Pleasure

In my attempt to write letters as C.S. Lewis did in his collection of The Screwtape Letters, it was easier to imagine what I thought demons would say, than how I thought C.S. Lewis would write. My writings are just a brush stroke where Lewis wrote murals. But their purpose is, as C.S. Lewis wrote in the preface of Screwtape, “to throw light from a new angle on the life of men.” I began writing, throwing light from a new angle on my own life, without a “particular spiritual theme,” but one quickly emerged: Pleasure.

My dear Wormwood,

When I previously assumed your diligence it resigned me to this: my own assumption and desire to debauch disproved my agile leadership. I let you down (if you could go further down) so our patient was lost to us—and found to her G*d.

That is no consequence now. Your fault or mine, it is finished.

Yet, I require you to re-up. Please, afford me the meager value of your effort. (Don’t see this as beggary but as mere bribery.) No need to aspire to greater evils, (these are not innately yours) to snare the bipeds. They live on the basest of terms. Pleasure of any and all sorts is their catnip. Roiling in any type for the sheer sensation of satisfaction, though it seldom provides the depth and degree desired. So they roil again—and we keep them at it until they become mush.

Roiling. Roiling. This is the role and you are fit for the job.

Think first. What would I want? Second. What would I do? Then, lead them like sheep down your path until they are saturated, becoming fluffy sycophants ready for sheepshearing.

This is their odious outcome. Fear. Laying them bare is precarious. We must hasten them to the springboard for another round of perceived pleasure. Naked reminiscence takes them to the Origins. Never a good idea. Pure pleasure like air. Unashamed. No toiling for satisfaction because they were, satisfied.

For this we trust our guidebook. Satisfaction is not our game. Never-ending consumption and want is our modis operandi. Fulfillment? Incredulous! To be satisfied? Gumshaw! Better to pour the sweetest of syrup down a sieve with no bottom than provide measured bits of short-lived sustenance.

But the method has merit for our Enemy.

The verse shared in our guidebook¹—daily bread and all that—instructs the bipeds to depend on their G*d for dailies, freeing them to use their strength on higher pursuits. The very pursuits we so desperately distract them from. Works of service, self-sacrifice, slaving for His gospel. [¹read swiftly to avoid any speck of contamination]

Enough. It’s a waste of time to mention this frivolity.

This is the trade. Either they are consumed with consumption, in other words becoming more like you, a biting specimen of unending want—or they are little mirrors of their Creator, shining light into darkness and turning away from the slop trough to be sated by Truth.

Look in the mirror. See your greed. Then make little armies ready to die for their next pleasure, then the next second to die again.

This is your invitation. Do your worst in Our Father’s name.

Your affectionate uncle

Screwtape

P.S. I impatiently await your return correspondence.

My dear Wormwood,

Ah! A recruit! You’ve already bred some success and I am dumbfounded—and so proud of myself for seeing your potential and freeing it from the festoon of your former failures. Ever since the Serpent duped their seed-bearers their bent is toward us. Amazingly you’ve shown some ability to bend further.

On with it, then. We have something in common with the bipeds that gives you a chance at more acclaim, if not an advantage. The love of Flesh.

We devour it. They delight in it. The same satisfaction exists: a short-lived satiation of lust. Sated until the first bit bursts and we’re at it again. Clawing and gnawing for another bit.

I draw the comparison for your education. Munitions are at the ready.

Remember What would I want? What would I do? Continue to draw from your own desire to devour. Prop a carrot at the nose and pull the lead down your path.

Flesh is the bipeds source of all delights. A smooth plat of shoulder on display, a scintillating touch across the skin, drink amusing the mind, a shiny object at a good price, a firebrand of fireworks to ooo and ahh, a two-pence exchanged for a lollipop. From birth to death our marks never tire. So we must not. Flesh is their pursuit—and ours.

Think, demon! Do you not hasten to discard this correspondence and get back in the game? Teasing your recruit toward pleasure to selfishly fulfill yours? You should begrudge me every moment you stand reading this rag. Is your hand shaking now, is your heart racing, are your eyes glassy with want? Good.

Pleasure does some of the work for you. Its dissipation is by design. Use it wisely. Watch your recruit and you’ll see the slide from ecstasy to ardor. Pleasure one moment. Pursuit the next.

Funny, that. It’s the easiest job in the world. They seek it out in a heady scheme of triumph. But if you prevail triumph is ours!

So I commend you my next admonition.

Now that you understand the method, here’s the madness. There is a fine line (there always is with these folk). You remember, I expect. The fine line tripped and lead to your downfall, from which I recently recalled you to service. Your ‘talent’ to fall could be enough to throw you forward into frequent use, snaring those at the surface of sin before they go deep and fall on their own sword.

We earn no points with self-eradication.

Here’s the hinge pin: pleasure is a vacuum. If served too often with vapid returns it give up its fallacy. It eludes to things of a higher nature. Despicable! G*d is so desperate to save them from the cycle of want he allows them its hollowness to lead them His way. So we must keep them entertained with easy pleasures, because the deadly ones—peace, purpose and philanthropy—fill them to our demise.

They call it “grace,” but don’t linger on it. His Omnipotence is glaring if they dare look. We don’t dare. Your aim is to drag your pleasure-seeking recruit to oblivion. The hollow sucking them dry instead of resorting to Truth.

Lead, now, with a tempting carrot specific to the desires of your recruit. Report with success or failure at once.

Your affectionate uncle

Screwtape

My dear Wormwood,

It’s not usual practice to infer our offer is less-than, counterfeit—even illegitimate. Its value depends on our desired outcome, which is the opposite of our counterpart’s. We spin the hamster-wheel until our mark is breathless and heady with want. The pursuit of pleasure, not pleasure itself. The Other infuses each breath with a hint of persimmon, inviting the soul to something tangible, belying our mediocre facsimile of joy.

We offer a sweet sprinkle on the tongue smacking bitter once swallowed. He offers something more.

This matters naught to your recruit. Each is charmed by their own perception of pleasure, a promise that is as good as given. You can find the lot prattling on about yesterday’s exploits overheard by any perked ear ready for vicarious intoxication—regurgitated from one to another without a prickle of empirical satisfaction.

Easy to fulfill what costs us nothing. Persuasion is all they need.

Guffawing with the crowd, heads thrown back at a bawdy joke. Belittling a red-faced chum to raise one’s stature. Filling the heart with endless window-shopping. Buying another round for empty praise.

“Three cheers for Smithers! Hip, hip, hooray!”

The illusion is enough. Like you—declaring your recruit’s downfall before a hint of it is realized. (Did you think I wouldn’t know?)

We are only able to whet the appetite, never to satisfy. Theirs or ours. Carrot on a stick with no prize to be had.

If shame was shameful in Our Place I’d be inclined to wallow. But you are, once again, the template of your recruit. You enjoy a measure of “pleasure” only by association. If I had not called you up for the task at hand, you would be squirming in the dank, drenched in dung. However, your ego arises on my achievements—so I feel no remorse—until I shake you off again to the lower echelons. Oh, I will, too—unless you overcome your naiveté. Even then you will count any attempt at success a triumph (and best that we triumph) when you are a mere shadow of my glowing achievements.

Encourage yourself with this—your patient is your kin. Satisfied with just a bit more than nothing. So, see? You are a mirror of their simple satisfaction, excepting this—they have the aching center that continually plucks a thread, when once pulled, unravels our weave only to be knit back together by the hands of the Divine. True pleasure ripping them away to the heavens, never to darken the door of Purgatory.

You must keep your recruit preoccupied. Thinking about it, talking about it, lying about it, desiring it—but never truly knowing it. Just like us.

You cannot give what you know nothing of. As long as there is still time to do so, do your worst.

Your affectionate uncle

Screwtape

P.S. Report only to me, if I hear otherwise…