Big Questions
The Devil's Playbook: Lewis's Screwtape Letters
A senior demon writes letters to his nephew about how to destroy a human soul. It's satire. It's also terrifyingly accurate.
In 1942, C.S. Lewis published one of the weirdest and most brilliant books in Christian literature: The Screwtape Letters. The setup is simple. Screwtape, a senior demon, writes advice letters to his nephew Wormwood, a junior tempter assigned to corrupt a human soul.
The whole book is written from the enemy's perspective. God is called "the Enemy." is "Our Father Below." Everything is flipped.
It's darkly hilarious. It's also unsettling, because the strategies Screwtape describes? You'll recognize every single one.
The Strategy of Subtlety
The most important thing Lewis reveals through Screwtape is that the enemy's best work is invisible. Screwtape doesn't recommend dramatic temptations. He recommends gradual drift.
"The safest road to Hell is the gradual one — the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts."
This is Screwtape's core principle: don't make the human feel like they're making a big decision. Just nudge them slightly off course, day after day. A little resentment here. A small compromise there. Nothing dramatic enough to set off any alarms.
Key Tactics
Lewis identifies several strategies that Screwtape recommends:
Distraction over direct attack. Screwtape tells Wormwood not to argue with the human about Christianity. Instead, redirect his attention. Get him thinking about lunch, about politics, about anything other than eternal questions. "It is funny how mortals always picture us as putting things into their minds: in reality our best work is done by keeping things out."
Weaponize relationships. Make the human annoyed by his family. Focus on the mom's irritating habits, the friend's political opinions, the partner's small failures. Turn everyday friction into resentment. Screwtape knows that most spiritual damage happens in living rooms, not battlefields.
Corrupt . Don't stop the human from praying — just make the prayers about feelings rather than reality. Let him evaluate prayer by whether he "felt" something rather than whether he actually talked to God. Make prayer a performance for himself rather than a conversation with God.
Exploit comfort. Keep the human comfortable. Comfort breeds complacency, and complacency breeds spiritual apathy. Screwtape fears suffering because suffering makes humans think about God. Comfort makes them forget.
Redefine virtue. Turn humility into false modesty. Turn charity into self-congratulation. Turn patience into passive aggression. Don't eliminate the virtues — corrupt them from the inside so the human thinks he's being good while actually serving his own ego.
Why It's Terrifying
The genius of The Screwtape Letters is recognition. You read Screwtape's advice and think: "I've done that. I've fallen for exactly that."
The resentment toward family. The prayers that are really just talking to yourself. The slow drift away from what matters. The comfortable numbness that passes for contentment.
Lewis makes the invisible visible. And once you see the patterns, you can't unsee them.
What the Bible Says
Screwtape's tactics aren't Lewis's invention. They're straight from :
warned the Ephesians about "schemes of the devil" () — the word "schemes" implies strategy, planning, and subtlety. Not brute force.
described temptation as a process: desire conceives, gives birth to sin, and sin produces (). Screwtape's entire methodology follows this exact sequence — nurture the desire, normalize the sin, hide the consequence.
described the devil as a "roaring lion," but Lewis's insight is that the lion usually hunts in silence. The roar comes after the prey is already caught.
And the serpent in 3 — the OG tempter — used exactly the tools Screwtape recommends: misdirection ("Did God really say?"), half-truths ("You will not certainly die"), and the appeal to ego ("You will be like God").
The Bottom Line
The Screwtape Letters is satire, but the insights are no joke. Lewis was mapping the terrain of spiritual warfare at the most practical level — not cosmic battles, but daily choices. Not Hollywood demons, but quiet suggestions.
The book's lasting power is this: it makes you pay attention. To your resentments. To your prayers. To the small compromises you barely notice. Because according to both Lewis and , that's exactly where the real battle is going down.