5 Lies About Politics From Screwtape
What C.S. Lewis' fictional demon actually wrote about politics
In recent U.S. election years, a fake excerpt from The Screwtape Letters has gone viral, which is unfortunate for a host of reasons. For starters, we have yet another fake C.S. Lewis quote to deal with. But also people miss what Lewis actually said about politics through the demonic perspective of Screwtape in his missives with his nephew Wormwood.
As we enter another presidential election year with Christians deciding how to be faithful and media viewing faith groups through the lens of voting blocs, consider how we can counter the lies that Screwtape wants us to believe about politics.
Policies don’t matter, only hating the right people.
The senior demon wanted his nephew Wormwood to direct his assigned human to a church with a pastor who cannot make up his mind about the proper place of politics—obsessed with it one day and then cynical about every political situation the next.
At the other church we have Fr Spike. The humans are often puzzled to understand the range of his opinions—why he is one day almost a Communist and the next not far from some kind of theocratic Fascism—one day a scholastic, and the next prepared to deny human reason altogether—one day immersed in politics, and, the day after, declaring that all states of this world are equally “under judgement.” We, of course, see the connecting link, which is Hatred.
Many of us have that same temptation. And we can be equally fueled by hatred to cause us to swing wildly between opposite extremes. The actual policies don’t matter as long as we support the right people and attack the others.
Politics can give us a path to heaven on earth.
Screwtape advises Wormwood to direct the human’s desire for heaven toward trying to create it on earth through various means like politics.
All of us can lose perspective on the proper place of politics. We may think it’s a way to bring about a social utopia through government policies or we could view it as the means through which God will bring “revival” to our nation.
Both of those miss the truth about politics and, more importantly, the truth about heaven.
So inveterate is their appetite for Heaven that our best method, at this stage, of attaching them to earth is to make them believe that earth can be turned into Heaven at some future date by politics or eugenics or “science” or psychology, or what not.
Faith serves as a means to achieve political goals.
If Christians are going to apply their faith to their politics, the demons want them to use Christianity as a means to another end, like some societal or political goal.
You can see this all across the spectrum this election. People leverage Bible verses and biblical-sounding arguments to attack those who say they plan to vote differently. We want our country to head in the “right direction” politically, so we use our faith as a tool to accomplish that end.
Quite subtly, we shift from our Christianity informing our politics to altering our morals and beliefs to better serve our politics.
Looking round your patient’s new friends I find that the best point of attack would be the borderline between theology and politics. Several of his new friends are very much alive to the social implications of their religion. That, in itself, is a bad thing; but good can be made out of it.
…
About the general connection between Christianity and politics, our position is more delicate. Certainly we do not want men to allow their Christianity to flow over into their political life, for the establishment of anything like a really just society would be a major disaster. On the other hand we do want, and want very much, to make men treat Christianity as a means; preferably, of course, as a means to their own advancement, but, failing that, as a means to anything—even to social justice. The thing to do is to get a man at first to value social justice as a thing which the Enemy demands, and then work him on to the stage at which he values Christianity because it may produce social justice. For the Enemy will not be used as a convenience. Men or nations who think they can revive the Faith in order to make a good society might just as well think they can use the stairs of Heaven as a short cut to the nearest chemist’s shop. Fortunately it is quite easy to coax humans round this little corner.
“Democracy” can be used to defend un-Christian behavior.
This quote from Screwtape Proposes a Toast might be the most apt for our current political environment. People use the word “democracy” as almost a magic wand to dismiss immoral behavior on their part or among those with whom they agree.
As a result you can use the word democracy to sanction in his thought the most degrading (and also the least enjoyable) of human feelings. You can get him to practice, not only without shame but with a positive glow of self-approval, conduct which, if undefended by the magic word, would be universally derided.
The feeling I mean is of course that which prompts a man to say I’m as good as you.
The first and most obvious advantage is that you thus induce him to enthrone at the centre of his life a good, solid, resounding lie. I don’t mean merely that his statement is false in fact, that he is no more equal to everyone he meets in kindness, honesty, and good sense than in height or waist measurement. I mean that he does not believe it himself. No man who says I’m as good as you believes it. He would not say it if he did. The St. Bernard never says it to the toy dog, nor the scholar to the dunce, nor the employable to the bum, nor the pretty woman to the plain. The claim to equality, outside the strictly political field, is made only by those who feel themselves to be in some way inferior. What it expresses is precisely the itching, smarting, writhing awareness of an inferiority which the patient refuses to accept.
And therefore resents. Yes, and therefore resents every kind of superiority in others; denigrates it; wishes its annihilation. Presently he suspects every mere difference of being a claim to superiority. No one must be different from himself in voice, clothes, manners, recreations, choice of food: “Here is someone who speaks English rather more clearly and euphoniously than I — it must be a vile, upstage, la-di-da affectation. Here’s a fellow who says he doesn’t like hot dogs — thinks himself too good for them, no doubt. Here’s a man who hasn’t turned on the jukebox — he’s one of those highbrows and is doing it to show off. If they were honest-to-God all-right Joes they’d be like me. They’ve no business to be different. It’s undemocratic.”
You can be ignorant as long as you know you’re right.
If the above quote is not the most fitting one for our current political environment, this other quote from Screwtape Proposes a Toast may be
We, in Hell, would welcome the disappearance of democracy in the strict sense of that word, the political arrangement so called. Like all forms of government, it often works to our advantage, but on the whole less often than other forms. And what we must realize is that “democracy” in the diabolical sense (I’m as good as you, Being Like Folks, Togetherness) is the fittest instrument we could possibly have for extirpating political democracies from the face of the earth.
For “democracy” or the “democratic spirit” (diabolical sense) leads to a nation without great men, a nation mainly of subliterates, full of the cocksureness which flattery breeds on ignorance, and quick to snarl or whimper at the first sign of criticism. And that is what Hell wishes every democratic people to be.
We are a nation—across both parties, various third parties, and among independents—of arrogant, but ignorant individuals.
We are sure of our being right, but obsessed with demonstrating otherwise by our actions and words. We are quick to fight but refuse to fight anything other than strawman arguments.
We have become the democracy hell wishes us to be.
Not Safe But Good
C.S. Lewis quote of the week
Notice how we are perpetually surprised at Time. (“How time flies! Fancy John being grown up and married? I can hardly believe it!”) In heaven’s name, why? Unless, indeed, there is something in us which is not temporal.
December 23, 1950 letter to Sheldon Vanauken, The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, Vol. 3
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