Screwtape Letter #25 – Discussion Guide

Letter #25

More bad news
– for Wormwood.

My dear Wormwood,

The real trouble about the set your patient is living in is that it is merely Christian. ... Substitute for the faith itself some Fashion with a Christian colouring. Work on their horror of the Same Old Thing.

25.1) “Mere Christianity” is a reference to another C. S. Lewis book. A reading group guide for the book includes the following text:

Regarded as the centerpiece of Lewis's apologetics, Mere Christianity began as a series of live fifteen-minute radio talks that Lewis gave, under the auspices of the BBC, during WWII. Characterized by careful reasoning, vivid analogies, and Lewis's gift for making complex religious ideas immediately accessible, the broadcasts were overwhelmingly successful,

…

Lewis was able to reach such a wide audience in part because he tried to explore the essence of Christian belief, what he felt "all Christians agree on." After he finished the radio scripts, he sent them to Roman Catholic, Presbyterian, Methodist, and Church of England theologians, all of whom agreed on the main points he had made. Lewis himself says in the preface to Mere Christianity, "So far as I can judge from reviews and from the numerous letters written to me, the book, however faulty in other respects, did at least succeed in presenting an agreed, or common, or central, or 'mere' Christianity."

Compared to “Christianity And” – why is “Mere Christianity” something that Screwtape wants to avoid?

The horror of the Same Old Thing is one of the most valuable passions we have produced in the human heart—an endless source of heresies in religion, folly in counsel, infidelity in marriage, and inconstancy in friendship. ... He gives them in His Church a spiritual year; they change from a fast to a feast, but it is the same feast as before.

Now just as we pick out and exaggerate the pleasure of eating to produce gluttony, so we pick out this natural pleasantness of change and twist it into a demand for absolute novelty. ... Only by our incessant efforts is the demand for infinite, or unrhythmical, change kept up.

25.2) Change – escape from boredom or a scary experience?

Depending on whether you like change or not – talk about why you would or wouldn’t like the idea of being-

not only contented but transported by the mixed novelty and familiarity of snowdrops this January, sunrise this morning, plum pudding this Christmas.

For myself - I think there’s a flaw in Screwtape’s thinking.
I don’t believe it’s just the same things over and over - to the point of boredom.

There’s so much to learn about God -
so much to experience -
as we do these same things year after year -
as we read the Bible and study it time after time -
as we grow with other people year after year -
we see more - experience more - learn more - and grow.