Screwtape Letter #4 – Questions

Screwtape Letter #4 – Questions is article #9 in the series: Screwtape Letters. Click button to view titles for entire series

Letter #4

 

Screwtape is unhappy –
about prayer –
and about blame.

 

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My dear Wormwood,

The amateurish suggestions in your last letter warn me that it is high time for me to write to you fully on the painful subject of prayer. … It also reveals an unpleasant desire to shift responsibility; you must learn to pay for your own blunders.

 

4.1) Notice how Screwtape says: It also reveals an unpleasant desire to shift responsibility; you must learn to pay for your own blunders. Contrast this with what Jesus says (and did) to (for) us.

 

 

The best thing, where it is possible, is to keep the patient from the serious intention of praying altogether. … That is exactly the sort of prayer we want; and since it bears a superficial resemblance to the prayer of silence … It is funny how mortals always picture us as putting things into their minds: in reality our best work is done by keeping things out.

 

4.2) Screwtape encourages getting the patient to either react against childhood experiences or to assume a level of prayer far in advance of what he is really prepared for. These both make sense – they will make it harder for the patient to focus on God , instead focusing on the act of trying to pray. But then he says It is funny how mortals always picture us as putting things into their minds: in reality our best work is done by keeping things out. Why would keeping things out of our mind be their goal?

 

 

If this fails, you must fall back on a subtler misdirection of his intention. … and never let them suspect how much success or failure of that kind depends on whether they are well or ill, fresh or tired, at the moment.

 

4.3) Screwtape says Teach them to estimate the value of each prayer by their success in producing the desired feeling; and never let them suspect how much success or failure of that kind depends on whether they are well or ill, fresh or tired, at the moment.  Looking at 1 Kings 18 and 19, consider how being emotionally drained and tired impacted Elijah.