Social Justice & Screwtape VI

My Dear Wormwood.

Based on the information in your last report (which I cross checked thoroughly) I have put you in for a commendation with the Lowerarchs. Globhiss let your patient become a formidable Christian in one of the most noxious and fearsome Churches we know of, then foolishly allowed him to catechize his children in the true knowledge of the Enemy. Small wonder we sent Globhiss to the House of Corrections and reassigned the patient to you. 

Lesser tempters would have complained that taking over in such a situation was unfair, but through the focused, sleepless application of force and careful obedience to your betters you have brought him back to us. Your patient now constantly insinuates that the genuine Christians around him are racists. His wife is estranged from him while yet living with him, his children despise what he has become, and he sees none of it, instead believing he is suffering for the sake of the Enemy’s Kingdom. I can see his end now, standing before his judge, outraged. “Did I not do many wonderful things in your name!? Did I not write many articles? Was I not entirely devoted to your cause?” The Enemy will say, “Depart from me, I never knew you” and will hand him over to us. He will observe how his hard work won him hell, he will realize what we’ve done to him, and then we will feast on him.

There is yet much to be done, to be sure. We must get him out of that church still, for it is an ever present danger to us. But insofar as it is possible, you have immunized him to it, as we immunized the Babylonian Exiles to the preaching of Ezekiel. He believes that our social fashions are imperatives that confer moral progress. He smiles at fellow church goers in person and denounces them as villains online. He follows our fads built on anti-Christian premises zealously. He is continually goaded into saying ever increasingly foolish things by extremists, but retains enough intelligence to create ambiguity and plausible deniability by them. We very nearly annihilated his own denomination with liberalism years ago and yet he is blind to what we do to it today. Oh it is a marvelous thing you’ve done to him Wormwood, be proud of yourself.

Do not be surprised if you are reassigned shortly. A future repentance may yet mar all, but the ever growing size required of it and the unconscious bias against it he’s built up makes repentance increasingly unlikely. Your patient can be managed by another tempter now Wormwood, you are too valuable to waste on him further.

Your Affectionate and Increasingly Proud Uncle,

Screwtape