PWJ: S4E40 – TSL 20 – “Matchmaker”
Screwtape wants to play matchmaker and choose what he regards as a suitable romantic partner for the patient.
S4E40: “Matchmaker” (Download)
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Timestamps
00:00:00 – Entering “The Eagle & Child”…
00:00:12 – Welcome
00:00:39 – Chit-Chat
00:09:47 – Song-of-the-week
00:11:18 – Quote-of-the-week
00:12:02 – Drink-of-the-week
00:14:02 – Patreon Toast
00:14:38 – Chapter Summary
00:15:30 – Discussion
00:59:11 – Unscrewing Screwtape
01:01:54 – “Last Call” Bell and Closing Thoughts
YouTube Version
After Show Skype Session
No Skype Session today!
Show Notes
Chit-Chat
- Andrew brought us up-to-date on his seminary and studying news.
- My reading news… I read A Grief Observed for the first time. I’m now halfway through The Silmarillion.
- In my Church we’ll soon be praying the Canon of St. Andrew, which is a service where there’s a dialog between St. Andrew and his soul. The theme throughout is an urgent exhortation to change one’s life, reflecting both upon one’s sinfulness and God’s mercy, drawing from copious examples from Scripture.
- I mentioned that our Show Notes are currently on my blog, RestlessPilgrim.net, but that we will have everything on one website at the start of Season 5.
Song-of-the-week
- In today’s letter, Screwtape is trying to find a wife for the patient! Therefore our song-of-the-week is a song from my wife’s favourite musical, Fiddler On The Road, it’s Matchmaker:
Matchmaker, Matchmaker, Make me a match, Find me a find, Catch me a catch Matchmaker, Matchmake, Look through your book, And make me a perfect match
Lyrics
- Close contenders for song-of-the-week were…
- Gold Digger by Kanye West
- Stacy’s Mom by Fountains of Wayne
- Devil Woman by Cliff Richard (UK-only?)
Quote-of-the-week
“It is the business of these great masters to produce in every age a general misdirection of what may be called sexual “taste”. This they do by working through the small circle of popular artists, dressmakers, actresses and advertisers who determine the fashionable type. The aim is to guide each sex away from those members of the other with whom spiritually helpful, happy, and fertile marriages are most likely”
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #20)
Drink-of-the-week
- Andrew was drinking Ardbeg An Oa. The description of this scotch was “earthy, very peaty, smoky, salty, robust–a bedtime malt”. He was also drinking PG Tips from his Van Gogh Sunflowers cup which he bought in London’s National Gallery.
- I was drinking a cup of tea in my “With great beard comes great responsibility” mug. Why, will become clearer as we unpack this letter…
Patreon Toast
- One of the benefits for Gold-level supporters on Patreon is that we toast one of them each episode. Today we are toasting our friend, Dr. Steven Beebe.
Chapter Summary
- So, on to Letter #20, which was first published in The Guardian on 12th September, 1941. Here is my one-hundred word summary:
Wormwood has overplayed his hand and God has brought his direct attacks on chastity to an end, demonstrating to the patient that spiritual attacks don’t last forever. Screwtape’s plan is now for a “desirable” marriage and reminds Wormwood he’s waiting for his report on potential wives in the patient’s neighbourhood. Screwtape explains that more senior demons have already set about determining the ephemeral fashion-of-the-week which will help bring about disastrous marriages. In particular, he speaks about how falsified images can be used to discourage all those involved with impossible standards. He concludes with a discussion about terrestrial and infernal Venus.
Chapter Summary of Letter #20
Discussion
Divine Intervention
- In recent letters, Screwtape has been speaking about love, sex, and marriage. It transpires that, while these letters were being exchanged, Wormwood had been working very hard on the patient’s unchastity. However, it appears that this was brought to an end… Screwtape writes:
I note with great displeasure that the Enemy has, for the time being, put a forcible end to your direct attacks on the patient’s chastity. You ought to have known that He always does in the end, and you ought to have stopped before you reached that stage.
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #20)
I find this comment by Screwtape very encouraging! It puts me in mind of a couple of Bible verses:
No trial has come to you but what is human. God is faithful and will not let you be tried beyond your strength; but with the trial he will also provide a way out, so that you may be able to bear it.
1 Corinthians 10:13
Submit [or humble] yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you.
James 4:7
Nothing lasts forever
- The fact that these attacks have been stopped is a double blow to Wormwood. Not only can the patient not be tempted to unchastity for the time-being, the end of the temptation has taught the patient that temptations don’t last forever. This is a real blow, as Screwtape says that their best weapon is to foster the belief in humans that there’s no hope of getting rid of them except by yielding.
For as things are, your man has now discovered the dangerous truth that these attacks don’t last forever; consequently you cannot use again what is, after all, our best weapon the belief of ignorant humans, that there is no hope of getting rid of us except by yielding.
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #20)
Of course, this reminded me of the red lizard in Lewis’ best book, The Great Divorce. The ghost with the red lizard of lustful temptation thinks that he’ll never be rid of the lizard – the best he can hope for is “management”.
“we grow up surrounded by propaganda in favour of unchastity. There are people who want to keep our sex instinct inflamed in order to make money out of us. Because, of course, a man with an obsession is a man who has very little sales-resistance. God knows our situation; He will not judge us as if we had no difficulties to overcome. What matters is the sincerity and perseverance of our will to overcome them.”
C.S. Lewis, ???
We discussed the seemingly throwaway line at the end of this section:
I suppose you’ve tried persuading him that chastity is unhealthy?
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #20)
Potential spouses
- Since the direct attacks on chastity have failed, Screwtape refocuses their efforts in the arena of eros.
- He impatiently reminds Wormwood that, in his previous letter, he asked for a report about the young women in the patient’s neighbourhood:
I should like it at once, for if we can’t use his sexuality to make him unchaste we must try to use it for the promotion of a desirable marriage.
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #20)
The “In Vogue” Woman
- Screwtape says he’ll give his nephew a hint about the “type of woman” to which the patient should be directed if they’re going to push him towards love and marriage.
- Screwtape says that this has actually been broadly decided for them by their superiors, or as he calls them, “spirits far deeper down in the Lowerarchy than you and I.”
- So, how have these senior demons already decided for them? Screwtape explains in our quote-of-the-week:
It is the business of these great masters to produce in every age a general misdirection of what may be called sexual “taste”. This they do by working through the small circle of popular artists, dressmakers, actresses and advertisers who determine the fashionable type. The aim is to guide each sex away from those members of the other with whom spiritually helpful, happy, and fertile marriages are most likely.
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #20)
- Screwtape loves what we would call today “Media Influencers”. He also loves fashions because they can be very helpful in fostering a false self in the patient.
Female Tastes
- Screwtape says that the devils have nurtured different fashions throughout history with both men and women.
- With regards to the tastes of women, he says that they’ve made secondary characters of men (such as the beard) to be widely disagreeable.
- As listeners will know, I am an avid reader of the Early Church Fathers, those Christian writers of the first few centuries of the Church… Well, they had some truly epic quotations when it came to facial hair that I wanted to share. I’ll put a link in the Show Notes, but here are a couple of good ones:
“The beard signifies the courageous; the beard distinguishes the grown men, the earnest, the active, the vigorous….”
St. Augustine, Exposition on Psalm 133 (5th Century)
“[T]he nature of the beard contributes… to the beauty of manliness and strength.”
Lactantius, On the Workmanship of God (4th Century)
Male Tastes
- Uncle Screwtape seems to indicate that, while much work has been done on cultivating the tastes of women, the real triumph seems to be regarding the tastes of men…
- He says that masculine tastes have varied a good deal over time. One only has to look at the history of art to see the contrast between, say, the voluptuous Rubenesque women and, say, the 60’s supermodel aptly named “Twiggy”:
At one time we have directed [men] to the statuesque and aristocratic type of beauty, mixing men’s vanity with their desires and encouraging the race to breed chiefly from the most arrogant and prodigal women. At another, we have selected an exaggeratedly feminine type, faint and languishing, so that folly and cowardice, and all the general falseness and littleness of mind which go with them, shall be at a premium.
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #20)
- Did you notice that, once again, the vanity of men is appealed to? Lewis might have thought that women were more prone to particular faults, but he also thought that the same was true of men. I actually think much in this passage could be mined for Jack’s thoughts about the faults and falsities of the sexes.
Today’s Male Tastes
- So, the demons help encourage different fashions and these change with time. Screwtape explains the fashion they’re encouraging during the current era (which he calls the “age of jazz”):
…we now teach men to like women whose bodies are scarcely distinguishable from those of boys.
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #20)
He notes that there’s a real advantage to this kind of fashion. This kind of beauty is one of the most fleeting and this makes it easier to nurture the female’s fear of aging and even render her less able and willing to have children.
Divine Intervention
- One thing which Screwtape says has been really useful to Hell’s cause is what he calls “the apparent nude” which is put before everyone’s eyes, almost in a form of advertising to reinforce the current fashion.
- Screwtape notes with delight the falisty in these images:
It is all a fake, of course; the figures in the popular art are falsely drawn; the real women in bathing suits or tights are actually pinched in and propped up to make them appear firmer and more slender and more boyish than nature allows a full-grown woman to be.
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #20)
Today we’d speak about photoshop and touching up images:
…making the role of the eye in sexuality more and more important and at the same time making its demands more and more impossible. What follows you can easily forecast!
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #20)
- So this concludes Hell’s current general strategy. Screwtape ends his letter by offering some suggestions as to how Wormwood can work within the prescribed framework…
Two different kinds of desire
- Screwtape says that Wormwood has a choice regarding the direction in which to send the patient’s desires. He says that…
You will find, if you look carefully into any human’s heart, that he is haunted by at least two imaginary women — a terrestrial and an infernal Venus, and that his desire differs qualitatively according to its object.
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #20)
- For “terrestrial”, original read “celestial” Venus
- Lewis talks about “Venus” in The Four Loves, using it to describe “the carnal or animally sexual element within Eros”.
Terrestrial Venus
- Screwtape says the patient has a healthy desire with regards to the terrestrial (earthy) woman which is amenable to Heaven. It’s a desire…
…readily mixed with charity, readily obedient to marriage, coloured all through with that golden light of reverence and naturalness which we detest;
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #20)
Infernal Venus
- However, there is another kind of desire for the internal woman which is much more diabolical. Screwtape says that here…
…he desires brutally, and desires to desire brutally…
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #20)
He goes on to explain to Wormwood that this kind of desire is very flexible. Screwtape says that it’s best to draw him away from marriage, but is useful to them even in marriage, since it results in the spouse being treated…
…as a slave, an idol, or an accomplice.
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #20)
…and while love for the terrestrial woman can be twisted, it’s the twistedness nature of the infernal woman which is the attraction! He says…
…the felt evil is what he wants; it is that “tang” in the flavour which he is after. In the face, it is the visible animality, or sulkiness, or craft, or cruelty which he likes and in the body, something quite different from what he ordinarily calls Beauty, something he may even, in a sane hour, describe as ugliness, but which, by our art, can be made to play on the raw nerve of his private obsession.
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #20)
Screwtape says that infernal Venus is best as a prostitute or mistress, but since the patient is a Christian, Screwtape thinks that Wormwood might be able to use all the propaganda about “irresistible and all-excusing ‘Love’” to be be made to marry her instead.
…nonsense about irresistible and all-excusing “Love”, he can often be induced to marry her.
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #20)
…which will result in a long-lasting and exquisite kind of unhappiness.
- Do you think that there’s a male equivalent of “infernal venus”?
- How about a woman’s attraction to “the bad boy”
- In the Silmarillion, Aredhel (a-re-THEL) marries Eöl (ay-OL) and he’s a bit of a jerk.
Unscrewing Screwtape
- Do build a marriage where you bring out the best of each other
- Do keep an eye on who is profiting from my sin
- Do remember that the enemy will always trade a lesser success for a greater failure
- Do remember that the devil’s attacks cannot last forever – resistance is not futile!
- Do not pay too much attention to fashions
- Do not define yourself by society’s praise
- Do remember the power of Photoshop!
- Do remember that beauty is fleeting
- Do grow a beard?!
- Do not objectify others
- Do remember that you are surrounded by people made in the image and likeness of God
- Do choose your spouse wisely!