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Screwtape Prepares for Advent (with apologies and thanks to CS Lewis)


1st December.

My Dear Wormwood, 

This is a dangerous time of year for us, so I write with urgent haste to advise you on strategies to keep your patient’s eyes and thoughts away from our enemy and his so-called promises. There is much else to occupy her at the moment, and we have made great strides in recent years - don’t be the one to let down our Father below and allow your patient to slip through your grasp and into that despicable state they call ‘faith’ or ‘hope’. If you do that, she might start to create ripples around her which will keep you out, she may even begin to ‘rejoice’, and, what with all our forward movement in spreading despair and turmoil recently, that will attract attention and you will find yourself in deep trouble. 


So, a reminder of the strategies that are proving most effective in attacking our enemy’s 'children', which he professes to want to be friends with, of all things. Ready?


Firstly, distraction. Make sure your patient is never far from their device. As soon as they start doing a simple task that requires focus, whether it is simply housework, or reading a book they enjoy, or talking to a friend, or even being creative (anything practical at all really), make sure they feel the urge to check their phone. Ideally, as soon as they have picked it up for a ‘quick look’, make sure they go to at least three different sites - it is easy, just a few clicks and you are there. After that, you have them; get them on to the news headlines, or whatever their current interest is, and before they know it an hour will have gone by and that simple task, during which their minds might have been free to be dangerously imaginative, or even prayerful, will have been successfully disrupted. This tactic is particularly successful when they have family around, especially children or spouses. Our enemy has unaccountably designed people to need eye contact and time together, and this is a proven way to sabotage that and make them feel lonely, to stop them talking to one another. 


I mentioned news headlines. Our forces have managed to make sure that the news is almost always full of our achievements or threatened achievements, but, exceedingly cleverly, they have made it seem essential to most people to check the latest news multiple times a day. Many of the headlines are mere conjecture, ‘this bad thing might happen’, ‘that thing probably will’, but as long as people see it as news, we have a clear path to take their focus away from our enemy. We intersperse these ideas with stories of our victories in destroying individual lives, so that the more they read, the bigger the impression that we are winning the battle in the world they live in. As it is, in many areas we are only just holding on by our fingertips, but as long as we can make them believe we are winning, we probably will, at least in their lifetime. Make sure your patient automatically turns to reading headlines and stories online whenever she is tired or bored, and especially when her children want her attention - and make sure she fills any periods of silence with something - anything at all - so that our enemy has no gaps to get in. The radio or music streaming can be your backup tool if she does manage to put away the phone sometimes. Keep those earbuds plugged in! If she ever thinks about leaders, let it be with contempt and despair, on no account let her think of praying for them. Likewise, our fields of action across continents.


You have done well in making her believe that what she does has no real impact on the world around her. She generally feels a bit useless - well done for pointing out all her failures or perceived failures at every opportunity. The distraction helps with this. Overloading her with information does too. Make sure you don’t let her stop and spend time actually opening her mind and heart to our enemy; she must believe he is somehow disappointed in her, even though we know that for some strange reason that is far from the case. She must believe that she is only worth something when she is achieving in her own strength; never let her see that, for some reason, our enemy loves her unconditionally.


Don’t let her rest. We have just about managed to exclude the despicable concept of ‘sabbath’ nowadays. Make her constantly busy and tired, and she will be very unlikely to enjoy her life (which, unaccountably, our enemy wants her to). 


Keep her in company with those who will encourage her in believing our Father below is winning the world she lives in. Don’t let her spend time with anyone who might encourage her in focusing on our enemy and his plans and words. When she is determined to pick up the phone and talk, or meet a friend, get her to text instead. It is easier to limit their ability to encourage one another this way, if they are absolutely bent on it. 


Above all, don’t let her spend time thinking about the horribly positive so-called promises in the enemy’s book - we have lost whole lives to those promises in the past - only last week one of our junior devils lost access to his patient completely for several days because he picked up on some ancient words about a shepherd, of all things, and started to actually believe he was being looked after. DON’T, on any account, let her believe she is loved and that the enemy has plans for her that he might actually carry out in spite of all impressions to the contrary. 


In summary: keep her hurrying, allow no time for rest, silence and solitude, overload her with information (negative stories, entertainment and myriad potential tips on self improvement, ideally) and don’t let her truly relate to others. If she insists on stopping, keep it short, none of that outdated concept of spending fully one seventh of her time on ‘sabbath’. 


I said this is a dangerous time of year for us. I’m not even going to talk about why, but see to it that your subject has no time or energy to devote to pondering what actually happened in Bethlehem two thousand years ago, and to thinking about what they are supposed to believe it means for them. Thanks to that time, and what happened 30 years later, we lost the power to dominate over anyone who swallows the words of Jesus and listens to all the enemy’s messengers. Fortunately, hardly anyone really believes them nowadays. Not so as it makes a difference. 

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