A Primer on “The Screwtape Letters” by C. S. Lewis: Advice from Hell
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The most unsettling thing about “The Screwtape Letters” is not that it imagines demons. It is that the demons sound so reasonable.
Published in 1942, C.S. Lewis’s satirical masterpiece takes the form of letters from a senior devil, Screwtape, to his nephew, Wormwood, a junior tempter assigned to secure the damnation of an ordinary British man. The advice is practical, clinical, and terrifyingly familiar. Reading it, you begin to suspect that someone has been taking notes on your inner life.
The Genius of the Inversion
Lewis’s stroke of brilliance was to flip the perspective. Instead of writing about temptation from the human side — where we might nod along without feeling the weight — he wrote from the tempter’s. Suddenly, every small compromise, every petty resentment, every moment of spiritual drowsiness is seen for what it is: a battle being fought over your soul.
Screwtape does not counsel Wormwood to lead his “patient” into dramatic sins. That would be too obvious, too likely to trigger repentance. Instead, he advises the slow erosion: a gradual cooling of devotion, a drift toward self-righteousness, a habit of thinking about prayer rather than actually praying. The strategy is not to push the man off a cliff but to let him wander, one degree at a time, until he no longer remembers the path.
Why It Still Cuts
More than eighty years after its publication, “The Screwtape Letters” remains one of the most widely read works of Christian literature — and one of the few that consistently makes readers laugh and wince in the same paragraph. Lewis understood that the most effective spiritual writing often comes sideways, through story and satire, slipping past defenses that a sermon might never breach.
The book’s power lies in its specificity. Screwtape’s counsel touches on prayer, friendship, pleasure, church life, romantic love, intellectual pride, and the thousand small ways we hide from God while convincing ourselves we are seeking him. Readers across generations have had the unnerving experience of recognizing their own evasions in Wormwood’s reports.
Pierre Châtel-Innocenti; Unsplash
The Convert Who Knew Temptation
Lewis wrote from experience. A committed atheist until his early thirties, he knew what it was to resist God — and he knew the subtle arguments the mind constructs to avoid surrender. After his conversion, he became one of the twentieth century’s most influential Christian writers, producing works of apologetics (“Mere Christianity”), fiction (“The Chronicles of Narnia”), and spiritual reflection that continue to shape how millions understand the faith. “The Screwtape Letters” stands among his most enduring achievements — a book that entertains, convicts, and illuminates in equal measure.
A Mirror You Did Not Ask For
If you have never read “The Screwtape Letters,” prepare to be charmed and disturbed. Lewis’s wit makes the pages turn quickly; his insight makes them linger. You may find yourself pausing mid-chapter, caught by a description of a temptation you had never named but suddenly recognize.
That is the book’s gift. It holds up a mirror — not to show you the dramatic sins you might fear, but the quiet ones you have learned to ignore. And in seeing them clearly, you may find yourself, for the first time in a while, wanting to fight back.
The Screwtape Letters is available in print, e-book, and audiobook from major retailers and Christian bookstores.