Screwtape Endorses a Candidate

A senior devil weighs in on America's political moment.

Photo by Cody McLain on Unsplash

A Disclaimer

In keeping with those who formerly stewarded a similar correspondence, I have no intention of disclosing how the following address came into my possession.¹

What follows is a glimpse into the abyss, a peek under the veil separating our reality from an unseen world that lies beyond the bounds of time and space…and yet it is not so distant as we might believe. In this reality, the moral order itself is inverted; what we know to be “evil” is thought to be pleasing, beauty and virtue are pernicious and loathsome, and “the Enemy” is God himself.

If you find yourself seeking a message of hope in the midst of trying and confusing times, trust that you will not find it here. These words have a sinister shape to them; they seek to eradicate everything you hold dear, and to leave you in darkness in the end.

Readers are encouraged to remember that the devil is the Great Deceiver, and everything he says is either a lie, a trick or a sham. His goal is not to defeat truth, but to poison the well until truth has become so diluted it cannot be deciphered from falsehood. If he can get you off your balance, he is more than halfway to victory.

Consider the following with prudence if you must…but don’t say I didn’t warn you.

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The scene is in Hell at the Infernal National Convention, with a sellout crowd in attendance. Having just been introduced by Gurtfoot, the assembly’s Chairman, Screwtape appears onstage to the sound of frenzied cheers from the crowd. As he approaches the podium, he bids the crowd be still as he begins his address:

Mr. Chairman, members of the delegation, your Disgraces, my Thorns, Shadies, and Gentledevils:

It is a privilege to stand before you this evening. As you know, every four years, this delegation gathers to celebrate the announcement of Hell’s endorsement for the office of President of the United States. It is a day many of you look forward to with eagerness, and hell knows I do not fault you for it. For three and a half long earth years, you have sown and toiled in your work, seeking to twist the minds of your patients in the service of Our Father Below. Admittedly, it is often thankless, tedious work; having to endure the contemptible monotony of human existence in search of just the right moment to strike, trading blows with the Enemy’s hosts in the hopes of one day winning access to the patient’s deeper faculties, and so on. But today, gentledevils, you need not worry about any of that. Today is a day for revelry and merriment, for rarely do we eat better in hell than during election season in America.

It is my task this evening to reveal the candidate Lower Command has selected to give the full weight of their support. And I intend to do so presently. But I hope you will indulge this old devil for the brief time Gurtfoot has allotted me. For although this has been a season of considerable prosperity for us, I am compelled to offer a word of caution. I perceive that many of you tonight are bloodthirsty, eager to see all-out war consume the nations as in the Golden Ages of the past. Your bloodlust is of course to be commended, but in its current form is of no help to our cause. Make no mistake, our Enemy is methodical, organized, and above all, patient; He plays the long game, which numerous setbacks have taught us over the course of our Great Campaign. Thus, I am eager to convey this evening what I regard as a pragmatic assessment of both our current and future endeavors.

Many of our younger devils will no doubt be surprised by this, but properly speaking, hell has no interest in politics. Politics, of course, referring to what historically has been understood as the moral ordering of public good, the pursuit of justice that, rightly carried out, would inevitably lead to the flourishing of the human race. I can hardly utter those words without doubling over in disgust. Nevertheless, we must reckon with what remains that unjust advantage of the Enemy: only He can create. Anything He designs is for the good of His creation, and politics is no different. Though we may wish it were otherwise, political activity was originally His idea.

But, just as the Enemy undermines our efforts by withholding the mysteries of creation for Himself, so we have become experts in spoiling His game. In fact, we have been so successful in this respect we have swayed many within the Enemy’s own camp on this point. On the whole, the modern man now sees politics as repugnant, wholly undesirable and certainly unable to be discussed reasonably with others. To eschew politics altogether has become nearly synonymous with human virtue. This is a great victory for our kind. The less the humans are made to think of the idea of politics, the more isolated and fractured they become, thus making them more vulnerable to our advances. An appeal to one’s ego or “inner feelings” is far more likely to resonate once we have depreciated their obligation to their fellow man.

Screwtape addresses the delegation.

Many years ago, I counseled my nephew Wormwood that jargon, and not argument, was his best ally in keeping his patient from the church. As it turns out, my nephew was only good for a decent meal, but word of my advice later spread until it reached the ears of Lower Command, who brought me down to advise on how this tactic might be deployed in our political stratagem. Well, gentledevils, I am pleased to inform you this has since become one of the bedrock principles of our modern political agenda. Previously, we spent much of our efforts infiltrating the minds of the sensible and harnessing our influence over them to afflict those possessing weaker minds. This was effective in the old days, when having an intelligent opinion about a complex subject was considered a desirable character trait. But nowadays, we have so inundated the human mind with trivialities that many would prefer never to consider such questions at all. This plays right into our hands. At one time, we battled tirelessly for control of a patient’s mind; today, it is offered to us willingly, perhaps even eagerly.

Once this has occurred, all that remains is to isolate the patient from any within their circle of influence who values a real intellectual discourse, particularly if that person is a close friend or relative. We achieve this by promoting a series of internal micro-movements that, if given the requisite time to mature, should ultimately produce the desired effect.

The progression itself is quite simple to follow. First, we propose to our patient that a simple turn of phrase amounts to something as good as a comprehensive and unassailable argument; something about the border or a woman’s body, perhaps. (You can even use the Scriptures if your patient will be so moved, it matters not to us.) Second, we see to it that any questions regarding the patient’s political views almost instantly elicits a feeling of deep insecurity and personal offense, though in reality they are only perceiving a dialectical foundation that has been poorly laid. Finally, we parlay those feelings of insecurity and offense into both resentment for the other person and validation for the self, simultaneously obstructing both the immediate conversation and the relationship itself. And we do all this without ever invoking their capacity for rational thought. Indeed, my friends, we have learned from our mistakes in eons past; logic is unnecessary when intuition will suffice.

Now then, let us turn our attention to the matter at hand. As it were, the candidates in this year’s election have yielded a rare coup for our side: two candidates in whom Our Father is quite fond of, but almost nobody in the country genuinely likes. You may be tempted to think otherwise, but I can assure you that in virtually every case, the affinity you perceive in them is born more from hating the other side than loving their own. Humans are always most easily steered by preying on their fears, a defect that never ceases to amuse. Consequentially, when they believe something of true importance is in jeopardy, they are easily compelled to do whatever is deemed necessary to secure victory. Eventually, they will come to believe their ends wholly justify their means, no matter how their personal character is compromised. This is precisely what we want: humans demeaning themselves in the name of morality, anger propagating in the name of peace, hate being enacted in the name of love. It is a temptation we have successfully proffered since the very dawn of time: the opportunity for them to gain the whole world, only to soon discover that their soul is forfeit. They may have been made in the image of God, but we can yet remake them in ours.

As for the candidates themselves, what is left to say that has not already been said? On the one side, we have a blathering idiot, on the other a shameless liar. Almost everything said in front of a camera is said for the purposes of being seen while saying it, and any policy has become entirely secondary to their celebrity at this point. What are the humans to do but either spend their time quarreling over choosing “the lesser of two evils” or permit themselves to drift into apathy and ignorance? Of course, both are perfectly acceptable outcomes in our eyes. I do hope that one day, you younger devils will come to appreciate how good you have it; many of my older comrades in attendance will no doubt remember the years when the class of candidate was not so easily moldable to our designs. But, under the leadership of our directorate in Lower Command, I am optimistic that we may never see the likes of them among the nominated ever again. If we can continue to produce candidates such as these two halfwits in the years to come, our victory is all but assured.

And so, gentledevils, after much deliberation, Our Father Below is proud to announce his support for the candidate who we believe will champion the cause of immorality and wickedness for many years to come. While both candidates made compelling cases for our endorsement this time around (especially regarding the most vulnerable and oppressed), in the end the superior candidate simply could not be denied.

I thank you all for your attentiveness this evening, and, without further ado —

Mr. Chairman, members of the delegation, your Disgraces, my Thorns, Shadies, and Gentledevils: I give you Hell’s candidate for the 2024 American Presidential election!

With a waive of his hand, a great banner unfolds behind Screwtape, revealing the candidate. As Screwtape stands triumphant with outstretched arms, the crowd of demons erupts into thunderous applause.

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Afterword

Photo by Jez Timms on Unsplash

“That’s it?!” I found myself exclaiming out loud.

It was late, and it quickly became evident my wife and children had long since gone to bed as I felt my voice puncture the stillness of the house. I had been reading the missive you now possess with rapt attention as I sat forward anxiously in my favorite armchair. The accompanying red envelope lay open on the table beside me, placed atop a small pile of books. Strangely, I could just make out a kind of unfamiliar, musty odor lingering in the air, though later I wondered if that had just been my imagination.

To say the least, I was incredulous; surely I must have missed a page somewhere. The address appeared to have concluded, but somehow no candidate’s name had been given, the one piece of information I had expected to ascertain. Not knowing what further recourse to take, I went back into the letter to look for clues, making sure I hadn’t overlooked something important. Screwtape had implied that the answer was obvious, but now it felt like anything but. The words he deployed throughout his address gave the irksome impression that the obfuscation was almost willful, as if the entire speech had been drafted to be deliberately confusing. A second and third reading, however, produced no additional leads, and I knew I had nothing else to go on.

At the same time, something else was gnawing away at me: why did the letter seem to read the same way, regardless of which partisan persuasion I approached it? Given the absence of an obvious answer (at least to me), I tried pretending that I knew who he meant as I read. But this only served to complicate things for me; neither answer seemed any more plausible than the other. In fact, I found that it was not difficult to imagine two people, one conservative and one liberal, reading alongside me, only for both to come away convinced that Screwtape was referring to the opposite candidate. How is that possible? And more importantly, what did it mean?

Restless, I pondered this question for what felt like hours, staring out at a fall moon lingering in the night sky. At some point, it occurred to me that, fundamentally, the devil a cheat, and would be more than happy to stack the proverbial deck by playing two sides against one another for his own gain. If such a letter were to be released to the general public, what would be the result? It would cause untold chaos, I said to myself. I could imagine people on both sides of the aisle making impassioned pleas as to why the other side was clearly the devil’s candidate. When considered in this light, I slowly realized the letter’s opaqueness was not some accidental oversight. It was, in fact, the main feature.

I turned once more to consider the letter, now lying on the floor beside my chair. Maybe the clue I was after was not to be found in the words of the letter, but in the letter itself. Maybe the answer was there all along, staring me in the face as I tied myself in knots trying to unravel its mysteries. Maybe the confusion was the point.

If the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist, his second-best trick was convincing the world that he’s one man or woman, one ideology, one political party, and not legion. Not only is he real, but he can (and does) use anyone and anything to his own advantage, and his machinations extend far beyond the next presidential administration. For him, the plan continues unchanged: to seek, kill and destroy God’s image bearers. If he can get us to hate one another, to compromise our witness out of fear for what might be taken from us, he wins. Hell would see us destroy ourselves for sport, and far too often, we give the devil exactly what he wants.

As we consider our role as ambassadors of Christ in what is undoubtedly a pivotal election, I would encourage you to exercise your right to vote however your conscience will allow. Continue to invest in and engage in your local communities. But keep in mind that, as I heard it put recently, we can only be the light if we advocate for His ways.² Any time we elevate personal values above what the Word of God commands, we become “a law unto ourselves” (Rom. 2:14) and our witness is in vain. Friends, have nothing to do with those who would seek to improve upon the word and character of the living God. We preach Christ and Him crucified, for without Him we have nothing of value to offer our neighbors; in fact, we would be of all people most to be pitied (1 Cor. 15:19).

Despite what you may have heard from your news feed, one election does not a doomsday make. With that said, let’s live like people who truly follow Jesus today and be the light in dark places wherever we find ourselves.

1. If you are somehow unfamiliar with C.S. Lewis’ seminal work The Screwtape Letters, please do yourself a favor and stop reading immediately, go pick it up and read Lewis instead of me. You can thank me later over coffee, I insist.

2. This message from Jesse Eisenhart is well worth your time. Skip to 20:34-23:53 for the reference listed.