PWJ: S4E42 – TSL 21 – “I want it now!”

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Today we come to David’s least favourite letter from Uncle Screwtape, which is on the subject of possessiveness, particularly with regards to time. Joining him today is a returning guest to the show, Sister Natalia from the What God Is Not podcast, together with another nun from her convent, Sister Petra.

S4E42: “I want it now” (Download)

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Timestamps

00:00 – Entering “The Eagle & Child”…
00:14 – Welcome
00:40 – Chit-Chat
04:32 – Song-of-the-week
05:37 – Quote-of-the-week
06:00 – Drink-of-the-week
07:36 – Patreon Toast
07:57 – Chapter Summary
08:46 – Discussion
43:10 – Unscrewing Screwtape
49:14 – “Last Call” Bell and Closing Thoughts

YouTube Version

After Show Skype Session

No Skype Session today!

Show Notes

Chit-Chat

  • Due to COVID, Sr. Natalia still hasn’t taken her “Life Profession”. When that day finally comes, it shall be proclaimed to be buy-a-nun-a-beer-day!
  • If listeners recall, the word-of-the-week when Sr Natalia was on the show was “dearth” (I thought its meaning was the opposite of what it really is). Well, we certainly don’t have a dearth of guests today, in fact we have two! When we were setting up this episode, you asked if you could bring a friend along, St. Petra.
  • In today’s episode Screwtape speaks about possessiveness, possessiveness of things, people and time. When I was sketching out this season I thought it would be really good to get a monastic, a monk or a nun, as the guest co-host on this episode, as monasticism is marked by things such as poverty, chastity, and obedience… which is just the sort of thing which would make Screwtape mad and then a couple of months ago ago on What God Is Not, Sister Natalia spoke about this very Letter. I saw that as a sign and immediately reached out!

Song-of-the-week

  • Today’s letter was all about possessiveness, so I had several musical choices:
    • I was very tempted to choose a song by an artist I can’t stand – Pitbull. The candidate was his song Give me everything where he famously rhymes “Kodak” with….”Kodak”.
    • I really wanted to make Matt happy by choosing a Taylor Swift song, and for a moment I thought I had it, but then my wife told me that the song is “You belong WITH me”, not “You belong TO me”. 
  • In the end, the song-of-the-week I chose is sung by Veruca Salt in the movie Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Her song I want it now perfectly summing up the possessive attitude Screwtape wants us all to foster.

I want a party with roomfuls of laughter
Ten thousand tons of ice cream
And if I don’t get the things
I am after I’m going to scream

Veruca Salt, I want it now (Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory)

Quote-of-the-week

“Men are not angered by mere misfortune but by misfortune conceived as injury. And the sense of injury depends on the feeling that a legitimate claim has been denied. The more claims on life, therefore, that your patient can be induced to make, the more often he will feel injured and, as a result, ill-tempered”

C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #21)

Drink-of-the-week

  • I’m drinking “The Pupil” from Society Brewery. Thanks to listener Jonathan Rolland for this suggestion. Here are the tasting notes from their website:
    • The Pupil is a smooth, medium-bodied, pleasantly dry IPA with forward aromas and flavor evocative of tropical fruit. Notes of guava and mango are most commonly detected by connoisseurs of this gently bittered beer, a crowd-favorite and one of our flagship hoppy creations since day one.
  • Sr. Petra was enjoy a Limoncello La Croix and Sr. Natalia was drinking a Bumbleberry Honey Blueberry Ale. They were both drinking out of Pints With Jack branded glasses.

Patreon Toast

  • We didn’t have any new Gold-level supporters on Patreon, so I thought we could just toast all the ladies at Christ the Bridegroom Monastery:

May you be poor, chaste, obedient and joyful! Cheers!

Patreon Toast for the nuns at Christ the Bridegroom Monastery

Chapter Summary

  • So, on to Letter #21, which was first published in The Guardian on 19th September, 1941. Here is my one-hundred word summary:

While inflicting the patient with sexual temptations, Screwtape recommends also working on the patient’s irritability… To this end, the patient must always conceive inconvenience as injury – when he is denied something he wants, he must feel like he is owed it. He must regard everything as his own personal possession, even time! Screwtape warns Wormwood not to try and offer arguments for this, because there aren’t any! Nothing a human has is ever truly his, even his own body. In the end, everything will belong either to God…or to the devil.

Chapter Summary of Letter #21

Discussion

During sexual temptation

  • Screwtape kicks off today’s letter by affirming that it’s a good idea for Wormwood to work on the patient’s “peevishness” (his irritability) alongside a period of sexual temptation.  Screwtape says it can even be the main attack as long as the patient thinks it’s the subordinate one.
  • However, Screwtape says that Wormwood’s assault should first be prepared by a darkening of the patient’s intellect. Put simply, he’s got to make the patient really stupid and accept a completely untenable position…

Misfortune conceived as injury

  • …and here we have the quote-of-the-week which I quoted a few moments ago:

Men are not angered by mere misfortune but by misfortune conceived as injury. And the sense of injury depends on the feeling that a legitimate claim has been denied.

C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #21)

So, it’s not simply that something bad happens to the patient, but that he feels that he’s been denied something he is owed. Therefore, Screwtape goes on:

The more claims on life, therefore, that your patient can be induced to make, the more often he will feel injured and, as a result, ill-tempered.

C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #21)

Constant interruptions

  • Screwtape goes on to explain that this “misfortune conceived as injury” also applies to time…

Now you will have noticed that nothing throws him into a passion so easily as to find a tract of time which he reckoned on having at his own disposal unexpectedly taken from him. It is the unexpected visitor (when he looked forward to a quiet evening), or the friend’s talkative wife (turning up when he looked forward to a tête-à-tête [a private conversation] with the friend)….

C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #21)
  • Last year my wife and I read the Bible and she said that she felt personally attacked by the Book of Proverbs! Well, it’s the same for me and this section of Screwtape. I see myself very clearly in it.  I think Lewis probably did as well. I can only imagine what it was like living in the Kilns with Mrs. Moore and a bunch of evacuees from London.

Time Thieves

  • Screwtape explains that it’s not that he is unloving or lazy – he just feels like something has been stolen from him! Wormwood is told that he must defend and guard this misconception:

Let him have the feeling that he starts each day as the lawful possessor of twenty-four hours. Let him feel as a grievous tax that portion of this property which he has to make over to his employers, and as a generous donation that further portion which he allows to religious duties.

C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #21)

Screwtape wants the patient to think that the time during his day is his own and…

…in some mysterious sense, his own personal birthright.

C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #21)
  • Sister Natalia referred to Orientale Lumen.
  • They also quoted from a Michael O’Brian book and from a monk:

Remember obedience is the Great Fast

Michael O’Brian (Fr. Elijah)

[Man] no longer has time for himself and for God. . . . He does not have time to die because he does not have time to live. . . . The monk agrees to lose all his time for God. Monastic life is happy; monastic death is, also.

Dom Pateau, O.S.B., of Fontgombault Abbey.

The stupid assumption

  • Screwtape offers some advice for Wormwood’s task ahead.

The assumption which you want him to go on making is so absurd that, if once it is questioned, even we cannot find a shred of argument in its defence.

C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #21)

He’s saying that the assumption which the patient makes about what is “his” is so ridiculous that the devils don’t even stand a chance at defending it by argument. Screwtape describes man’s predicament:

The man can neither make, nor retain, one moment of time; it all comes to him by pure gift; he might as well regard the sun and moon as his chattels [private property].

C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #21)

Service to God

  • Of course, the patient’s position is complicated by the fact that the patient is a Christian. Screwtape says that if God appeared to the patient and asked for an entire day’s service he wouldn’t refuse Him. He’d be relieved if all he had to do was listen to a foolish woman. He’d even be a bit disappointed if God gave him half an hour back to amuse himself.
  • Screwtape points out how ridiculous the patient is – he’s in this position every day – God asks him for his time!
  • Sr. Petra referred Matthew’s Gospel and the parable of the Sheep and The Goats.
  • She refers to “The End of the Affair” by Graham Greene:

I never want the spring to come. There I go again. I want. I don’t want. If I could love You, I could love Henry. God was made man. He was Henry with his astigmatism, Richard with his spots, not only Maurice. If I could love a leper’s sores, couldn’t I love the boringness of Henry? But I’d turn from the leper if he were here, I suppose, as I shut myself away from Henry. I want the dramatic always.

Graham Greene, The End of the Affair

No arguing!

  • Screwtape began his series of letters by saying that the devils do their best work, not from putting things into our heads, but keeping things out! He is another great example…

Your task is purely negative. Don’t let his thoughts come anywhere near [his assumption]. Wrap a darkness about it; and in the centre of that darkness let his sense of ownership-in-Time lie silent, uninspected, and operative.

C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #21)
  • Naturally, Screwtape wants this sense of entitlement to be encouraged. He points out that humans are always saying that various things are “theirs” and Screwtape points out that this sounds silly to both Heaven and Hell. The difference is that Hell wants us to keep talking like that!

Possessiveness vs Chastity

  • At the beginning of the letter, Screwtape was talking about attacks on chastity and now Screwtape points out that Hell has managed to raise lots of resistance to chastity from the notion that we “own” our bodies. This is, of course, ridiculous.

Confusion

  • Screwtape says that this sense of ownership is fostered, not only by pride, but by confusion…

We teach them not to notice the different senses of the possessive pronoun — the finely graded differences that run from “my boots” through “my dog”, “my servant”, “my wife”, “my father”, “my master” and “my country”, to “my God”. They can be taught to reduce all these senses to that of “my boots”, the “my” of ownership.

C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #21)

In a rather chilling example, Screwtape says that a child can be taught to think of “my Teddy-bear” as “the bear I can pull to pieces if I like”. Equally chilling, he says that humans can be taught to say..

“My God” in a sense not really very different from “My boots”

C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #21)
  • We spoke about using gratitude to push back on Screwtape.

Ultimate Ownership

  • Screwtape ends by summing up the absurdity of what humans can be tricked into thinking…

…the joke is that the word “Mine” in its fully possessive sense cannot be uttered by a human being about anything. 

C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #21)
  • He says that ultimately either God or Satan will say about each thing in the world, “mine”.

They will find out in the end, never fear, to whom their time, their souls, and their bodies really belong — certainly not to them, whatever happens. At present the Enemy says “Mine” of everything on the pedantic, legalistic ground that He made it: Our Father hopes in the end to say “Mine” of all things on the more realistic and dynamic ground of conquest…

C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #21)

Finding out more

Unscrewing Screwtape

  1. Do pray for God to illuminate the places in your mind and soul which are dark
  2. Do be grateful for everything, even the tough things
  3. Do not regard anything as truly your own
  4. Do remember that you have received everything in life as a gift
  5. Do remember that it’s not about you
  6. Do regard your schedule as time entirely devoted to God, in which you also perform the necessary duties of the day.

Closing thoughts

  • We began today’s episode with Veruca Salt parroting Screwtape’s lies, so I suppose it’s only appropriate that we end with the Umpa Lumpa’s response to her demands…

Oompa loompa doompety da
If you’re not spoiled then you will go far
You will live in happiness too
Like the Oompa Loompa Doompety do

C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #21)
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