Many readers will recognize an allusion to the C.S. Lewis classic The Screwtape Letters in the title of this blog. Lewis’s book is a fictional collection of letters from senior devil Screwtape to Wormwood, his “nephew” and temptor-in-training. Wormwood’s task: to lure his human charge (or “patient”) away from God (whom Wormwood calls “the Enemy.”)

Lewis’s purpose in writing from a demon’s point of view was not to encourage evil, of course, but to help readers better be on guard against it. While I don’t pretend to possess the insight, wit, and writing skills of Lewis, neither do I pretend that I wasn’t doing my best to imitate him!

A word about demons and devils…I believe that Satan is real. He was created as a glorious angelic being, rebelled against his Creator, and set himself at enmity with God, His creation, and His people. Satan and his demonic followers aren’t merely metaphors for evil. I also believe that, as a created being, Satan is neither omniscient nor omnipresent. The Bible nowhere teaches that we each have a demon hovering over us, personally overseeing our temptation. Like Lewis, I simply use the idea as a literary device. As fallen creatures, we do quite well falling into temptation on our own without needing a great deal of outside encouragement.

But if demons really do exist, you may ask, is it such a good idea to be so flippant about them? Turning a demon into a department head? Turning Beelzebub into a bureaucrat? Trivializing and taunting the Evil One and his hosts?

Yes. Yes, it is.

Christians needn’t live in fear of the devil. By Jesus’ death, resurrection, and ascension He has crushed the head of the serpent. And though Satan still prowls and rages, and though the Church should remain on guard against him, those attacks are nothing more than the desperate thrashings of a creature in its death throes. The Christian should rejoice and shout and sing about Christ’s victory – and even laugh aloud (like Elijah mocking Baal) at the doomed rebellion of the demonic hosts.

“The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture,” said Martin Luther, “is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn.” Lewis included that quote in the beginning of The Screwtape Letters, and it’s worth repeating here.

Many things have changed since Lewis’s day – some for the better, some for the worse. But, as the book of Ecclesiastes reminds us, there is nothing new under the sun. Despite the march of time and the advance of technology, mankind continues to struggle with the same old sins of the world, the flesh, and the devil.

I hope you enjoy “The Squirmtrap E-mails.” And I also hope that it might, in some small way, encourage you in your Christian walk.

–A.K. Brennan

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All content © 2008, A.K. Brennan