginable basis for reconsideration or regret.'

Such a sin is comparable to that of Lucifer's, and as such there is no possibility of repentance. Hell has been chosen.  


What we need to recognise is that the average Methodist, Presbyterian, Quaker, Baptist or Roman Catholic of 2018 would not want the heaven that was desired by their namesakes of the middle 1800s - indeed, the modern adherents probably would not be considered Christians at all, by the men of the past.

And that brings us back to the Sons of Perdition and the strategy of the powers of evil for damning as many Men as possible...

If you accept (as I do) that Hell is ultimately only for those who want it, who actively-choose it (and all others will go to a degree of glory in accordance with their own deepest wishes - bearing in mind that apparently many or most people do not aspire to any very high degree of glory, if the promises of their religions are regarded as a guide) - then the task of the demons is a difficult one...

The demons must bring a Man to the point where he clearly understands what Heaven is, and that (thanks to the work of Jesus Christ) Heaven can be his dwelling at an astonishingly cheap price - And Yet, at this point of clarity and understanding; that Man will permanently reject this gift of Heaven and Glory; and instead choose Hell.  

Let us suppose that that is the difficult task of the demons; then, for the powers of evil to win a human soul for Hell is, in most cases, not going to be easy...

Such was one of key, repeated, messages of CS Lewis in both The Screwtape Letters and The Great Divorce. And Lewis gave many hints towards an accurate prediction of what seems to have been the demons' answer in Screwtape Proposes a Toast - which is: to work gradually towards the inversion of Good. So that a Man will (overall) regard Good as evil, and evil as Good. Such a Man will regard Heaven as Hell; and by choosing his-personal-Good, he will in fact be choosing Hell. 

This was, Lewis implies, a major strategic shift requiring great restraint on behalf of the demons; because it required them to set-aside the short-term gratifications of Men suffering and dying (as with the world wars of the early twentieth century); and instead to be contented with progress (decade by decade since the 1950s) towards a long-term goal of mass moral-, aesthetic- and truth-inversion among Western Men.

Men were to be corrupted by comfort, prosperity, materialism; by irony, hedonism and despair. By a pride so absolute and individual and cut-off; that it attained to solipsism: in doubt of its own existence, cynical of its own capacity for knowledge; and denying of external reality...

And the tremendous success of that demonic strategy explains the strange - unprecedented - nature of the modern condition, the way in which it resembles a self-chosen and cure-rejecting insanity. The average condition of modern Man is, in fact, the precise state of soul required to make someone actively choose Hell - in perfect clarity and understanding.


Note: I was not so clear or solidly confident as I am now; but I first made this kind of argument in Thought Prison (2011) and Addicted to Distraction (2014). 

Screwtape wants a comfortable, middle-aged world

*
If any reader have not already read or otherwise experienced CS Lewis's The Screwtape Letter, then you may be depriving yourselves.

The conceit of the book is its inverted perspective, written from the demonic perspective of advisory/ threatening letters from a senior devil called Screwtape to his nephew Wormwood who has been assigned to work on earth as a Tempter for a young man - they are trying to win the soul of the 'Patient' (i.e. the young man) for Hell; and in this task God is the 'Enemy'. This topsy-turvy angle makes for considerable humour, and many unexpected insights.

As well as re-reading the book; I have a fine CD audio-book of the basso-profundo-voiced Joss Ackland reading them; and also a very lively audio-drama version featuring the always-brilliant Andy Serkis as Screwtape with Bertie Carvel being perfect in the tricky role of his nephew Wormwood.

*

The Letters come up fresh every time because there is just so much distilled wisdom and prescience - in the following (edited) passage, Lewis - a 1914-18 combat veteran writing in the middle of another world war, is arguing that from the demonic perspective war and premature death is mostly a problem, and comfort and long-life are their great allies.

This has since been proved correct, now that we perceive that the effects of unprecedented prosperity and convenience in The West, better health and a twenty-plus year increase in average life-span have been accompanied by an historically-unprecedented collapse of faith and official embrace and approval of the inverted and Satanic viewpoint on many major issues.

Lewis accurately blames the quietly corrupted middle-aged and elderly (i.e. my generation, and that of my parents and grandparents) for this situation - since the young are naturally too unstable and easily-swayed to hold to an evil course, but will intermittently spontaneously recur to religiousness.

This particular passage is also where I was for the first time brought to recognize the need for Christianity to recognize that, through history, most humans die in the womb, infancy or before adulthood - and that the mature Man is a tiny minority of the species. Any adequate theology must therefore recognize 'premature' mortality as normal, and 'threescore years and ten' as exceptional.

God's plan of salvation has so far been mostly about fetuses, babies, children and youths.

**

Humans, of course, do tend to regard death as the prime evil and survival as the greatest good. But that is because we have taught them to do so.

If only your Patient can be kept alive, you have time itself for your ally. 

The long, dull monotonous years of middle-aged prosperity or middle-aged adversity are excellent campaigning weather. The routine of adversity, the gradual decay of youthful loves and youthful hopes, the quiet despair (hardly felt as pain) of ever overcoming the chronic temptations with which we have again and again defeated them, the drabness which we create in their lives and the inarticulate resentment with which we teach them to respond to it—all this provides admirable opportunities of wearing out a soul by attrition.

If, on the other hand, the middle years prove prosperous, our position is even stronger!

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. His increasing reputation, his widening circle of

acquaintances, his sense of importance, the growing pressure of absorbing and agreeable work, build up in him a sense of being really at home in earth which is just what we want. You will notice that the young are generally less unwilling to die than the middle-aged and the old.

The truth is that the Enemy, having oddly destined these mere animals to life in His own eternal world, has guarded them pretty effectively from the danger of feeling at home anywhere else. That is why we must often wish long life to our patients; seventy years is not a day too much for the difficult task of unravelling their souls from Heaven and building up a firm attachment to the earth.

So inveterate is their appetite for Heaven that our best method, at this stage, of attaching them to earth is to make them believe that earth can be turned into Heaven at some future date by politics or eugenics or "science" or psychology, or what not. Real worldliness is a work of time—assisted, of course, by pride, for we teach them to describe the creeping death as good sense or Maturity or Experience.

How valuable time is to us may be gauged by the fact that the Enemy allows us so little of it. The majority of the human race dies in infancy; of the survivors, a good many die in youth. It is obvious that to Him human birth is important chiefly as the qualification for human death, and death solely as the gate to that other kind of life.

We are allowed to work only on a selected minority of the race, for what humans call a "normal life" is the exception. Apparently He wants some—but only a very few—of the human animals with which He is peopling Heaven to have had the experience of resisting us through an earthly life of sixty or seventy years. Well, there is our opportunity. The smaller it is, the better we must use it.

Whatever you do, keep your patient as safe as you possibly can.

*

Understanding the purpose of mortal life

*

I seem to have an unusual level of dissatisfaction with the standard Christian explanations concerning the function, purpose, meaning of mortal life.

Typically, I adopt one or another of the explanations I come across, only to find that in practice it turns-out to be inadequate, or demotivating.

*

The idea that mortal life is a lifelong test leading to a dichotomous allocation - salvation versus damnation - around the moment of death - nothing else in life having any relevance... seems to suck all meaning from the sweep of mortal life and negates the idea of the gospel as good news.

*

Learning about the concept of theosis was a step in the right direction, the idea that life should be a progress in holiness towards sanctity.

But on further consideration the way this is typically explained is inadequate - especially when salvation is not assured.  According to some accounts, someone might spend a long life of asceticism working on theosis only to be deceived into spiritual pride and damned at the last.

*

So theosis only makes sense, I think, on the basis that we are already-saved (if we want to be saved) - and that nothing can take away salvation, except our own rejection of salvation.

So, Christ has saved us and mortal life is about theosis...

But then why mortal incarnate life?

*

Either because that was the pre-existent state of man - men just were incarnate mortals on earth, and we were saved from that state - which is to say there is no meaning to us being incarnate mortals, it was just an accident of history...

Or else men are made as incarnate mortals because only as incarnate mortals can we...

Can we... what? That is the question.

*

Something that can be done only by mortals, and only with bodies - in a world of decay, corruption, change, death...

*

(I am also unable to ignore the fact that so many - perhaps most - humans throughout history have either died in the womb at birth or as children - and how this fits into things.)

*

(It seems that Tolkien was concerned about this matter as well - or specifically the mortal side of things - the deepest stratum of his work was about mortality, and why men took-over from elves. What was the advantage of men that the One and the gods began with elves but ended with men?)

*

I don't know. Maybe it is something like the fact that in some jobs you have to work your way up from the toughest level: all doctors must begin as a lowly house officer/ intern; a general must have seen combat...

*

We seem to have as a default background assumption that it is better to be a spirit than incarnate - the ideal and perfect entity is omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent - therefore discarnate, some kind of spirit or idea or force or form...

From this assumption we struggle to explain why we are incarnate; and why we are resurrected - because I feel pretty sure than most intellectual Christians do not concretely imagine themselves resurrected after death, but on the contrary as spirits - because spirits seem more pure and perfect, and a Heaven of actual bodies seems too childish, somehow.

*

So we get this gulf between an earthly life of mortal bodies in time, and that to which we hope to escape; which is (perhaps secretly and implicitly) seen in terms of its opposite - a Heavenly life of eternal spirits living in a state of timeless bliss.

(It seems very difficult to imagine resurrected bodies, limited persons, in a state of bliss out of time - it sound more like a coma than Heaven.)

*

From all this I infer that it is not right that we should on earth strive to make ourselves independent of time, bodies; and disease, decay, death - these 'must' - it seems - be something to do with why we are here and what we are supposed to do.

That's about as far as I have got.

***


NOTE ADDED:

There is a really excellent discussion of this general matter at

http://nonapologia.tumblr.com/post/43846005462/brief-experimental-theology-of-heaven-and-earth

 For example: 


Since Heaven can be comprehended as consisting of stories, a number of things become clear. First of all, the childish desire to enter a certain story is a thing that is commonly experienced (if never acknowledged, or explained away as ‘wish fulfilment’).

But this is not because the story is necessarily an improvement on real life. In fact, one may still wish to enter a story where people face more difficult problems and suffer far more than the reader. However, something of the timeless and perfected nature of Heaven is perceived to be on the other side of the story. In entering the story, one hopes to enter an imperishable existence, and one in some difficult-to-define sense freed from time (as a story can be re-read and re-experienced) — but unbounded where the story is bounded.

The modern tendency to produce stories that are horribly, soul-damagingly dull (because containing excessive and purposeless suffering, or purposeless events of any other nature) can be seen as a concerted effort by Hell to deprive people of yet another hidden link to Heaven, and to get the people choosing to write and read the unHeavenly stories to thereby carry out a (symbolic, preparatory) rejection of Heaven.

[my emphasis added]
 
*

...in the common understanding of salvation, a person seeking theosis comes to nothing if at the last they attain merely to spiritual pride and are damned, but I see the exact same problem with a child growing up. Was the child worth killing to produce the uncertain, unpleasant, damnable and damned adults that frequently result?

Obviously, if a perfectly reasonable child grows up, either his qualities are integrated into the adult smoothly, including the worthwhile ones — or the child has been killed, wholly or partially. (In which case, I can only hope, the promise of resurrection applies to him.) Indeed, in the worst cases the adult will have the air of a sort of gebbeth or usurper walking around in the child’s overripe skin...

This is in fact the day-to-day experience of most modern people, to a lesser or greater degree. Absent some kind of mass societal repentance, and assuming modern society does not collapse, this feeling is likely to get worse in future generations. 

We may say that the adult as a whole is often damned, and the child is worth saving. But if we extract the child from the driver’s seat, what is left? The adult’s memories? Certainly. But his intelligence, impulses, preferences, later vices and perhaps virtues? These are contingent machinery, whose addition to the child was experimentally proven to produce evil... 

And, of course, if the Enemy cannot damn the entire person, he will always seek to ensure we cannot properly earn all of the gifts that were intended for us in Creation; partial damnation...

So salvation and perfection after death is at once a very simple thing to accomplish, and a most complicated matter. And the choices made during life make every difference as to what sort of being will be raised in the resurrection. 

Thus if we cry out to God that all our gifts and talents and intelligence is a meaningless burden; we will certainly not be required to bear that burden in the afterlife. But what will be left of us then?

Thus people who merely do the best they can with what they have, pray for salvation for themselves and their close ones, believing themselves unworthy of holiness and attainment, may very well find salvation easy in the end, and awake in Heaven still very much themselves.

And people who sincerely ask God for the opportunity to grow in holiness, will be obliged with almost unimaginable extremes of spiritual despair and temptation, given for them to overcome. If they fail, it was their presumption to seek holiness that was a sin; they turn out to have been children playing with matches. But if they overcome, all glory to them...

In some sense this is literally true, and not just a make-believe for the purpose of spiritual development. Seen from outside, everyone worth saving is saved, for all that is good within them will be saved. But seen from inside, you are choosing all the time to comprise your very soul out of pieces either of Heaven or of Hell. Obviously, if your understanding tells you to choose pieces of Hell, that understanding is deluded, and will in the end come to perceive nothing but the flames of Hell. Pray to God that you will have another understanding left over after that...

Thus I can see that if we take a Napoleon and boil away his evil, we may get first a sullen and petulant child; then perhaps a perfectly reasonable three-year-old who never matured properly. Most of the glory and glamour of Napoleon has boiled away with it, for it was built on his wickedness and not on his few good qualities...

And if we take Screwtape and boil away his evil, we get an amoeba; for indeed, an amoeba’s wish to devour everything in reach is the sole and highest spiritual sentiment expressed in ‘The Screwtape Letters’; it’s the sentiment that Screwtape mistakes for Love, having no other point of comparison!

*

Live in the present, plan for eternity - but don't dwell on the future!

*

From The Screwtape Letters - by C.S. Lewis - excerpted from letter 15. 

Letters from one demon to another (i.e. the 'Enemy' is God):

*

"The humans live in time but our Enemy destines them to eternity. He therefore, I believe, wants them to attend chiefly to two things, to eternity itself, and to that point of time which they call the Present. For the Present is the point at which time touches eternity.

"Of the present moment, and of it only, humans have an experience analogous to the experience which our Enemy has of reality as a whole; in it alone freedom and actuality are offered them.

"He would therefore have them continually concerned either with eternity (which means being concerned with Him) or with the Present—either meditating on their eternal union with, or separation from, Himself, or else obeying the present voice of conscience, bearing the present cross, receiving the present grace, giving thanks for the present pleasure.

"Our business is to get them away from the eternal, and from the Present.

"With this in view, we sometimes tempt a human (say a widow or a scholar) to live in the Past. But this is of limited value, for they have some real knowledge of the past and it has a determinate nature and, to that extent, resembles eternity. It is far better to make them live in the Future.

"Biological necessity makes all their passions point in that direction already, so that thought about the Future inflames hope and fear. Also, it is unknown to them, so that in making them think about it we make them think of unrealities.

"In a word, the Future is, of all things, the thing least like eternity. It is the most completely temporal part of time—for the Past is frozen and no longer flows, and the Present is all lit up with eternal rays. (...)

"To be sure, the Enemy wants men to think of the Future too—just so much as is necessary for now planning the acts of justice or charity which will probably be their duty tomorrow. The duty of planning the morrow's work is today's duty; though its material is borrowed from the future, the duty, like all duties, is in the Present.

"This is not straw splitting. He does not want men to give the Future their hearts, to place their treasure in it.

"We do.

"His ideal is a man who, having worked all day for the good of posterity (if that is his vocation), washes his mind of the whole subject, commits the issue to Heaven, and returns at once to the patience or gratitude demanded by the moment that is passing over him.

"But we want a man hag-ridden by the Future—haunted by visions of an imminent heaven or hell upon earth—ready to break the Enemy's commands in the present if by so doing we make him think he can attain the one or avert the other—dependent for his faith on the success or failure of schemes whose end he will not live to see.

"We want a whole race perpetually in pursuit of the rainbow's end, never honest, nor kind, nor happy now, but always using as mere fuel wherewith to heap the altar of the future every real gift which is offered them in the Present."


*

The imaginable and the unimaginable? - Paradise and Heaven

We want more than this world can provide - we want the best that we can imagine.

Of course, some people don't have much facility for imagination - yet at the very least, we want what this world cannot sustain. This would be Paradise - the best things of this world (or, the feelings induced by the best things of this world), sustained; Paradise is engineered as a place of happiness - but it would not be Heaven.

Some people most want very evil things - power, domination, destruction, to see others suffer - to themselves be the cause of suffering, to take pleasure from the suffering they have inflicted... and so on. Paradise for such people would be a place dedicated to their own satisfactions (therefore indifferent to others) - it would not be any kind of Heaven.

Heaven is for divine beings - can we imagine ourselves as divine, yet still our-selves; can we imagine life in a world of similar divine beings? in general - we need help in imagining Heaven, whereas Paradise comes naturally and spontaneously.

Indeed, Paradise does not need to be imagined - because we already know what it is like; all we have to suppose is that it is like the best things that we have felt, and sustained - this does not need imagination, it is merely an extrapolation.

Heaven does require imagination, indeed in mortal life Heaven could be said to exist only in imagination. This is not to say Heaven is 'imaginary' and false - but that imagination is the primary reality - and if Heaven cannot be imagined, then it does not exist during our mortal lives.

We need help in imagining Heaven, and if we do imagine it, we may not be able to communicate that knowledge - because the task is to induce that imagination we have experienced in the mind of another person. Speaking of our imagined Heaven, or writing it down, or painting it - does not necessarily do this - indeed it may induce some quite different and false imagination in another person.

Nonetheless, communication of imagination can happen, and imagination is the place where knowledge of Heaven exists (and no other place) - and I think perhaps more people lack this knowledge, and need this knowledge, more urgently than ever - so Heaven is something that needs experiencing and communicating, if at all possible; and this has to be by imagination - with imagination taken seriously, and imagination recognized as knowledge.

People who can imagine, and can imagine Heaven have a job to do. They can only do half the job - but that half, they should be doing.


Note: Imagined depictions of Heaven which have helped me include from Tolkien the Undying Lands, Rivendell, Lothlorien and the afterlife in Leaf by Niggle; from CS Lewis the end of The Last Battle, the end of The Screwtape Letters, and most of The Great Divorce, from Joseph Smith the King Follett Discourse, and from William Arkle his Letter from a Father.

Three sources of Evil: Flesh, World, Devil

*

From Unseen Warfare edition published by St Vladimir's Seminary Press, Crestwood, NY, USA, 1987. From Chapter 1 (emphasis added):


There are many who say that the perfection of Christian life consists in fasts, vigils, genuflections, sleeping on bare earth and other similar austerities of the body.


Others say that it consists in saying many prayers at home and in attending long services in Church.


And there are others who think that our perfection consists entirely in mental prayer, solitude, seclusion and silence.


But the majority limit perfection to a strict observance of all the rules and practices laid down by the statutes, falling into no excess or deficiency, but preserving a golden moderation.

Yet all these virtues do not by themselves constitute the Christian perfection we are seeking, but are only means and methods for acquiring it.

There is no doubt whatever that they do represent means - and effective means - for attaining perfection in Christian life.

For we see very many virtuous men, who practice these virtues as they should, to acquire strength and power against their own sinful and evil nature 

- to gain, through these practices, courage to withstand the temptations and seductions of our three main enemies: the flesh, the world, and the devil...

*

From The Book of Common Prayer (emphasis added):

Almighty God, our heavenly Father,

we have sinned against you
and against our fellow men,
in thought and word and deed,
through negligence, through weakness,
through our own deliberate fault.


*


Flesh, world, devil = weakness, negligence, deliberate fault.

*

Flesh/ weakness = Original sin, natural passions, selfishness and short-termism.

*

World/ negligence = Distractions. Focusing on Life rather than reality; on status, comfort and pleasure rather than sanctification, deification, salvation.

*

Devil/ deliberate fault = choosing to serve as a tool of purposive evil, which is nihilism, which is denial of reality, which is practiced by

systematic destruction of The Good

(i.e. destruction of Truth, Beauty and Virtue and their Unity by denial, subversion and inversion).

*

Three sources of  Evil.

The Flesh is pretty much a given factor for an individual, for humanity.

The World is much more powerful in the West now than it has ever been anywhere in human history.

The Devil is an unknown quantity, but as C.S Lewis says in Screwtape Letters:


There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. They themselves are equally pleased by both errors and hail a materialist or a magician with the same delight.

*

Of course, all these sources of Evil are linked in a unity: but modern Evil is characterized and made distinctive by an historically vast and pervasive expansion of The World - of Negligence.

***

Undulation, consciousness and Life

Life is undulation: life is meant to be undulation: consciousness is undulating.

The main undulation is between waking and sleeping - during sleep there is undulation between deep sleep and dreaming.

While awake there is also undulation in consciousness - between the three major types of Original Participation, the Consciousness Soul and Final Participation - that is; between childlike, adolescent-like and grown-up-divine consciousness - that is; between immersive-in-life un-consicousness -- alienated/ cut-off-from-life self-consciousness -- and conscious participation with reality...

Much of this blog has recently been concerned with the attainment of Final Participation - by means of Primary Thinking; but I have neglected to emphasise that we cannot do Primary Thinking all-the-time, and more than we could stay awake all-the-time. And, more importantly, it would not be desirable for us to live in Final Participation all-the-time - any more than to be awake/ asleep all the time.

Undulation is part of the essence of life; because life is dynamic, polar; life is about love - love is something that entails movement - movement requires undulation...

It isn't just that we cannot be in any fixed and permanent state, but that this would be a denial of the very nature of reality. I am talking, here, about the metaphysical nature of things...

If it is accepted that ultimate reality is a thing that is dynamic/ polar/ moving - then this just is how things are. It is not a matter of what is expedient, or pleasurable, or good-for-us - but that things always are going to be undulating.

Our remote tribal ancestors seemed to understand this, in one way - in that they regarded life as transformation, a cycling of states - an endless mixing and recombining of the same fixed ultimate material...

Our own metaphysics is, by contrast, open-ended, and genuinely creative; yet it returns to that old idea of transformation of state, of life as undulating - but we see this as the means by which there is creation.

But love gives the clearest example. In Love (and I do not mean in-and-out-of love - but staying In love) there is undulation - Love is NOT (think about it, contra what some have said) a steady solid unchanging state of being; love is intrinsically undulating: that is its life and livingess.

We stay-in love, but undulating. Same for life, same for our own specific life.

Do not grasp and hold onto one state, not even the best and most divine state - but undulate; as is right and necessary.


Note: This idea comes, today, from what Rudolf Steiner termed 'oscillation' (in translation), and from what William Arkle describes in A Geography of Consciousness, in the chapter 'Astrology' - it is also memorably discussed in CS Lewis's Screwtape Letters (although I feel that the point is undercut by Lewis's neo-Platonic metaphysics; which philosophy suggests to me that undulation is 'merely' an expedient of mortal life - to be dispensed-with in Heaven...).

The 'undulations' of being a Christian

In The Screwtape Letters - CS Lewis talks about the 'undulations' of Christian life; the high and low phases of faith and doubt, bliss and desolation, connectedness and isolation - that are so striking to the convert. 

Having experienced the bliss of God's guidance and blessing, it can be dismaying when this is withdrawn - as it always is. It is not uncommon for the Christian to pray sincerely for help and guidance, yet for prayers to yield none. 

As if one had picked up the phone to speak with God, but discovered 'the line had gone dead'. 

I understand this in terms of two things: firstly, God's basic intent in creation; and secondly the consequent basic nature of this mortal life.

The intent of God is that by ongoing-creation Men may rise to become like to God; as has already happened with Jesus Christ. 

...That as many Men as desire it should follow the path to full divinity - which Jesus opened and on which he guides us. 

This means that our current existence is primarily a phase of learning. As such, God wants each of us to do as much as possible for himself - for each (as much as possible) to 'work-out his own salvation'. 

Simply because that is the best way to learn - and we are here to learn. 

Therefore, for God continuously to guide and sustain us, would defeat the object of creation!  

So, the 'undulations' of Christian life are not an accident, nor are they necessarily the fault of the Christian; but at some level are 'part of the plan'. 

God is always present and available to 'intervene' directly in our life and the world - when it is necessary. But Plan A is for Men - individually and collectively - to work things out for themselves as much as possible, and to learn from this (often trial and error) process.

God's (intermittent, perhaps infrequent) direct interventions should be regarded as a means to an end - and something that happens 'only' to get us going, provide (minimal but necessary) encouragement, and rescue us from a situation beyond our own capacities. 

As William Arkle once said (I paraphrase): God does not want our lives to be focused on God; but instead to be focused on doing what God put us here to do - which is live and learn!

Those periods of direct contact with the divine, guidance, revelations, miracles, answered prayers etc - should Not be regarded as the main thing in life; but as helping us to live well, and learn from our failures as well as successes...

Bearing in mind that sometimes the best way to learn (for you, me, or others) may be to struggle, overcome despair, fail and try again, err and repent... Whatever works best or is necessary, God may try with us - through his work of creating.

And from our personal point of view - we should not always be 'demanding' (or begging for) divine intervention and guidance; but ought to work things out for ourselves, endeavor to learn God's lessons from the many experiences that God places in our paths. 

We should do what God wants us to do, live as God wants us to live - and that is not to function as some kind of a remote controlled automaton, implementing divine orders! 

We need not demand or beg; because there is no difficulty at all about God intervening in our lives - when God recognizes the need for His external assistance... But not whenever we suppose we need help and keep asking for it instead to be helping-our-selves. 

No problem about God stepping-in to stop us when we are determined on a wrong track... But it is better if we recognize this for ourselves.

No problem about God producing a miracle - small or spectacular- when it is likely to be helpful to faith... But not when the miraculous will merely be used as an opportunity to explain-away and mock the divine. 

No problem about God inspiring and enthusing and shaping us with a direct apprehension of His love - for any capable of recognizing it and responding positively... But not when a Man wants to surrender responsibility for his fate. 

We are sustained alive in this created mortal world either because we have not (yet) decided-for-Christ, and are being given time and opportunity to make that choice - i.e. salvation; or else because it would benefit us through our eternal resurrected life to learn something/s - and our mortal life is being shaped to encourage such learning - i.e. theosis). 

God makes them possible; but neither salvation nor theosis can be done for us by God. Both rely on our own personal efforts. 

Some kinds of learning can be unconscious and automatic, but other kinds must consciously be chosen.  

The main things of life are up to us. 

Christianity and self-gratification - is it a guide to goodness, or an evil-manipulation

I was always struck by CS Lewis's hardline attitude to happiness or self-gratification in relation to Christianity - the way he emphasized the problem of mixing-up the 'therapeutic' aspect of belief with the business of what is actually true. 

In the Screwtape Letters and Great Divorce (as well as his more abstractly theological works) Lewis negatively depicted people who fluently excused whatever they wanted to do - what they currently enjoyed doing, or what made them feel better - by making arguments that linked these to Christianity. 

In the Narnia chronicles; this was encapsulated in the phrase stating that Aslan (i.e. Jesus) is Not a Tame Lion. That is to say; Christianity cannot be comfortably domesticated and stay Christian. 

Certainly it is a real problem; but - especially in The Last Battle - Lewis also depicted the opposite problem, which happens when the cruelty and destructiveness of the evil demon Tash is explained as being the actions of Aslan; or later, the oxymoronic false-invention Tashlan, syncretized from both good and evil deities. 

These actual evils - in reality motivated by greed, selfishness and sadism - were effectively propagandized as consistent with the fact that Aslan is Not a Tame Lion 

And therefore the fact that God is not aiming at our immediate self-gratification is twisted into a mask for 'the devil'. 

In other words; on the one hand it is true that, at a superficial level of here-and-now, the goodness of God may be experienced as harsh life-lessons that are, nonetheless, necessary for our ultimate and eternal benefit. 

Yet, on the other hand, to know when this is actually the case, and when evil outcomes are instead a product of evil intent; requires honest discernment as to the motivations. 

So, the experienced and observed miseries and sufferings of this world are not evidence in either direction - they might be necessary and temporary means to a good end; or they might be the end in itself: cruelty, destruction, misery, suffering might be the actual purpose of evil beings. 

The correct answer must come from discernment, and the discernment - while taking-account-of-evidence, cannot derive-from evidence. 

As always, we are driven down to an acknowledgment that all knowledge depends on intuition; an individual act of an individual being. 

And, further, that Christian discernment entails acknowledgement that there is a side of Good (i.e. God) and a side of evil (i.e. the demons). We first need to know this in order to choose one or the other side; and only by choosing a side can be - even in principle - make a discernment as to whether a particular event was motivated by good or evil intent.

For a Christian; to deny that good and evil are separate and opposite sides, amounts to the false-deity of Tashlan - in other words, to base discernment on an assumption of unity, oneness, 'non-dualism' is itself (merely) a type of evil. 

From this analysis we can see that Christianity is related to self-gratification (i.e. the pleasurable, comfortable, desirable) in that God wants us to be deeply and eternally happy; but such a goal entails that we must sometimes be temporarily and superficially miserable. 

To know what is going-on in the here and now we need to depend on divine guidance - which (because God is The Creator, is Good, and is our loving parent/s) we have all been equipped-with. 

We all have potentially available both direct access (i.e. in our stream of thinking) to true inner guidance (because we have within-us something of the divine, being children of God)...

And this inner guidance also enables us to have access indirectly to external guidance - both directly from the Holy Ghost, and indirectly from all other sources of information such as legitimate and wise authority (e.g. of Men and books), true-tradition, and any other cultural product. 

In sum; deep self-gratification is a sure guide to the operations of God and His agents; while superficial self-gratification may be a consequence of the manipulations - or sadism - of evil Men and/or the beings of supernatural evil.