He also proposes how demons might try to undermine Christians and their relationships with God by placing himself in the role of a demon attempting to do so. Through this premise and Screwtape’s letters, Lewis tackles most of the common Christian paradoxes and dilemmas. Screwtape, a demon in the top ranks of Satan’s army, is sending letters to his nephew, Wormwood, who is trying to ensure a man’s soul is sent to Hell. The format and putative dating of the passage quoted above suggest " The Screwtape Letters," a 1942 novel that is Lewis' most popular book outside of the Narnia series and comprises a series of letters from a demon (Screwtape) to his nephew (Wormwood): And so living, they died every day! And that's how it was very easy for me to take their miserable souls to hell. They accepted everything! Just to live at least one more miserable day.
The world turned into such a concentration camp, without forcing them into captivity. They stopped visiting family and friends. They gave up their freedoms, they didn't leave their own homes literally anywhere.
"They believed blindly everything they heard and read in the papers. They gave up all social contacts and everything that was human! Later they ran out of money, lost their jobs, but that was their choice because they were afraid for their lives, that's why they quit their jobs without even having bread. They stopped hugging, greeting each other. The old man answered: "You know they believed the only thing they have to keep at any cost is their lives. The young devil, surprised, answered: "Then I don't understand?" they got sick, died, and the rescue was there."
The old devil answered: "I instilled fear in them!"Īnswers the youngster: "Great job! And what were they afraid of? Wars? Hunger?"Īnswers the man: "No, they were afraid of the disease!"įor this youngster: "Does this mean they didn't get sick? Are they not dead? There was no rescue for them?" One young devil asked the old man: "How did you manage to bring so many souls to hell?" Lewis wrote this nearly 70 years ago but could have been written today: In mid-2020, however, Lewis, who died in 1963, was attributed as the author of a piece titled "Old Devil's Letter to the Young" or "The Devil's Letters to His Nephew," a work said to have been published in 1942, but seemingly quite prescient in anticipating both the COVID-19 pandemic that began several decades later and the resistance to social distancing measures enacted to slow its spread: Lewis was a British writer and educator best known for The Chronicles of Narnia, a series of seven fantasy novels published in the 1950s (the first of which was 'The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe') and set in the magical land of Narnia, home to mythical beasts and talking animals.
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