I have read the Screwtape Letters many, many times. This is a short book. Not only that, but it is divided into short letters from the senior demon Screwtape down in Hell to his nephew Wormwood who was on earth tempting a human being.

I enjoy a writer who makes his points bluntly and quickly.

CS Lewis wrote the Screwtape Letters to demonstrate what Jesus was talking about by showing what someone on the opposite side would say.

Like Jesus, Screwtape had only one focus. His only concern was the salvation or damnation of the soul of a single human being. One fascinating thing about the book is that it was written at the beginning of World War II, but Screwtape couldn’t care less which side won.

CS Lewis was writing in World War II England, but he kept saying that that war was not all that important.

In fact Screwtape referred to World War II as “what humans call The War.”

To Screwtape there was only one real War, the one between Hell and Jesus. Again and again he warned Wormwood against worrying about which side should win. Wormwood’s job was to damn a soul.

Jesus kept saying that, over and over: “The poor we have always with us.”

“What profits it for a man to gain the whole world and lose his own soul?”

One of the many things Jesus said that would get him kicked out of most churches was:

“My Kingdom is not of this world.”

But today we are told over and over that Jesus’ Kingdom is dedicated not only to this world, but to a tiny strip of this world, the Holy Land.

Screwtape would certainly approve of THAT.

Screwtape kept telling Wormwood that Christianity was harmless as long as it was what he called “Christianity AND….” If a person could be diverted into worrying about “Christianity AND the Crisis,” his religion would get off of individual salvation. A Christian can be diverted to worshipping the Bible or the Holy Land or Social Justice or worrying about creationism or anything else in THIS world.

Any of those things keeps the person from seeing his faith as a means of salvation. A person can dedicate his entire life to that sort of thing, said Screwtape, and still end up “In Our Father’s House.”

Screwtape’s “Our Father” was Satan.

The road to salvation, said Screwtape, is strait and narrow. All Wormwood had to do was to lead a human off onto a side path.

One thing Screwtape referred to was something every demon-in-training learned: “The standard parade-ground exercise of appearing as an Angel of Light.” The demon used this disguise as he stood on a path which led away from the strait and narrow. He looked like an Angel of Light showing that this way, saving the Holy Land, feeding the poor, fighting creationism, was the Way to Heaven.

If knowing the Old Testament was the key to salvation, Satan would be a saint.

Jesus offered forgiveness with an open hand:

“Father forgive them for they know not what they do.”

Did God reply, “No way, Son.”?

Damning a soul is not as easy as most “Christians” think. They hand out damnation with an open hand.

One of the two people Jesus specifically said was damned was the High Priest who had led a completely holy life and who knew the Bible almost as well as Satan did. He was everything today’s “Christians” say a man of the Holy Land should be.

But he was damned. He found a path that was not simply asking for forgiveness. Salvation was a minor concern among all his virtues.

As Screwtape would say, “He is now in Our Father’s House.”

That is not where I want to go, so I don’t want to be in today’s churches.

Any of them.