Thursday, November 08, 2012

A Newly Discovered Screwtape Letter


My Dear Wormwood:

We have succeeded in convincing the vermin that technological progress is the same as moral progress. How delicious! Your man thinks that the more technological "connections" (how they love that now mindless word) he has, the larger he is, the more urbane, and up-to-date. But one of he enemy's writers complained that "homo-up-to-datum is a dunce." Gladly, few have read that book (it is on our list of forbidden books), and we have little to worry about. But we are very busy on the electronic books front. More on that later...

May your little cyborg feel that he cannot be alone with his thoughts. That is a waste of time, dead air; he is being, the Enemy help him, unplugged. Don't let it enter his overstimulated  and over-saturated brain that being unplugged is a way to still the soul and listen to the insistent whispers of the Enemy, who (what nerve!) calls him self the Logos and even commands silence on occcasion. But as I have previously written, we will drive out all silence and true music in the end.

No, no. Give him his gizmos, devices, his toys; keep him lusting for more, more, more, so that he ignores his fellow man next to him on the bus, in the classroom or in the bedroom. Then, we will have him! Our Father below is, after all, "the price of the power of air." The Bad Book at least got that right.

Your affectionate Uncle,
Screwtape

3 comments:

Billy Wayne said...

Nice letter. Flows like a genuine screwtape letter. One minor note, there's a typo: Satan is the "prince" not the "price" of the power of the air. ;-) Great job.

Krave said...

A very clever piece of writing! Also, Letter 1 of the original Screwtape Letters is relevant to this point as well...Screwtape advises Wormwood to keep "the patient" in a perpetual state of distractedness to keep him from the Enemy. Thanks to electronic media and other devices, this task has probably never been easier for the Devil.

JHC said...

Very well done. C.S. Lewis would not have agreed more.