Screwtape Goes To Work

Is your email box a place for spiritual warfare?

Ben Dockery | Est. 4 minutes

The Psychology of Temptation

I recently returned from the C. S. Lewis Tour Lakelight hosted in Oxford, London, and Cambridge. Walking the old roads awakens your mind to another world. As Jerry Root said, Lewis opens more than wardrobe doors.[1] 

In July 1940, Lewis was attending Holy Trinity Church in Headington Quarry when he conceived the idea for Screwtape Letters. In a letter to his brother, he explains, “Before the service was over I was struck by an idea for a book which I think might be both useful and entertaining. It would be called, As one Devil to Another, and would consist of letters from an elderly retired devil to a young devil who has just started work on his first “patient.” The idea would be to give all the psychology of temptation from the other point of view.” [2]

I’m starting a related project that leans into Lewis’ masterpiece of diabolical correspondence but takes aim at issues of work.[3] Deep spiritual formation occurs at work, whether we see it or not. Temptation is always crouching at the door but rarely roars.

Letters from the Work Temptation Manual | Subject: Email

Dear Hamilton [4],

I’m excited to share a strategy that proves effective with even the most devoted patients. [5] Our data shows that regular morning practices – or ‘quiet times’ as our old handbook says – are damaging to our attacks. I know you reported your patient is avoiding your best distractions and now routinely reads and prays before work. Never fear. 

I’d like you to adjust your efforts away from having her sleep-in or make a ‘real’ breakfast. Let’s move the battlelines to immediately after prayers. I want you to help her get a jump on her work by immediately checking her email on the phone. Reports are coming in all across the agency that a single glance at email can erase any progress on morning spiritual practices. 

It’s a bit like magic. In one moment, she might be sensing the Enemy’s love or asking forgiveness for an attitude she displays toward her colleague. Both are dreadful thoughts. Then, before leaving her chair - we can regain all our morning losses. It’s a shortcut. It’s like a ‘force quit’ telling her operating system to terminate all the active applications.

Sometimes, you won’t even need her to engage in email. A single glance at the name of a pesky co-worker or the subject line from a stressful project can propel her immediately out of the world of grace into the world of performance and deadlines. 

She needs to feel this is the true world – a world where she is all alone. 

The Enemy perfectly designed these worlds to be integrated. This becomes most clear when the Son came down to earth (we don’t write his name, it’s a Kryptonite that impairs our work even with a little exposure). He connected the worlds.

It’s remarkable how much human creatures miss this. In her reading, she doesn’t see the biblical authors are regularly writing to the Enemy about the pressures of work. The language is filled with work vocabulary and metaphors. In fact, the Psalm about the Shepherd she repeats daily at the coffee pot is a reflection from his work experiences. It’s a work Psalm. I find our ability to keep this hidden to be one of our great achievements. We have the upper hand when the world of the Bible (that despicable book) remains a fictitious world - not the real workplaces of past saints.

She’s not the sort of irresponsible client who might look at emails before she starts her morning practices — you might even remind her of that — she’ll be proud she’s not like others. Still, play on that strong sense of responsibility to make her check in the office so she doesn’t fall behind or appear behind. The email eraser might just do the trick.

Please note: She will eventually pick up on this. She’s bright. She will fight back. At this point, we need to call forth her sensitivity to shame. Make her feel that the Enemy’s fully devoted followers don’t deal with distraction. Try to keep her from letting anyone know her struggle. Enough doses of this shame, you might even undo her morning routine since they will feel ineffective.  

If you accomplish that result, you will be called upon to share at our next staff meeting. These success stories inspire young tempters across the network who battle with the most devoted clients. Keep me informed.

Before I finish, be aware there is a risk in the strategy. Some patients have started connecting their devotions to their emails. If you sense her morning mercies bleeding into her email box, that’s trouble. When she connects the ancient world of the Bible with her workplace and identifies her struggles with theirs, it might be time to abandon the strategy and aim for something else. 

We’ve seen the Enemy reward patients who endure suffering with things like confidence and faith, two things to avoid at all cost. Try to make her believe she belongs to the crowd who shrinks back. Make her believe she simply must do more and be better to win her King’s approval. It’s an old yet effective tactic.

I’ve said enough. Give it a try. Keep her phone near at all times. Keep her worlds separated. Keep up the dark work.

Devilspeed,

Mr. Krow [6]

Regional Trainer | “Leading into temptation and delivering to evil for over 100 years”

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Endnotes

[1] Dr. Jerry Root said this at a Lakelight Talk on Lewis in January 2024.

[2] Taken from a letter to his brother, Major Warren Lewis: Saturday, July 20, 1940(1895-1973). In Collected Letters Vol 2, Walter Hooper, 426-427.

[3] Many writers have scribbled out Screwtape-type letters with varying degrees of success. Needless to say, none provide the insight and cleverness displayed in Lewis’ original work. It is a precarious (maybe conceited) thing to try to mimic a master like Lewis, so I admit up front that’s what I’m attempting. The project started at our 2023 Good Work Summit.

[4] Lewis published his first book, Spirits in Bondage, under the pseudonym Clive Hamilton. It was published in 1919 as a collection of poems written between 1915-1918 while he was serving in trenches of WW1 and a military trainee at Oxford. Clive was real, Hamilton was not.

[5] For those unfamiliar with Screwtape – words like ‘patient’ or  ‘client’ refer to the person the devil is tempting and words like ‘Enemy’ or ‘their King’ refer to God.
[6] The tempter’s name is a puzzle I hope you can solve.

© Ben Dockery | This article was first published in Lakelight Monthly, July 2024 Edition