After forever, the series continues! Hallelujah? Hallelujah!
It is the seventh chapter or the seventh letter and our darling VIP Devil, Screwtape, has much wisdom to pass on to his less experienced nephew who is in the clutches of . . . youthful hubris? The letter starts off questioning the necessity of the concealment of devils, i.e, is it beneficial for devils if humans think them to be nonexistent? Screwtape thinks, mais oui! bah! But his exact words are:
Our policy, for the moment, is to conceal ourselves . . . We are really faced with a cruel dilemma. When the humans disbelieve in our existence we lose all the pleasing results of direct terrorism and we make no magicians. On the other hand, when they believe in us, we cannot make them materialists and sceptics . . . I have great hopes that we shall learn in due time how to emotionalise and mythologise their science to such an extent that what is, in effect, a belief in us (though not under that name) will creep in while the human mind remains closed to belief in the Enemy . . . If once we can produce our perfect work––the Materialist Magician, the man, not using, but veritably worshipping, what he vaguely calls ‘Forces’ while denying the existence of ‘spirits’––then the end of the war will be in sight. 31-32
Eh, I am at my wit’s end to the exact meaning of the above quote, but surmises Lewis is arguing it is essential that one does not dismiss the existence of the devil. Are there valleys and no hills? I will leave this matter for you to detangle on your own.
What I am contemplating for the seventh letter is something prevalent in our time. It is the E word. You know, EXTREMISM! Which, perhaps, one shouldn’t worry about too much. Why? Well, after I discovered Korean drama a few years ago, I got quite infatuated and binge-watched series upon series for months until I got really sick of it. Now, unless it is a unique script and an exceptional acting, I can’t watch K-drama. I just can’t watch it. This has led me to hope that extremism has the ability to climax and allow for a less polarizing behavior. Wishful thinking?
So what does Lewis say on extremism? Well, he had Screwtape saying:
I had not forgotten my promise to consider whether we should make the patient an extreme patriot or an extreme pacifist. All extremes, except extreme devotion to the Enemy, are to be encouraged. Not always, of course, but at this period. Some ages are lukewarm and complacent, and then it is our business to soothe them yet faster asleep. Other ages, of which the present is one, are unbalanced and prone to faction, and it is our business to inflame them. 32
Let’s define extremism before I lose you: it is when one would only eat a particular potato without fail. Yet claim, confidently, that potato is the best in the world. And Perhaps, also, insist that all who do not eat the particular potato exclusively or share one’s opinion on it are nincompoops. Of course, this is exactly why extremists deserve kindness and should be approached with respect and a genuine interest in the particular potato they can’t get enough of––this counts for our own extreme beliefs and behaviors, too. Really, do imagine eating only one kind of potato for a particularly long period of time! And what if you loath to be wrong and harbor secret fears of finding out you have been deluding yourself for ages? Argh! Would you really want to know/admit that you might have been missing out on better potato options? Heck to the KNOW! I didn’t appreciate anyone (only my mother dared) telling me I was watching too much K-drama.
What’s Lewis saying? That every form of practice––except one’s personal (internal?) effort to plug into God––that pushes the back to a wall (or a cliff) is dangerous? So for instance, a mindset that can be defined as excessively confident and even absolute is extreme, no? A rigid practice like a few old/middle-aged men playing God and telling thousands of women what they can and cannot do to their body is extreme, no?
As humans who live such short lives, shouldn’t we be on our guard against polarization? Not so much in others, because we cannot change others, but in ourselves. In learning about the colors, one ought not stop at the primary colors but also learn the secondary and tertiary colors, and even go on to suspect that there maybe colors that one lacks the ability to perceive. Perhaps that sort of mindset is a useful amulet to save one from the pains of a limited perspective. And what is extremism if not a most singular diseased-mindset, and a terrorizing one at that?
What’s my point? I think Lewis is saying, your devil––whether you believe in it or not––is happier when you are singleminded, inflexible, super-duper righteous, a hard-hearted know-it-all who never, really, give other potatoes a fair chance.
J. A. Odartey
+ Lewis, C. S. The Screwtape Letters: Letters from a Senior to a Junior Devil. London: William Collins, 2016. Print.
