Reflect — Background

Lesson Reading

Read alongside this lesson: the Preface (Lewis's note to Tolkien), and Letters 1 and 2.

Why these. The Preface is where Lewis names the two opposite errors about the devil: disbelieving in him entirely, or taking an excessive and unhealthy interest in him. It sets the posture for the whole study. Letter 1 shows Screwtape's opening strategy on a man who is not yet a Christian: keep him from thinking clearly, keep him fixed on "ordinary life," use jargon instead of argument. Letter 2 covers the man's conversion and his first disappointment with the church and the ordinary Christians in the next pew. Together they introduce the patient, the method, and the stakes.

Discussion and Reflection Questions

  1. In the Preface, Lewis names two opposite errors about the devil: refusing to believe he exists, and taking too much interest in him. In your own words, what does each error get wrong, and which one are you more prone to?

  2. In Letter 1, Screwtape wants the patient to stop thinking in terms of true and false and start thinking in terms of what is "strong" or "stark" or "the philosophy of the future." Where do you see this same move in the way people around you decide what to believe? Where do you see it in yourself?

  3. Letter 1 turns on keeping a man fixed on "real life," meaning the bus and the newsboy and his lunch, so that he never lets an argument carry through to a conclusion. Be honest: what ordinary, daily thing do you reach for when a serious spiritual thought starts to land on you? What does that habit cost you?

  4. In Letter 2, the patient is disappointed by the ordinary Christians in the next pew, the ones with squeaky shoes and bad singing. Scripture commands us to love the actual church, not an imagined one: "By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another" (John 13:35). Where have you let the ordinariness or the flaws of real believers become a reason to hold the church at a distance?

  5. Screwtape says the patient's idea of "Christians" is "largely pictorial," full of togas and sandals, so that real people in modern clothes do not fit. What false or romantic picture of what a Christian should look like have you carried? How has it kept you from receiving from the real saints God has placed beside you?

  6. Read 1 Peter 5:8 again: "Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour." After watching Dr. Root's lecture, what does sober-minded watchfulness mean for you this week that it did not mean before?

  7. Application: name one place in your daily routine where you can build in a few minutes of honest thinking about God, rather than letting "real life" crowd it out. What is the specific change, and when this week will you make it?