A Peek Inside the Devil’s Playbook

1. A Peek Inside the Devil’s Playbook A Lenten Bible Study Based on The Screwtape Letters By C. S. Lewis

2. A Peek Inside the Devil’s Playbook Letter I Arguing with the Philosophies of the Day

3. A Peek Inside the Devil’s Playbook “Your man has been accustomed, ever since he was a boy, to having a dozen incompatible philosophies dancing about together inside his head. He doesn’t think of doctrines as primarily ‘true’ or ‘false,’ but of as ‘academic’ or ‘practical,’ ‘outworn’ or ‘contemporary,’ ‘conventional’ or ‘ruthless.’

4. A Peek Inside the Devil’s Playbook Jargon, not argument, is your best ally in keeping him from the Church. Don’t waste time in trying to make him think that materialism is true! Make him think it is strong or stark or courageous—that it is the philosophy of the future. That is the sort of thing he cares about.” Letter I, page 19.

5. A Peek Inside the Devil’s Playbook “Beware lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the basic principles of the world, and not according to Christ.For in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily; and you are complete in Him, who is the head of all principality and power.” Colossians 2:8-10

6. A Peek Inside the Devil’s Playbook “Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy—meditate on these things.” Philippians 4:8

7. A Peek Inside the Devil’s Playbook “He knew he’d has a narrow escape, and in laster years was fond of talking about ‘that inarticulate sense for actuality which is our ultimate safeguard against the aberrations of mere logic.’”

8. A Peek Inside the Devil’s Playbook “He knew he’d has a narrow escape, and in laster years was fond of talking about ‘that inarticulate sense for actuality which is our ultimate safeguard against the aberrations of mere logic.’… He is now safe in Our Father’s House.” Letter I, page 20.

9. A Peek Inside the Devil’s Playbook Letter II The Patient Becomes a Christian!

10. A Peek Inside the Devil’s Playbook “One of our greatest allies at present is the Church itself… Make his mind flit to and fro between and expression like ‘the body of Christ’ and the actual faces in the next pew. It matters very little, of course, what kind of people that next pew really contains. You may know one of them to be a great warrior on the Enemy’s side. No matter.

11. A Peek Inside the Devil’s Playbook Your patient, thanks to Our Father Below, is a fool. Provided that any of those neighbours sing out of tune, or have boots that squeak, or double chins, or odd clothes, the patient will quite easily believe that their religion must therefore be somehow ridiculous…

12. A Peek Inside the Devil’s Playbook Never let it come to the surface; never let him ask what he expected them to look like. Keep everything hazy in his mind now, and you will have all eternity wherein to amuse yourself by producing in him the peculiar kind of clarity which Hell affords.” Letter II, pages 22-23.

13. A Peek Inside the Devil’s Playbook I Corinthians 12:14-27 Matthew 7:1

14. A Peek Inside the Devil’s Playbook Letter III Nobody Ever Loves You Like Your Mom

15. A Peek Inside the Devil’s Playbook Screwtape gives a four-point lesson here: • Keep his mind on the inner life. • Make sure his prayers are always “spiritual.” • Highlight the “nuissance tones” • Enforce a double standard

16. A Peek Inside the Devil’s Playbook Screwtape and Wormwood would have our focus be inward, especially towards our own state of mind, we are constantly reminded that our greatest call is to love others and that “Greaterlove has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends.” (John 15:13)

17. A Peek Inside the Devil’s Playbook Screwtape himself outlines all the reasons for praying “spiritual prayers.” We have to remember that Jesus fed people first and then He preached to them. It’s hard to spiritual issues in your life when you have physical, material crises going on. Help with the one first. The others will follow.

18. A Peek Inside the Devil’s Playbook “Therefore you are inexcusable, O man, whoever you are who judge, for in whatever you judge another you condemn yourself; for you who judge practice the same things. But we know that the judgment of God is according to truth against those who practice such things.

19. A Peek Inside the Devil’s Playbook And do you think this, O man, you who judge those practicing such things, and doing the same, that you will escape the judgment of God? Or do you despise the riches of His goodness, forbearance, and longsuffering, not knowing that the goodness of God leads you to repentance?” Romans 2:1-4

20. A Peek Inside the Devil’s Playbook   “Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” I Corinthians 13:4-7

21. A Peek Inside the Devil’s Playbook Letter IV And Now A Word of Prayer

22. A Peek Inside the Devil’s Playbook “Keep them watching their own minds and trying to produce feelings there by action of their own wills. When they meant to ask Him for charity, the them, instead, start trying to manufacture charitable feelings for themselves and not notice that this is what they are doing. When the meant to pray for courage, let them really be trying to feel brave. When they say they are praying for forgiveness, le them be trying to feel forgiven…

23. A Peek Inside the Devil’s Playbook Teach them to estimate the value of each prayer by their success in producing the desired feeling; and never let them suspect how much success or failure of that kind depends on whether they are well or ill, fresh or tired, at the moment.” Letter IV, page 29.

24. A Peek Inside the Devil’s Playbook The response to this is James 2:14-26

25. A Peek Inside the Devil’s Playbook Letter V The War Begins

26. A Peek Inside the Devil’s Playbook “Consider too what undesirable deaths occur in wartime. Men are killed in places where they knew they might be killed and to which they go, if they are at all of the Enemy’s party, prepared…

27. A Peek Inside the Devil’s Playbook “How much better for us if all humans died in costly nursing homes amid doctors who lie, nurses who lie, friends who lie, as we have trained them, promising life to the dying, encouraging the belief that sickness excuses every indulgence, and even, if our workers know their jobs, withholding all suggestion of a priest lest it should betray to the sick man his true condition!”

28. A Peek Inside the Devil’s Playbook “And how disastrous for us is the continual remembrance of death which war enforces. One of our best weapons, contented worldliness, is rendered useless. In wartime not even a human can believe that he is going to live forever.” Letter V, pages 32-33.

29. A Peek Inside the Devil’s Playbook We are only one week away from Ash Wednesday when the priest imposes ashes on the foreheads of the penitents and recalling God’s words from Genesis 3:19 declares, “Remember, you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

30. A Peek Inside the Devil’s Playbook We are only one week away from Ash Wednesday when the priest imposes ashes on the foreheads of the penitents and recalling God’s words from Genesis 3:19 declares, “Remember, you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” You will die. What are you going to do about it?

31. A Peek Inside the Devil’s Playbook Letter VI Worry and Fear

32. A Peek Inside the Devil’s Playbook “There is nothing like suspense and anxiety for barricading a human’s mind against the Enemy. He wants them concerned with what they do; our business is to keep them thinking about what will happen to them.”

33. A Peek Inside the Devil’s Playbook “It is your business to see that the patient never thinks of the present fear as his appointed cross but only of the things he is afraid of. Let him regard them as his crosses: let him forget that, since they are incompatible, they cannot all happen to him, and let him try to practice fortitude and patience to them all in advance.”

34. A Peek Inside the Devil’s Playbook “Fear becomes easier to master when the patients mind is diverted form the thing feared to the fear itself, considered as a present and undesirable state of his own mind; and when he regards the fear as his appointed cross he will inevitable think of it as a state of mind.”

35. A Peek Inside the Devil’s Playbook “In all activities which favour our cause, encourage the patient to be un-selfconscious and to concentrate on the object, but in all activities favourable to the Enemy bend his mind back on itself. Let an insult or a woman’s body so fix his attention outward that he does not reflect ‘I am now entering into the state called Anger—or the state called Lust.’”

36. A Peek Inside the Devil’s Playbook “Contrariwise let the reflection ‘My feeling are now growing more devout, or more charitable,’ so fix his attention inward that he no longer looks beyond himself to see your Enemy or his own neighbours.”

37. A Peek Inside the Devil’s Playbook “Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy—meditate on these things.” Philippians 4:8

38. A Peek Inside the Devil’s Playbook Next week: Letters VII—XII