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Keely's review

The Screwtape Letters (Gift Edition)
by C.S. Lewis

Keely's review
rating:
bookshelves: fantasy, humor

If not for the fact that this is a satire in earnest, it would serve as a powerful absurdist invective against humanity. There is a degree to which this book helped to improve my view of Christians in general, but only in the sense that it points out that all the faults which I have found in your average Christian are often just as powerful in the uncommited person, the Christian just tends to make themselves more conspicuous in it.

The sharp weapon of Lewis's rhetoric tears down humanity through all the self-righteous hubris, denial, misdirected hopes, and easy mistakes we pile upon ourselves in masochistic suffocation. However, one begins to develop the impression, slowly at first, that Lewis has nothing to offer in return. There are scarcely words of alternatives, let alone improvements.

Lewis does give us a house which disgusts the devils and redeems the man, but this perfect representation of Christian values seems mostly defined by a lack of any description of philosophy, e...more If not for the fact that this is a satire in earnest, it would serve as a powerful absurdist invective against humanity. There is a degree to which this book helped to improve my view of Christians in general, but only in the sense that it points out that all the faults which I have found in your average Christian are often just as powerful in the uncommited person, the Christian just tends to make themselves more conspicuous in it.

The sharp weapon of Lewis's rhetoric tears down humanity through all the self-righteous hubris, denial, misdirected hopes, and easy mistakes we pile upon ourselves in masochistic suffocation. However, one begins to develop the impression, slowly at first, that Lewis has nothing to offer in return. There are scarcely words of alternatives, let alone improvements.

Lewis does give us a house which disgusts the devils and redeems the man, but this perfect representation of Christian values seems mostly defined by a lack of any description of philosophy, excepting that it is 'suffused' by some sort of magical glow which infects the cat. Indeed, I began to get the impression that Lewis intended to fill in this section later, but that he never got around to it.

Lewis said that the writing of this text was one of the most painful that he had with any book, and that he could not bring himself to write a sequel. I find little surprise in this, because one can see how, as the book goes on, Lewis more and more recognizes and elucidates the failures of mankind but when he comes to express what makes him or his faith any different, he cannot find anything to say.

The 'suffusing glow' then becomes a stand in for Lewis's own righteousness, but it is not difficult to see that, in a book where Hubris and self-assuredness are constantly torn down, that self-righteousness is left with little to stand in.

Along with this, Lewis often presents a very advanced knowledge of rhetoric and human behavior but it oddly deficient in that he applies the same things to one side and then the other first as a positive, and then a negative.

For example, the book begins with the demon advising that humans shoud be encouraged to think of things as being 'real' without ever questioning what that means. The term 'real life' is meant to act as a self-justification for assumptions, not as an introspective view.

However, later on Lewis begins to talk about how the Christians should make sure to follow what is 'natural', without ever defining what that is. He mentions it several times and one is left with the sense that there is little distinction between 'natural life' and 'real life'.

This can hardly surprise, as Lewis maintains a philosophy of Duality. Dualitism presents the 'with us/against us' ideal by which any two groups may grow to hate one another despite the fact that they have relatively few differences. As long as one defines the other as bad, there is no need to define the self as good, as in the Dualistic system, there is only good and evil, and you are either one or the other.

The problem with this is that if one believes morality more complex than black and white, then it is not enough for him to simply say he is better or different than those who so deeply disappoint him.

That being said, it would still be refreshing to meet a Christian who had put as much thought and work into at least attempting to understand and explain themselves. Indeed, this book has reminded me that it is rare enough to find that in or out of religions. Atheists and scientists can be just as troubled, flawed, and deluded as anyone else.

The lesson I will pull from this is that it is important for me to concentrate on myself and my own growth, because worrying about everyone else didn't help Lewis, and it isn't going to help me, either....less

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message 1: by Skylar

05/05/2008 04:32AM

A thoughtful review.

"However, one begins to develop the impression, slowly at first, that Lewis has nothing to offer in return." "The problem with this is that if one believes morality more complex than black and white, then it is not enough for him to simply say he is better or different than those who so deeply disappoint him." I think Lewis would be the last to imply that he is "better" than those who disappoint him; I think that idea grossly misses the point of Christianity, which is not that Christians are "better" than anyone else. This understanding I think may be in part why he appears to you to offer nothing "better" in return, because being Christian is not really about BEING "better" at all, it's more about being aware – aware of God, aware of His pleasures, aware of the voice of the conscience, aware of our own sin, aware of forgiveness, aware of the fact that we are NOT "better." I think what Lewis offers in return in Screwtape is real pleasure sincerely and appropriately enjoyed, as opposed to perverted pleasure consumed without filling or feigned pleasures pursued to impress others.