LETTER 27

-Screwtape is disappointed in Wormwood.
-Wormwood let the Patient notice that he is distracted and has a wandering mind. -Now that he is aware of it, it has become the subject of his prayers.

-Screwtape says, "false spirituality is always to be encouraged."
-Screwtape doesn't want the Patient to put full meaning into his prayers

"HEADS i WIN, TAILS YOU LOSE."

• If he prays and nothing happens, the petitionary prayers don't work
• If he prays and it is effective, he will see the physical features that led up to it
• "therefore, it would have happened anyway"

WHAT THE PATIENT THINKS ABOUT GOD AND TIME

• God remembers the others as past
• God anticipates others as future
• God sees some things as present
• God always knew men were going to make those prayers
• Men did not pray freely, they were predestined to do so

TO WATCH A MAN DOING SOMETHING IS NOT TO MAKE HIM DO IT

• God is unbound by time
• He experiences all time at once

Screwtape acknowledges that some learned scholars know that God does not control us, that He simply watches. In order to deal with this, Screwtape says that demons use the Historical Point of View. He calls this when a man is presented with any statement in an ancient author but doesn't ask whether it is true. Instead he asks an abundance of irrelevant questions.

Screwtape does not want us reading the works of ancient scholars because they wrote of the truth about God and religion. To keep us uneducated about these things, demons cut us off from previous generations in fear that we may be educated by their knowledge of God. Screwtape ends by saying that, thanks to the Devil and the Historical Point of View, great scholars are now uneducated on these matters.

"But you can worry him with the haunting suspicion that the practice [prayer] is absurd and can have no objective result...If the thing he prays for doesn't happen, then that is one more proof that petitionary prayers don't work; if it does happen, he will, of course, be able to see some of the physical causes which led up to it, and 'therefore it would have happened anyway...' "

Screwtape explains to Wormwood how to make the Patient believe that prayer doesn't work. He tells Wormwood that if what the Patient prays for doesn't happen then he can say it didn't work, and if it does happen, he can just point out the causes of it and act as if it would have happened no matter what.

"...the Enemy does not foresee the humans making their free contributions in a future, but sees them doing so in His unbounded Now. And obviously to watch a man doing something is not to make him do it."

Screwtape acknowledges the fact that God does not control what we do, He only sees what we do because He experiences all time at once.

"To regard the ancient writer as a possible source of knowledge--to anticipate that what he said could possibly modify your thoughts or your behaviour--this would be rejected as unutterably simple-minded. And since we cannot deceive the whole human race all the time, it is most important thus to cut every generation off from all others.. "

Screwtape sees the ancient writers as a threat because they are knowledgable on the matter of God. Screwtape cuts us off from these writers so that we do not become educated on God and realize that what they have been telling us about God is wrong.

WHAT THIS TEACHES US

• To keep praying no matter how much you are tempted not to
• To believe that God listens to all of our prayers because He experiences infinite time
• To believe that God answers all of our prayers, maybe not in the way we intend, but in the way we need
• To trust that we have our own free will, and that God solely sees, rather than foresees, what we do in the future

What this teaches us (continued)

To study ancient scholars because they contain knowledge of God that we may need to learn in order to help us push through the temptations of the devil

How does this relate to us? Sometimes we lose motivation to pray because we stop believing that our prayers are effective. We lose the most motivation when we notice that our lives are making no progress. We have to believe that God listens to our prayers, even when it doesn't seem like it.