One of C.S. Lewis’s most popular books, and the one he said was the hardest to write, is The Screwtape Letters. (See my entry of 2 years ago).

They are a collection of letters written by a senior devil, Screwtape, to his nephew and apprentice, Wormwood, which cover an interesting curriculum designed to mentor Wormwood in meeting the objective of shipwrecking humans on the rocks of evil and eternal damnation.

I am not sure if The Screwtape Letters are quite as popular today as they were when they were written back in 1941 since the “sophistication” of this post-Christian age scorns the idea of personified evil in the form of Satan, the Prince of Darkness, Father of Lies, who masquerades as an Angel of Light. However, Lewis writes masterfully of the wiles of the devil and his subtle influence on ourselves to claim us as his unwitting followers on a path in the opposite direction of Heaven.

One of the most primary methods outlined is that of convincing us of Satan’s non-existence. If we can be made to believe that he does not exist, then he can move more stealthily about as invisible, nicely hidden from our modern secular cognizant selves by our own spiritual blindness. How much easier it is for him to do his dirty work when nobody believes he is there! What a stroke of genius!

It would seem that the Prince of Darkness could well be winning the battle for people’s souls. One of the functions of The Barna Group is to provide primary research regarding the religious or spiritual views currently held by people in America, and I am using this very large population as generally representative of our western civilization. In a recent study directed by David Kinnaman, it was found that…

Most Americans do not have strong and clear beliefs, largely because they do not possess a coherent biblical worldview. That is, they lack a consistent and holistic understanding of their faith. Millions of Americans say they are personally committed to Jesus Christ, but they believe he sinned while on earth. Many believers claim to trust what the Bible teaches, but they reject the notion of a real spiritual adversary or they feel that faith-sharing activities are optional. Millions feel personally committed to God, but they are renegotiating the definition of that deity.

As regards the existence of Satan…

~ In 2006, more than half of adults (55%) say that the devil, or Satan, is not a living being but is a symbol of evil.
~ In 2006, 45% of born again Christians deny Satan’s existence.
~ Slightly more than two-thirds of Catholics (68%) say the devil is non-existent and only a symbol of evil. (2006).

In Scripture, Satan first appears as the snake who successfully tempts Eve to eat of the forbidden fruit (OK, who thought it was an apple that she ate, and why?) but that is one representation of many. Satan is said to be a non-corporal spiritual entity, originally an angel of some stature who lead a rebellion against God. So in talking about him, in whatever way at all, he originates from the spiritual realm, that which mainstream Christian belief acknowledges co-exists with our physical reality.

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Changing tack just a little, it strikes me as amazing that millions of Americans say they are personally committed to Jesus Christ, but also say they believe He sinned while on earth. To whom then are they committed? It cannot be the Jesus of the Bible because there is no doubt in Scripture that Jesus Christ, the One who was crucified on the cross as our Redeemer, is indeed sinless. To say that He sinned is to deny that God is holy and righteous, and it flies right in the face of true Biblical Christian belief. A Jesus who sinned while on earth is simply a figment of the imagination; a Jesus that anyone can make up and manipulate anyway one likes. And quite sadly, too many folk do go around with a made-up version of Jesus in their heads, believing in some non-Biblical mythical person instead of the real One who is the Second Person of the triune Christian Godhead.

If these so-called Christians can believe in that made-up Jesus instead of the real One, then it is no wonder that they can believe the Father of Lies who sets out to convince them that he doesn’t really exist.

Our policy, for the moment, is to conceal ourselves. Of course this has not always been so. When the humans disbelieve in our existence we lose all the pleasing results of direct terrorism and we make no magicians. On the other hand, when they believe in us, we cannot make them materialists and sceptics…

…I do not think you will have much difficulty in keeping the patient in the dark. The fact that “devils” are predominantly comic figures in modern imagination will help you. If any faint suspicion of your existence begins to arise in his mind, suggest to him a picture of something in red tights, and persuade him that since he cannot believe in that (it is an old textbook method of confusing them) he therefore cannot believe in you.

~ C.S. Lewis, the words of Screwtape in a letter to Wormwood.

Yes, the straw man argument! Create a ridiculous image and notion of Satan or devils and such, and then demolish that ridiculous image and notion - claiming that you have just demolished the real thing. C.S. Lewis was really on to something when he penned his popular book, but how sad that the truth embedded therein is being so disregarded these days. The spiritual realm is real, but so many will not believe that until they leave their mortal bodies behind. For them, Satan will so likely have cause to celebrate.

POSTSCRIPT: Check this out.