How Satan Twists God’s Word: Lessons from Uncle Screwtape
I recently finished C.S. Lewis’s classic fictional work, The Screwtape Letters. This book is a series of letters written by a demon named Screwtape to his nephew, Wormwood. In these letters, Screwtape evaluates Wormwood’s work and gives him further advice on tormenting his human subjects. Through these fictional letters, Lewis conveys his beliefs about Satan, the demonic realm, and how spiritual warfare takes place in the lives of average, everyday humans.
What stood out the most to me was chapter 14, which is all about humility. Screwtape instructs Wormwood on how to take humility, a godly virtue (Philippians 2:3-8), and distort it for their own purposes. He then lists off some specific tactics to instill a false sense of humility in their “patient.”
The first tactic is to disguise pride as humility:
“Your patient has become humble; have you drawn his attention to the fact? All virtues are less formidable to us once the man is aware that he has them, but this is specially true of humility.”
When we tell ourselves, “I am being humble,” we are subconsciously being prideful; we become proud of the fact that we are being ‘humble.’ This, in reality, is the opposite of humility.
The next tactic is to redefine humility as simply having a low opinion of oneself, reducing humility to mere insecurity:
“You must therefore conceal from the patient the true end of Humility. Let him think of it not as self-forgetfulness but as a certain kind of opinion (namely, a low opinion) of his own talents and character.”
Both of these tactics have the same goal, which is “keeping their minds endlessly revolving on themselves in an effort to achieve the impossible.”
These demons want the patient to focus inwardly and have such unrealistic standards that he forgets the true goal of humility: self-forgetfulness and sacrificial love to God and neighbor.
This is just one illustration of Satan taking Godly virtues and distorting it to our detriment. We see plenty of examples of this throughout scripture. Satan disguises pride as wisdom (Genesis 3:5-6), obligation as generosity (2 Corinthians 9:7), and toleration of sin as love (1 Corinthians 13:6). We often think that we’re obeying God, but in reality, we’ve fallen prey to Satanic lies!
So, what is the solution? How do we know whether we’re being obedient or falling for Satan’s schemes? The answer, brothers and sisters, is simple: know the Scriptures. While tempting Jesus in Matthew 4, Satan quoted Scripture, but Jesus fired right back with more Scripture in proper context!
So church, may we not fall prey to “the doctrine of ignorance” (as Bro. Ben suggests) and become a victim of Satan’s tactics. Instead, may we strive to be Biblically literate so that we can take our eyes off of ourselves and love our God and our neighbors properly!
To God be the Glory,
Bro. Casey
I recently finished C.S. Lewis’s classic fictional work, The Screwtape Letters. This book is a series of letters written by a demon named Screwtape to his nephew, Wormwood. In these letters, Screwtape evaluates Wormwood’s work and gives him further advice on tormenting his human subjects. Through these fictional letters, Lewis conveys his beliefs about Satan, the demonic realm, and how spiritual warfare takes place in the lives of average, everyday humans.
What stood out the most to me was chapter 14, which is all about humility. Screwtape instructs Wormwood on how to take humility, a godly virtue (Philippians 2:3-8), and distort it for their own purposes. He then lists off some specific tactics to instill a false sense of humility in their “patient.”
The first tactic is to disguise pride as humility:
“Your patient has become humble; have you drawn his attention to the fact? All virtues are less formidable to us once the man is aware that he has them, but this is specially true of humility.”
When we tell ourselves, “I am being humble,” we are subconsciously being prideful; we become proud of the fact that we are being ‘humble.’ This, in reality, is the opposite of humility.
The next tactic is to redefine humility as simply having a low opinion of oneself, reducing humility to mere insecurity:
“You must therefore conceal from the patient the true end of Humility. Let him think of it not as self-forgetfulness but as a certain kind of opinion (namely, a low opinion) of his own talents and character.”
Both of these tactics have the same goal, which is “keeping their minds endlessly revolving on themselves in an effort to achieve the impossible.”
These demons want the patient to focus inwardly and have such unrealistic standards that he forgets the true goal of humility: self-forgetfulness and sacrificial love to God and neighbor.
This is just one illustration of Satan taking Godly virtues and distorting it to our detriment. We see plenty of examples of this throughout scripture. Satan disguises pride as wisdom (Genesis 3:5-6), obligation as generosity (2 Corinthians 9:7), and toleration of sin as love (1 Corinthians 13:6). We often think that we’re obeying God, but in reality, we’ve fallen prey to Satanic lies!
So, what is the solution? How do we know whether we’re being obedient or falling for Satan’s schemes? The answer, brothers and sisters, is simple: know the Scriptures. While tempting Jesus in Matthew 4, Satan quoted Scripture, but Jesus fired right back with more Scripture in proper context!
So church, may we not fall prey to “the doctrine of ignorance” (as Bro. Ben suggests) and become a victim of Satan’s tactics. Instead, may we strive to be Biblically literate so that we can take our eyes off of ourselves and love our God and our neighbors properly!
To God be the Glory,
Bro. Casey
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