The Screwtape Letters :: RtK DISCUSSION post

This post marks the end of September's book club read of The Screwtape Letters and marks the beginning of the discussion. If you read along this month and wrote up a post detailing your thoughts, this is the post to leave a comment on, sharing the link to your post. If you don't have a blog and want to chime in on the conversation, please feel free to do so in the comment section below.

Barbara from Stray Thoughts selected this book for the group to read and wrote a blog post sharing her thoughts on this book. You can read her full review over at Stray Thoughts. Here is a portion to kick things off. Do note that if you have a link of your own to share, please do so here.



Without further ado - here are Barbara's thoughts:

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Lewis thought it might be both “entertaining and useful” to write a series of letters from an older devil to a younger apprentice in his work of tempting and tripping up a new “patient.” The type of approach, presenting “a negative point of view to lift up the positive,” was unusual for Lewis, but he felt it “would give a fresh, even comical perspective on the subject and might attract readers who might not normally think about such things.” Why a comical approach for such a serious subject, one that ended up being very difficult and unpleasant for Lewis to write about?” Partly to “[lure] the ordinary reader into a serious self-knowledge under pretense of being a kind of joke”* (McCusker’s preface) and because “humor involves a sense of proportion and a power of seeing yourself from the outside” (Lewis’s 1961 preface).

In his preface to the original edition, Lewis notes that “There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. They themselves are equally pleased by both errors and hail a materialist or a magician with the same delight.” In the same preface he “[advises the reader] to remember that the devil is a liar. Not everything that Screwtape says should be assumed to be true even from his own angle.” He writes in the preface to the 1961 edition that “Satan, the leader or dictator of the devils, is the opposite, not of God, but of Michael,” an archangel, and “God has no opposite.”

At first it is a little hard to get used to the reverse thinking of the letters: Screwtape refers to God as “the Enemy,” to the devil as “Our Father Below,” to his position in the “Lowerachy” of hell, etc. It takes frequent mental adjustments throughout the book, and I can see at least partly how it could seem so oppressive for Lewis to try to express what a devil’s thoughts might be.

To read further CLICK HERE.

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Thanks, Barbara, for hosting this month! Looking forward to hearing from others who read this title along with us this month OR at any time previously. Feel free to share your opinions with us!