Screwtape Lives!

One of the scenes in The Screwtape Letters that I find most chilling involves Screwtape's advice to eliminate silence. He writes to his nephew, Wormwood, expressing his concern about the woman Wormwood's "patient" is seeing. She comes from a religious family and Screwtape fears the influence she will have on the young man through her faith:

[The house] bears a sickening resemblance to the description one human writer made of Heaven: ‘the regions where there is only life and therefore all that is not music is silence.’

Music and silence–how I detest them both!….[Hell] has been occupied by Noise–Noise, the grand dynamism, the audible expression of all that is exultant, ruthless, and virile–Noise which alone defends us from silly qualms, despairing scruples and impossible desires. We will make the whole universe a noise in the end….The melodies and silences of Heaven will be shouted down in the end. 

At this point, Screwtape is so stirred up and hysterical that he turns into a centipede illustrating the transformational power of NOISE (and not a transformation for good). I think Lewis captured in that one scene the reality of our culture.

I recently saw a doctor being interviewed who commented on this very issue. "There is not enough silence," he said. "We're distracted from self." 

Another quote from Screwtape also applies to our culture -- the relentless focus on feelings. For many young people, feelings represent reality, the only truth is what corresponds to one's feelings. Acting against your feelings constitutes a sort of hypocrisy, a failure to be the true self. All the world must bow to one's feelings and affirm their truth. The result? 

Gender ideology is the answer on steroids! If I wake up in a man's body "feeling like a woman" then I must be in the wrong body. Forget that a man can't know what it "feels like" to be a woman or to be a dog, a cat, or a rock for that matter. He conjures up an image in his mind and puts on what his imagination identifies as a woman. So you get the bizarre unreal "woman" Dylan Mulvaney. And the world embraces his psychosis and talks about him as "she." If you refuse to play the game, you are labeled a hater. Life is all about feelings and everyone must enter Dylan's world of make-believe and coddle his delusions while he mutilates his body and his soul. How can you find peace in an X-rated Wonderland?

Screwtape addresses this with Wormwood describing the necessity of encouraging the patient's feelings:

"The more often he feels without acting, the less he will be able ever to act, and, in the long run, the less he will be able to feel"

With regard to being "distracted from self," look at all the folks glued to their cell phones, a graphic illustration of avoiding self. To know oneself silent reflection is necessary. And then one needs to ask the questions: Who am I? Who made me? Why am I here? What is my purpose? How can I fulfill it?

Too many people never ask the questions because they are too busy gaming or filling their lives with noise. They live in Screwtapes world. Let us pray that people, especially the young, will turn off their electronics, lay down their cell phones and listen to the quiet, still voice of God.