Screwtape Letters Reflection 2: On Not Missing the Point

Screwtape Letters Reflection… 2nd  Sunday of Lent

As we approach another presidential election many of us may be groaning thinking of the oncoming intensification of the culture wars; the yelling back and forth at each other over our political divides. We care deeply about the issues that are important to us and impact those we love and care about and we should be passionate about helping to create a more just and loving country. However, it’s hard not to notice how the extent of everyone’s passion about the issues seems to keep leading us into greater and greater division; a division that is rapidly becoming one of our most urgent issues itself. How are we to find a balance between advocating for a better world and repairing the division that is so obviously harmful to our nation? 

In The Screwtape Letters, Wormwood is asking his mentor demon Screwtape whether he should push his patient towards ardent patriotism or pacifism in his attitude towards the war.  Interestingly, Screwtape thinks that either way Wormwood will have an excellent opportunity for claiming his soul. “Whichever he adopts, your main task will be the same. Let him begin by treating the Patriotism or the Pacifism as a part of his religion. Then let him, under the influence of partisan spirit, come to regard it as the most important part. Then quietly and gradually nurse him on to the stage at which the religion becomes merely part of the “cause”, in which Christianity is valued chiefly because of the excellent arguments it can produce in favor of the British war-effort or of Pacifism.” 

This quote hit me like a ton of bricks. It speaks so clearly to our present situation. I have often heard others, and been guilty myself of, taking a particular political issue and making it a central tenet of our faith. For many the idea that life begins at conception is central to their faith, while on the other side, a proper understanding of systemic racism and intersectionality is of chief importance. Yet, while each of these are certainly important and vital issues, our specific stances on them are not among the essentials of our faith. Reasonable people of serious faith may have differing opinions on how these issues should be addressed in our contemporary society. Yet when we make them as central to our faith as a belief in the power of a loving God, or trust in the reality of redemption through Jesus Christ, we allow our faith to be warped and our outlook on our neighbors to change. Suddenly the center of our faith is our particular stance on the issue and those who disagree are no longer our sisters and brothers in Christ with whom we are in respectful conversation, but enemies of the faith and the purpose of God. By clinging blindly to the idol we have made of our pet issue, we are oblivious to the irony in our charges that our opponents have begun worshiping a false God. 

This Lenten season it is my hope that we as a congregation will do our best to return to the proper focus of our Christian faith. Our faith is in a God who lovingly created the entire world, who judges our sins with justice, compassion, and grace, and who welcomes us into a new life of humility guided by the Holy Spirit. May we return to these essentials of our faith this Lent and renew our concerns for justice by centering them in a deep sense of humility, compassion, grace, and love. Let’s hold this bit of advice from Screwtape as a warning, “Provided that meetings, pamphlets, policies, movements, causes, and crusades, matter more to him than prayers and sacraments and charity, he is ours — and the more “religious” (on those terms) the more securely ours. I could show you a pretty cageful down here.” May God help us to remember that our faith is not meant to be a means to serve our passions for justice; rather our passions for justice must spring forth from a healthy faith.

Pastor Andrew Greenhaw