The Slubgob Correspondences: Letter III

My Dear Screwtape,

     You seem to have turned a corner and are finally asking the right questions. This pleases me. It is indeed quite perplexing when one considers how to corrupt those institutions which have succeeded so distastefully in turning mortals toward the Enemy. For now, the conventional wisdom states that our focus ought to remain on keeping people indifferent to such entities.

     Taking on an institution – such as the Catholic Church – is quite a task. The problem is that the Enemy seems to be everywhere. If we were to expend resources trying to corrupt the Church, there’s no guarantee the Enemy wouldn’t reach His pets by some other means. The Enemy can be in many places at once but we have opportunity costs to consider. If we leave institutions alone, eventually the human frailties of its leaders will become apparent and we can use that to turn their subjects away from the proverbial light.

     Consider the prevailing concepts we reinforce on the publics through our current propaganda channels. The entire message of Christianity is that the Enemy is all-forgiving and all-loving. The humans can always turn to the Enemy, and so long as they do so humbly and honestly they’ll always be accepted. What lunacy! The Enemy gives humans rules, humans break them routinely, yet He still accepts them if they surrender. It is indeed a “heads I win, tails you lose” proposition and a major bone of contention between Our Master and Him.

     Sorry, I’ve lost my train of thought…Oh, yes, we need to blind the humans to the fact that the Enemy will always accept them regardless of what they’ve done. Keep showing them images of times when forgiveness was completely absent from the actions of their religious leaders. Stories of the Spanish Inquisition and the Borgia family usually do the trick for Catholics; for Protestants, we typically refer them to the Salem Witch Trials.

By exposing their minds to atrocities committed by religious leaders of the past, we poison them with a stubborn intolerance for sinfulness in the religious leaders of the present. We want to inspire in them a mob mentality like the one so effectively dispatched during their Witch Trials. There is much hay to be made from vengeful righteousness.                                                                    Your Merciful Master,

                                            Slubgob