Essay On Gods Love As Seen Through Wormwoods Distortions

The Screwtape Letters is a fictional work written by Christian apologist C. S. Lews. The book consists of an ongoing correspondence between two demons. One of the demons, Screwtape, is trying to teach the younger demon, his nephew Wormwood about his understanding of God. Obviously, a demon’s understanding of going to be distorted. Screwtape uses convincing arguments to teach his nephew Wormwood that God loves for people only for his own sake. But through his distorted views comes Lewis’s real views that he is trying to convey through Screwtapes distortion.
The first time love in mentioned is Screwtape, who brings up the subject in his second letter to Wormwood. He says that, “The Enemy [God]” is bent on his curious fantasy of making “all these disgusting little human vermin into what He calls his “free” lovers and servants.” He is essentially saying that God wants humans to love him not for human’s sake, but for his own. Screwtape goes on to say that his “inveterate love of degrading the whole spiritual world by unnatural liaisons with two-legged humans” (Lewis, 4). Here Screwtape is bringing up a subject of a natural order to the world. He is saying that it is unnatural for there to be a connection based on love between the physical body based creatures of humanity and the eternal spiritual creators like God. Unknowingly though, by brining that up, even though his view is distorted, he is making a claim that such a natural order exists in the world. And if a distorted view of it can exist, then by seeing through the problems with Screwtape’s view it is possible to find C.S. Lewis’s view. This view is reflective of God’s love for his people and his Church on earth.
Screwtape, admits to pleasure in the world. Lewis view is that good things are creator by God for man to enjoy because he loves them. God though, also made man with free will, so he can choose to reject the good things that God has given him, or he can misuse them to the point where though they are not evil themselves, they are used for evil ends. He tells wormwood that in order to temp mankind all he needs to do is to work against the natural condition of please, the way God intended it becomes unnatural. Lewis I feel here, relays a very realistic definition of how pleasures and good things are allowed to be twisted until they are evil. Screwtape says, “An ever increasing craving for an ever diminishing pleasure is the formula” (Lewis, 13). Here we see what Screwtape’s Father, Satan, wants for makind in order to get his soul into hell. The key is to get man’s soul and give him nothing in return. That is the Devil’s formula, and we can see that God’s formula will intuitively be the oppose of the Devils. God wants man to freely submit his soul to him, to use his free will to love him, and instead of giving him “nothing” in return, he will give him everything.
Screwtape ends the six letter with a troubling viewpoint, that despite virtues that are “painted in the fantasy” of humans, or the measure by which God loves man will not keep him from hell, and that the struggle between good and evil will just “make him more amusing when he gets there” (Lewis, 10). Wormwood reveals in his 14th letter what God’s desire is for mankind, that he wants to kill man’s self-love. After that he wants to give them a different kind of self-love, a “charity and gratitude for all selves, including their own; when they have really learned to love their neighbors as themselves” (Lewis, 22). Here we see through the distortions what Lewis believes is God’s plan for mankind. He wants to eliminate the self love of animals, who do not have souls but only know how to respond to impulses like hunger or thirst. What he wants to do after this is give mankind a different kind of love that can go beyond the self. It can go not just beyond the self but it can soar to such great heights that mankind is able to feel charity and gratitude for all selves. The end game for God then, is for mankind to love both himself and all of creation infinitely. This is the way that God loves, and God created man in his own image so this makes sense.
Wormwood though, like any demon, does not want this to happen so he is set on working against it. We see through his distortions that what he wants to prevent in mankind, is what he wants to attain. It is not difficult to see that he wants to take man’s soul and give him nothing in return. Lewis knew that God loved man so much that he created him with his soul, created pleasures and enjoyable things to be used in the right situation and in moderation on earth. He also knows that the only thing that can prevent mankind from being showered in God’s love is through his own rejection of it from sin.