The Plowman

(Editor’s note: These posts on the Screwtape Letters are the result of the high-school Sunday school class that my wife and I teach at Trinity Baptist church, in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Our goal is to use this classic fiction by C. S. Lewis is to excite the imaginations of our students to help them see the reality of the spiritual warfare that exists in the Christian walk described in Ephesians 6:12. If any of this material would be useful to anyone for a similar purpose, please feel free to use it, modifying it in any way you feel necessary. If you have any suggestions, comments, or observations, I invite you to please post them here. This is a work in progress, looking for any honest and sincere help you might offer.)

Vocabulary:

Flippancy: not showing a serious or respectful attitude.
pretext: a reason given to justify a course of action that is not the real reason.
witticisms: a witty remark, sometimes involving a play on words or some type of humor.
opaque: not able to be seen through, not transparent, but not without some light coming through.
austerity: extreme plainness and simplicity of style or appearance.
incongruity: not in harmony or keeping with the surroundings or other aspects of something.
lasciviousness: a feeling or revealing of an overt and offensive sexual desire.
tedium: a dry, dreary routine, or a state of dull uniformity.
twits: silly or foolish persons.

Lesson:

All these, as I find from the record office, are thoroughly reliable people; steady, consistent scoffers and worldlings who without any spectacular crimes are progressing quietly and comfortably towards Our Father’s house.

This is how Screwtape describes “the patient’s” new-found friends in the opening lines to letter eleven. Consider how very much this description describes the people in your neighborhood, those you work with, go to school with, and perhaps this describes your friends. In this letter, as in a number of the others previously studied, we see this same allusion to people progressing quietly and comfortably towards hell. As Christians we need to wake up and be aware of what is going on around us. We need to realize that decent though they be, with out the grace and mercy of God in Jesus Christ, there are multitudes around us on this same quiet, comfortable journey to hell. We need to have the attitude of our Lord:

We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming, when no one can work. (John 9:4, ESV)

“I divide the causes of human laughter into Joy, Fun, the Joke Proper, and Flippancy.” Beginning in the second paragraph Screwtape analyzes laughter, declaring the first two pretty much harmless, for his purposes, that is. The last two he delves into with more interest finding usefulness in the cause of keeping people at a safe distance from knowing and serving the true and living God. In the second paragraph, Screwtape confesses an ignorance as to the source of true joy.

What that real cause is we do not know. Something like it is expressed in much of that detestable art which the humans call Music, and something like it occurs in Heaven – a meaningless acceleration in the rhythm of celestial experience, quite opaque to us. Laughter of this kind does us no good and should always be discouraged. Besides, the phenomenon is of itself disgusting and a direct insult to the realism, dignity, and austerity of Hell.

In discussing the Joke Proper – which he explains works as it “turns on sudden perception of incongruity” – Screwtape differentiates between two uses of Jokes or Humour. There is that use which is indecent or bawdy, and then there is that use which is operates as “the all-consoling and (mark this) the all-excusing, grace of life. Hence it is invaluable as a means of destroying shame.” What Screwtape is saying is that one of the ways we excuse our sin is to make light of it. We try to laugh it away, by not treating it and viewing it as God views it. The word of God is full of references to the seriousness of sin, the fact that sin earns death for us all (Romans 6:23), but none should fill the lost with dread like passages that refer to God’s anger with the unrighteous:

God is a righteous judge,and a God who feels indignation every day. (Psalm 7:11, ESV) In the King James: “…angry with the wicked every day.”

Flippancy is regarded by Screwtape as the most useful of all causes of human laughter. Look at how Lewis concludes this letter:

Among flippant people the Joke is always assumed to have been made. No one actually makes it; but every serious subject is discussed in a manner which implies that they have already found a ridiculous side to it. If prolonged the habit of Flippancy builds up around a man the finest armour plating against the Enemy that I know, and it is quite free from the dangers inherent in the other sources of laughter. It is a thousand miles away from joy; it deadens, instead of sharpening, the intellect; and it excites no affection between those who practice it.

The Bible speaks often and harshly in regards to the flippant, which God calls scoffers or the scornful, and is closely associated in scripture with the simple, or uneducated:

“Scoffer” is the name of the arrogant, haughty man who acts with arrogant pride (Proverbs 21:24, ESV). See also Prverbs 1:22, Proverbs 3:34, Proverbs 21:24, and Psalm 1.

My Dear Wormwood,

(Editor’s note: These posts on the Screwtape Letters are the result of the high-school Sunday school class that my wife and I teach at Trinity Baptist church, in Tulsa, Oklahoma. If any of this material would be useful to anyone for a similar purpose, please feel free to use it, modifying it in any way you feel necessary. If you have any suggestions, comments, or observations, I invite you to please post them here. These posts are comprised of study and preparation on my part before class, with discussion that occurred during the class being added afterwords. This is a work in progress, looking for any honest and sincere help you might offer.)

Vocabulary:
belittling: the act of making someone seem unimportant
vanity: pride in one’s own achievements
exploiting: to make full use of something
urbane: of a person being well refined, well mannered and courteous
mammon: riches, in the sense that it is regarded as an object of worship
bawdy: dealing with sexual matters in a comical way
blasphemy: speaking irreverently or without proper respect in matters relating to God.
priggish: self-righteous, moralistic, holier-than-thou

Lesson:

I was delighted to hear from Triptweeze that your patient has made some very desirable new acquaintances and that you seem to have used this event in a really promising manner.

Very desirable, indeed! Obviously Screwtape doesn’t have the patient’s best interest at heart in this opening statement to letter 10. In this letter we find some of the pitfalls of having non-Christian friends. How is a Christian suppose to navigate in this fallen world? We are told by our Lord to be salt and light (Matthew 5:14-16), and to go and make disciples (Matthew 28:19). We are also commanded to keep ourselves unstained by the world (James 1:27), and not to be conformed to this world (Romans 12:2). How can we have contact without contamination? After all, we are told that bad company corrupts good morals (1 Corinthians 15:33).

What we have here is a tight-rope act, a walking on the razor’s edge. If we truly love our neighbor as ourselves, then we should long to tell our fellow man about our God and Savior. So how do you befriend those lost whom you work with, go to school with, live next door to? In the course of class discussion, we looked at the following passages:

• Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth (2 Timothy 2:15, ESV). First of all, we need to be concerned primarily with what God thinks, not man.
• Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God (Colossians 3:16, ESV). In this passage we learn that we must both study the Bible, so that it will dwell richly; and we must share it freely with our brothers and sisters in Christ.
• But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus (2 Timothy 3:14,15, ESV). We must persevere in the faith, using God’s word to remind us of what we believe, the truth of the Gospel.
• Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect (Romans 12:2, ESV). The battle is ever and always in the head and the heart. We must, by constant vigilance, strive to take every thought captive to obey Christ (2 Corinthians 10:5).
• “You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven (Matthew 5:14-16, ESV). Our purpose while here on earth is to reflect the glory of God in our lives. This means living a careful life for Him, not because it saves us, but because we have been saved and redeemed from every lawless deed (Titus 2:14).

Other passages: 1 Timothy 4, 1 Corinthians 15, the Proverbs.

Your affectionate uncle, Screwtape