The Screwtape Letters book that I read actually contained two publications, The Screwtape Letters and Screwtape Proposes a Toast.

I may be nearly the last person on Earth who has read this, but for those who haven’t:

Letters is a collection of 31 letters from a minor devil, Screwtape, to a young tempter-in-training, Wormwood. He writes as if in response to letters Wormwood sends him (not shown in the book) to ask for advice in leading Wormwood’s quarry, a man, away from God, referred to as the Enemy.

Screwtape advises his protege in various escalating avenues of temptation as Wormwood’s quarry continues to evade the tempter. He advises to avoid speaking absolutely, in terms of True and False, but rather in degrees of Adolescence and Experience. He takes pride in the devils’ work of reducing the world’s reasons to get married to one: “being in love”. When the human loses his selfishness, Screwtape advises that men define unselfishness seek not to impose on others and women define unselfishness as going out of their way to help others. This can be used to create conflicts between the two sexes. Regarding prayer, he advises that since we are in the Present, an unanswered prayer can be used to doubt God, or an answered prayer can be turned to something that was going to happen away. These are among the craftier suggestions, written of course that the reader can recognize such things in their own life.

I found the “letters” not to be the humorous satire the cover plays it up to be, but instead intriguing. Lewis has interesting insights about what bothers a person, especially the “horror of the Same Old Thing” and the desire to “Be Like Folks”.

In the Forward to Toast, Lewis admits that writing The Screwtape Letters was easy but not enjoyable, feeling sullied about writing from the side of evil. He wanted to write a counterpoint on the “Good” side, but he feared himself not up to the task of writing as if directly from Heaven.

While Letters was interesting, Screwtape Proposes a Toast is a good essay on the mechanics of egalitarianism. In a single hypothetical speech, Screwtape shows how one can pervert the meaning of democracy into the amoral person’s mantra of “I’m as good as you are,” equalizing himself with the virtuous.

There is no reference to Christ in both works other than a reference or two about “what the Enemy did,” so this is not a book that evangelizes but instead a book that offers a guard against falling away from moral behavior. I shudder to think the Devil has more arms than what has been “disclosed” by Lewis. :) It’s a short book and easy to read.