A book by C.S.Lewis entitled The Screwtape Letters purports to be a series of letters of advice by an experienced devil to a young tempter on how to get someone to sin. Since the senior devil, Screwtape, is more important in the lowerarchy (as opposed to the hierarchy) he attempts to guide the younger demon on the foibles of human nature that a tempter can exploit. One concrete bit of advice that Screwtape proposes is not to confront the potential sinner with a dramatic choice between good and evil. He said that “the safest road to hell is the gradual one – the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.” Let people kind of drift into a soft complacency of committing minor infractions and soon the sinner is caught. In another place Screwtape observed that “(God) wants people to be concerned with what they do; our business [as tempters] is to keep them thinking about what will happen to them” In other words, temptations are geared to having us obsess about what is going on with us instead of noticing how we are called to action. Neither senior nor junior demon can comprehend God’s love for humanity or acknowledge human virtue so the tempters try to focus their prey’s attention on how put upon they are. Temptations are all about me.
How would Screwtape rate the temptations that Jesus had to endure? He would not have approved that the tempter avoided the “gentle slope, the gradual road” but instead went for the blockbuster confrontation. But he would, perhaps, approve of the tactic of trying to get Jesus to focus on himself. Hey, you’re hungry. You’ve got to take care of yourself. Make some bread. Look, you’re here on a mission and they don’t have twitter or facebook in 1st century Palestine. How are you going to attract any attention to yourself? If the angels catch you when you throw yourself down from the temple that should get you some notice. Quite frankly, Jesus, you could do a better job at running things in the kingdoms of the world in their magnificence than the current crowd is doing. Why don’t you take over as the CEO of the world and show them how it should be done. Jesus resists those temptations by shifting the focus off of himself and onto God. “One does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.” “You shall not put the Lord, your God, to the test.” “The Lord, your God, shall you worship and him alone shall you serve.” Jesus was able to deal with temptations that focused on him and what he was going through by keeping his eyes fixed on what God was doing. Then, we are told, the devil left him and angels ministered to him.
All of this is not simply a Bible lesson about what happened to Jesus. We tell the story of the temptations of Jesus at the beginning of every Lent so that we can examine the temptations that we face. We usually consider our temptations to be doing things that violate a commandment: bless me, Father, for I have sinned by lying, by stealing, by disobeying. However, the story of the Screwtape letters suggests that the temptations of the devil are much trickier than that. What are some of the subtle temptations we face? Screwtape suggests that the most dangerous temptations come on a gentle slope, gradually, without milestones. I face that temptation every time someone says something ugly or racist or downright false. To avoid getting into a fight I tend to keep my mouth shut when some says that immigrants are rapists and murders when I know that immigrants contribute greatly to our country. I don’t contradict when someone talks about “those people.” I don’t point out the obvious dangers of climate change to someone who denies it because he read it on the internet so it must be true. Letting ugliness and untruth stand is a temptation because it puts me on the gentle slope away from God’s presence and action in the world. Screwtape goes on to say that temptation focuses us on what we are going through and not what we can do. Violence is widespread. The rich are getting richer and poor poorer. Politics is a mess. All true but the temptation is to just focus on poor, pitiful me instead of looking for ways that I can do something about these things. Screwtape says that temptation becomes possible when we forget the love that God has for us. Isn’t that the story of the first temptation, that of Adam and Eve? They wanted something for themselves and forgot that God had given them everything, even life itself. Temptation happens whenever we go after the gift and forget the giver.
Jesus tells us how to resist temptation, even the subtle ones. In the Sermon on the Mount he instructs us in the traditional Jewish practices of prayer, fasting and almsgiving. During Lent these three activities provide the buffer against temptation. We can think of this as our fire- fighting gear keeping us from the flames of hell. Prayer: Jesus used the scripture to help him to resist temptation. During Lent read five minutes every day from the gospel of Matthew or one of the Psalms. Fasting: give up something that you like (wine? Facebook?) just to make sure that it does not have control over you. Almsgiving: reach out to someone in need as a way of growing in awareness that all that we have comes as a gift from God. Once upon a time, Screwtape was leading a class in temptation to the new recruits. He asked them: what is the most important message to get across to someone you are leading astray. “Tell them there is no heaven,” suggested on imp. That’s not it, said Screwtape. “Tell them there is no hell,” proposed another. That won’t work either, Screwtape responded. “Tell them there is no hurry.” That’s it, said Screwtape. If you can convince them of that you have the battle half won.
