My Dear Screwtape,
No, no, no,
no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, NO! You still
don’t get it!! Sin has no qualitative properties! It is impossible to tempt a
human to commit a sin so horrible that they’re forever put out of His favor. We
can persuade them to certain attitudes which make them more susceptible to our
advances but there is no magic bullet where one action in one moment in their
time damns them to our eternal feast. The mere fact that the Enemy forgives,
renders such a strategy implausible. This is what you fail to understand.
Conversely,
however, it also means there is no single virtue which puts anyone out of our
reach forever. This is the aspect of our struggle on which your students should
focus. Corrupting the virtuous can be far more rewarding than maintaining the path
of the damned. And corrupting a virtuous community drags many subsequent
followers down here.
We have two
primary tools at our disposal. You may view them as lanes on a highway: On one
side lay secret guilt and the other, public punishment by the human community.
Now, while it may be entertaining to keep our subjects wallowing on one side or
the other – as it is always fun to witness their guilt and/or humiliation –
these are the two places where the Enemy is most likely to grab them.
Where do we
want them? Right smack in the middle!
Allow me to
explain: On the side of secret guilt, this is a place where someone has
committed some act for which they feel penitent. Nobody – or at least few -
knows about this act. This is something the subject feels privately and in
isolation and is almost always an offense to the Enemy Himself rather than
another person. Because of this, they feel separated from Him and are left with
a kind of dull empty ache. As this feeling becomes more pronounced, they start
drifting off farther and farther to the side of the road until they finally
admit to their sin and earnestly request forgiveness. The Enemy obliges and the
soul moves out of our sight for the time being.
The other
side is one of public humiliation and ridicule resulting from some sin usually
committed against another person or a community of persons. This one is a bit
more complicated. Crime is the best example. There’s usually a singular victim
and the community sides with that victim and against the perpetrator to bring
about justice. There’s always a degree of humiliation a human feels when caught
in the act. There’s even a form of
humiliation felt when one is falsely accused of the act for which they are
being humiliated.
Thankfully,
the humans have managed to find a way to institutionalize this humiliation of
their criminal element – we call this incarceration. They've institutionalized
this practice for two key reasons, ensuring that “justice” is swift as well as
distant. Remember how I spoke of compassion before? Their system puts distance
between the citizen and the criminal as a way to deny the citizen of any
compassion they might feel toward the criminal. What’s that saying of theirs?
Out of sight, out of mind? The prisoner is therefore subject to a compassionate void. This lack of warmth keeps the humiliated from going off this side of the road just as
pride keeps the private sinner from going off on the other.
There are
some citizens who find the opportunity to express compassion to the imprisoned
and sometimes it works. Many prisoners who were previously on the straight and
narrow toward us, managed to have discovered the eternal benevolence of the
Enemy and later fallen off. In nearly all cases, this is because they managed
to find just a modicum of compassion amidst the desperation of physical
confinement.
We must keep
them firmly in the middle of this road. For the private sinners, we win when we
convince them the Enemy is the source of their guilt rather than the cure. And for
the prisoners, we win when we convince them they are undeserving of compassion thus
driving them to the following conclusion: “If I am to be treated as if I’m
evil, why bother being good?”
Your Merciful
Master,
Slubgob
No comments:
Post a Comment