Introduction

  If I'd been able to cook up a narrative structure better than the brilliantly inside-out one C.S. Lewis came up with for The Screwtape Letters to use in telling the story I wanted to tell here, I certainly would have.  The fact is that my habitually negative, devil's advocate, trouble-shooting point of view on these things is best served by precisely what he came up with.

 

  The human events in this story are true, with slight changes made to some of the specifics to protect the anonymity of some.  I don't write this to damn individuals, but rather to expose how these sorts of calamities are achieved, in the interests of avoiding repeating them any more times.  Much of what takes place in this story occurred while I was a child, so my recollection of those events is, naturally, from a child's point of view. 

 

  It is not easy to strive for complete logical consistency and have fun at the same time, but I have done what I could.  Apart from in the "What We Are" email, I have not obsessed overmuch as to theological (or diabological) accuracy in depicting exactly what evil spirits are and what they do, particularly if making them more human than they should be added humour or colour to a work that desperately needed those.

 

  I have co-opted Lewis' story structure in order to tell the tragic story of a group of Christians led astray by their own flawed humanity, rather than, as he did, the story of a single individual.  The events I depict happened in a group of Closed or "Exclusive" Plymouth Brethren Gospel Halls in the 1980s and 90s.  I suppose this has made my story narrower in scope and perhaps in appeal, but this is the story I have to tell.

 

Mike Moore

July 2009

Part the First

In Which Screwtape is Assigned a Rather Overenthusiastic Young Subordinate, and Harsh Words are Exchanged as to his Inappropriate Use of Language

From:   Screwtape [scrwtp@ppa.com]
To:       Grubsputum
Cc:
Subject: Your New Assignment, and the Proper Use of Sex 

 Greetings, under-demon Grubsputum. 

Thank you, somewhat, for the wholly unedited, quite odd email you sent by way of introducing yourself.  I found your avowed enthusiastic plan to,

 

>tear that Stevens Street place to the ground using there [sic] nasty
>human sex drives and have them totally screwing each other in the isles
>[sic] of the place while it burns down around there [sic] asses!!!  LOL

 

…a rather dubious one, however.  Of course it sounds delightful enough, but how will it work in practice, exactly?  I think upon further reflection you will see that any use of sex as a destructive tool with this particular group is fairly limited.  I cannot advise your viewing it as a key strategy of any kind.  Remember that there are no magic bullets, and hard work will be the key to your fostering their smoking ruination. 

 

Of course, ensuring that married humans are not having any sex will predictably free up their time and send them all around the community making insufferable nuisances of themselves, will cause the young humans to doubt there is any point getting married to begin with, and will generally make everyone in your group miserable and impossible to deal with.  We will, clearly, require more than that however, if we are to be successful. 

 

Any significant number of people who could be tempted into strategic sexual indiscretions or truly hedonistic promiscuity is, sadly, simply not to be found in this particular group.  If you had taken the time to view the proper reports, you would have seen that, at all age levels, on a weekly basis, there are really very few groups in the entire world in which less sexual activity is going on, even taking the weekly instances of sexual molestation and abuse into account.

 

(The T69A forms identifying humans with, clearly, not the first clue as to how sex works psychologically, what it is for and what it does and so on, were included in your orientation package.  Please review them.  You will find some useful titbits there as to those few of your subjects who have been identified as vulnerable in this area and are already, or can be tempted into, enacting hilarious, farcical misuses of their truly nasty human genitalia.) 

 

As a collective, these humans are generally, I think you will find, of such a character as to make an entirely different toolbox of strategies necessary.  We will come to that in time, should you last a week in your current position, of which I am understandably dubious.

 

I must admit that it was with dismay (and no small amount of anticipatory hunger) that I heard of your promotion to the post you now occupy.  Who are you again?  I have never heard of you.  As you are no doubt aware, I am by now rather used to working with demons who have already proven their worth and skills in other areas, and have thus been given the distinct honour of being sent to work under me.  I am uncertain, then, as to why The Bureaucracy has seen fit to take a human group as vital as the Stevens Street one you now inherit from Wrackbilious and place it in your (doubtless ill-intentioned, but quite inexperienced) care.  Am I right in thinking this is your very first post as a supervisor of personal tempters (or, in fact, in a supervisory position of any kind)?

 

It was, you may be aware, the demon Wrackbilious who allowed this (originally small) problem at Stevens Street to grow, weed-like, into the thriving centre of congregation for so many potential Servants of the Enemy that it is today.

 

The initial, all-too-pervasive spirit of dutiful humility was something he did not, to our infernal dissatisfaction, manage to really stamp out to any degree.  A crucial failing, that.  Wrackbilious was not altogether a fool, and took, of course, their troubling collective focus on discovering more about who our Enemy is, and soon diluted that spirit until the group became all about showing proper respect for and deference to how all the long-dead humans once did and said everything.  He managed to some degree to induce them to then trade epiphanies for traditions, to swap a journey of suspenseful exploration of reality (and themselves) for a brand of particularly brainless conservatism and a decided digging in of heels. 

 

All this was done to ensure their carefully planted doubts were properly guarded from interlopers seeking to uproot them, so these vital things could grow undisturbed in the darkness.  Wrackbilious had a fair degree of success with that, at least, but fell very short in a number of areas. 

 

He also, it is true, did much to turn the dangerously unselfconscious humility which once pervaded the Stevens Street group into one which was much more of the “very aware of just exactly how humble we’re being” variety.  Things were, however, getting very out of hand under his care, and he eventually proved to be quite delicious, for all his other shortcomings.  (You soon may as well.)

 

At any rate, I will give you your first assignment: in no fewer than two thousand words, provide me with a detailed report of your impressions of the Stevens Street group, being careful, of course, henceforth to use only formal, appropriate, DC language.  (You must, after all, try to serve as an example to the personal tempters under you who work more directly, one-on-one with the various human creatures in your group at Stevens Street.)

 

Please get working on this immediately.  I await with interest your non-sexually-based strategies for chipping away the foundations of this teeming hive of Xtian creatures.

 

Regards,

Your new supervising over-demon Screwtape

___

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