During Advent I like to revisit The Screwtape Letters as a devotional exercise, but this year my ladyfriend discovered My Dear Hemlock, a new Screwtape-esque book that focuses on a female “patient”, and follows her from early young adulthood through her life’s ebb. Because it follows her for decades, the readers get to see how the spiritual temptations and trials of life can change from period to period. We witness our patient here being tempted by outings with a group of vain and materialistic friends in her youth, for instance, when Hemlock is instructed to make the patient vainly think she can be a “good influence” on them, and much later when the patient is stricken with a possibly-terminal disease, Hemlock is advised to make the woman dwell in her fears — not for herself, but for her children, never thinking of how this crisis might stir the waters and create an opportunity for grace to shine through. The span of time covered does to make this more episodic, though: whereas in Screwtape Letters, Wormwood and Screwtape are in the midst of an intense campaign and we see schemes unfolding across multiple levels, here it’s more one-letter, one-battle, and now we jump ahead five years. There is also focus on relationships here that was present in Screwtape, but not to nearly the same degree: the marriage is of great concern to the senior demon, given that it is something like the church in miniature, each partner dying to the other and working for the other’s sanctification — but it could lead to triumphs for the demons, too, for hate and festering bitterness and swearing off love altogether. As with Screwtape, the snares sewn are the subtle ones, and the senior demon warns her ward off of big moves, which can have unexpected consequences: when Hemlock manages to inflict a chronic disease on her patient, she’s horrified to see the patient growing closer to Christ through it, making her more thankful for the support of her family and friends, more mindful of her short time on Earth, more grateful for the moments without pain. I was hoping to integrate some reflections from my and the ladyfriend’s joint discussion of this, but she’s in no-serious-reads-until-school-is-out-mode.

Related:
The Screwtape Letters, Jack himself
The Gargoyle Code, Fr. Dwight Longenecker

Highlights:

We must do everything in our power to prevent her finding out a standard fact about the male human: he will usually slouch to meet a woman’s disapproval and grow to meet her praise.

Our best marriages occur when a woman is constantly trying the wind’s method, blowing as cold and hard as she can. Husbands universally respond by pulling their coats tighter around them. (In the fable, the sun shines warmly on the man’s face so that he removes the coat voluntarily. It is a dangerous secret, really.)

The humans are all Naamans, certain that their problems are too unique and too knotty for a simple swim in the Jordan.

Here it is very entertaining to take advantage of the human tendency to learn a new obedience one moment and then, in the exact next moment, look angrily around at people who don’t seem as obedient about the same thing.

You asked which is better: to encourage your woman to start a fight with the husband about what he did, or to encourage her to ignore what he did and punish him with silence. The answer is—yes. Honestly, it’s little matter to me which she does, as long as her heart is cooled and hardened toward her husband and the Enemy. So choose the one that comes most naturally to her, and let her flesh do the work.

You see? This way, you get her to pile up months of crusted-over “small” sins. She and her husband will go picking their way around the piles, stepping on old trash left from a silent supper three months ago, and they’ll stop noticing it’s even there. As long as they never begin the habit of confession, they’ll build this delightful tartar of the soul for years. This is how hatred begins, Hemlock. Don’t underestimate it.

Identify the Patient’s ditch and push her into it.

This is what the screen gives the humans. It gives them the same escape. They don’t know when or how they came to be on their phones. They only know they are freed from the plodding, repetitive step of moment after moment. The joys and sorrows of life are muted for them, and they are carried down the road of time without knowing or caring.

You might think that, once you get her friends into the category of enemy, it will occur to her that she should approach them the way the Enemy told her to in his Terrible Talk on the Mountain. But I promise she’ll never make the connection. “Love your enemies,” His nonsensical command, is hard enough when she has a clear enemy. But what about when her “enemy” is just a friend who has forgotten to include her in a text invitation? What about when her “enemy” has slapped her on the cheek by repeating her private prayer request to a third party?

You’ll want to begin by encouraging her in long episodes of worry. Worry is fixated on the future and inspired by the past, and it does very good work ruining the present. All worry is good worry.

Teach her to forget the eyes of the Enemy entirely in her cringing and preening awareness of the eyes of man. Rather than assessing her obedience against His book, against the promptings of His accursed Spirit, encourage her to assess it entirely using these mathematical symbols: <, >, =. Are my children performing better, worse, or as well as these other children? This rubric can replace the question of whether she herself is following Enemy instruction. Her parenting will thus become one long plea for affirmation from others, a plea to be excused for failure and to be admired for success. Every private moment with her children will be overshadowed by the latest public performance. She will miss the pure enjoyment she may feel in them, in their personalities and voices and bodies. [..] The frustrations of such a woman are delicious, her insecurities tasty to the last drop. Her energies are futile and poured out for the enjoyment of us all.

The humans are quite aware of the potential of disease or disorder when it comes to the body. But for some reason, it’s easy to get them to forget the possibility of disorder when it comes to the mind and the emotions. Repress the obvious thought that some emotions—and the fervent beliefs that accompany them—simply do not reflect what is “true” in the oppressive sense meant by the Enemy.

Death is never a real friend. I always say that the less the humans think of death, the better. Death instructs them when it is faced head-on. Only when it is skirted around can it be really beneficial. A human pretending she won’t die is a human who fears death.