A very entertaining book indeed that makes you think.
It's about a series of letters an old demon was sending to his nephew called wormwood about how to tempt a man.
Very informative. Gives you an insight into the enemy's strategies. Get the book and read it.

This is the first of thirty-one letters from Screwtape to his nephew Wormwood.

Letter 1

My dear Wormwood,

I note what you say about guiding your patient's reading and taking care that he sees a good deal of his materialist friend. But are you not being a trifle naif? It sounds as if you supposed that argument was the way to keep him out of the Enemy's clutches. That might have been so if he had lived a few centuries earlier. At that time the humans still knew pretty well when a thing was proved and when it was not; and if it was proved they really believed it. They still connected thinking with doing and were prepared to alter their way of life as the result of a chain of reasoning. But what with the weekly press and other such weapons, we have largely altered that. Your man has been accustomed, ever since he was a boy, to having a dozen incompatible philosophies dancing about together inside his head. He doesn't think of doctrines as primarily "true" or "false," but as "academic" or "practical," "outworn" or "contemporary," "conventional" or "ruthless." Jargon, not argument, is your best ally in keeping him from the Church. Don't waste time trying to make him think that materialism is true! Make him think it is strong or stark or courageous—that it is the philosophy of the future. That's the sort of thing he cares about.

The trouble about argument is that it moves the whole struggle onto the Enemy's own ground. He can argue too; whereas in really practical propaganda of the kind I am suggesting He has been shown for centuries to be greatly the inferior of Our Father Below. By the very act of arguing you awake the patient's reason; and once it is awake, who can foresee the result! Even if a particular train of thought can be twisted so as to end in our favour, you will find that you have been strengthening in your patient the fatal habit of attending to universal issues and withdrawing his attention from the stream of immediate sense experiences. Your business is to fix his attention on the stream. Teach him to call it "real life" and don't let him ask what he means by "real."

Remember, he is not, like you, a pure spirit. Never having been a human (oh, that abominable advantage of the Enemy's!) you don't realise how enslaved they are to the pressure of the ordinary. I once had a patient, a sound atheist, who used to read in the British Museum. One day, as he sat reading, I saw a train of thought in his mind beginning to go the wrong way. The Enemy, of course, was at his elbow in a moment. Before I knew where I was I saw my twenty years' work beginning to totter. If I had lost my head and begun to attempt a defence by argument, I should have been undone. But I was not such a fool. I struck instantly at the part of the man which I had best under my control, and suggested that it was just about time he had some lunch. The Enemy presumably made the counter-suggestion (you know how one can never quite overhear what He says to them?) that this was more important than lunch. At least I think that must have been His line, for when I said, "Quite. In fact much too important to tackle at the end of a morning," the patient brightened up considerably; and by the time I had added "Much better come back after lunch and go into it with a fresh mind," he was already halfway to the door. Once he was in the street the battle was won. I showed him a newsboy shouting the midday paper, and a No. 73 bus going past, and before he reached the bottom of the steps I had got into him an unalterable conviction that, whatever odd ideas might come into a man's head when he was shut up alone with his books, a healthy dose of "real life" (by which he meant the bus and the newsboy) was enough to show him that all "that sort of thing" just couldn't be true. He knew he'd had a narrow escape, and in later years was fond of talking about "that inarticulate sense for actuality which is our ultimate safe guard against the aberrations of mere logic." He is now safe in Our Father's house.

You begin to see the point? Thanks to processes which we set at work in them centuries ago, they find it all but impossible to believe in the unfamiliar while the familiar is before their eyes. Keep pressing home on him the ordinariness of things. Above all, do not attempt to use science (I mean, the real sciences) as a defence against Christianity. They will positively encourage him to think about realities he can't touch and see. There have been sad cases among the modern physicists. If he must dabble in science, keep him on economics and sociology; don't let him get away from that invaluable "real life." But the best of all is to let him read no science but to give him a grand general idea that he knows it all and that everything he happens to have picked up in casual talk and reading is "the results of modern investigation." Do remember you are there to fuddle him. From the way some of you young fiends talk, anyone would suppose it was our job to teach!

Your affectionate uncle

SCREWTAPE

Buy the book and read it. It's so good. I hardly read myself, but this one was great!

Oops. Meant to be in Literature forum. but you know what, I think it's good here.

thanks. just placed an order for my copy

I've had this book for about 3 years now and I havent gone past chapter 5. It;s like the devil really doesnt want me to read this book. I told myself that by force I must finish it this summer but the summer is almost over and here I havent even touched it.

Anyway, Yes I agree with you. It is indeed a very good read. It opens one's eyes to a lot. It's one of those books that will make you "wow! this is crazy" the whole time. I think this thread is going to make me pick up the book right now!

Looking forward to hearing what others have to say about the book.

Seriously my sister, now THIS is the sort of thing a producer should pick up and make a movie about. (Would have to be British though)
Sadly, there are no movies of it even yet. It's all plays.

But then again....maybe that's a good thing that it remains a book. Might be too deep for a movie.

Yea I know what you mean. It will certainly make a great movie. Although like you said, making it into a movie can take a lot away from the intensity of the book. A lot can be lost through "translation". I didnt even know there were plays. Well at least, that's a start.

Have you read any other books by C.S Lewis?

The Screwtape Letters movie trailer.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4J8PsacmPs


This is a trailer for the book, The Screwtape Letters, by C. S. Lewis and is just a project for a school.

That's not at all the trailer.

I notice that for anything of this sort, it would have to be done by a Christian producer, and there's not a lot of them out there.
If they are, they are very low budgetty and could end up ruining it.

This trailer must be the real McCoy, no?


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd9cWPwF6B0

The story behind the Screwtape letters being told here.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=En5XdEdffwk

The Screwtape Letters: Behind the Scenes of the audio drama.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLfYd2nd5NI