PWJ: S4E48 – TSL 24 – “The ‘in’ Crowd”

March 23, 2021 pilgrim Leave a comment

Dr. Douglas Beaumont joins David today to discuss Letter #24 of “The Screwtape Letters” where Screwtape explains how he is going to use the patient’s new circle of friends to foster his pride.

S4E48: “The ‘In’ Crowd” (Download)

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Timestamps

00:00:00 – Entering “The Eagle & Child”…
00:00:13 – Welcome
00:00:37 – Chit-Chat
00:04:12 – Song-of-the-week
00:06:47 – Quote-of-the-week
00:07:00 – Drink-of-the-week
00:07:55 – Patreon Toast
00:10:09 – Chapter Summary
00:11:01 – Discussion
00:56:36 – Unscrewing Screwtape
01:05:53 – “Last Call” Bell and Closing Thoughts

YouTube Version

After Show Skype Session

I chatted with the hosts of the YouTube channel, Narnia Nerd Talk:

Show Notes

Chit-Chat

David met Douglas through Devin Rose, Douglas’ godfather, and through reading Douglas’ website prior to his conversion.
Douglas shared a little bit about his life. If you’d like to know more about this, please check out the following videos:

I thanked listeners for writing in to us in response to Letter #22, where we wondered about the meaning of Screwtape description of a “deadly odour”. Several listeners pointed out that they think it’s the “aroma of Christ” from 2 Corinthians 2:14-16. We will certainly be returning to this subject again before we finish Screwtape’s letters…

But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumph, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere. For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing, to one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life. Who is sufficient for these things?
2 Corinthians 2:14-16.

Song-of-the-week

Today’s letter is all about groups, cliques, and coteries…
- Listener John Marr suggested “Not One of Us” from what he assures me is Peter Gabriel’s excellent 3rd album.
- I was tempted by a classic British band, Madness, and their song which I recently introduced to my wife, “Our House”.
…but in the end I chose a song a love, the Rhythm and blues classic, “The ‘In’ Crowd” performed by Dobie Gray:

We breeze up and down the street
We get respect from the people we meet
They make way day or night
They know the in crowd is out of sight
At a spot where the beat’s really hot
Oh, if it’s square, we ain’t there
We make every minute count
Our share is always the biggest amount
Other guys imitate us
But the original’s still the greatest
The ‘In’ Crowd

Quote-of-the-week

The idea of belonging to an inner ring, of being in a secret, is very sweet to him. Play on that nerve.
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #25)

Drink-of-the-week

The drink-of-the-week is Amrut, a drink I had on a previous episode and which . Douglas was drinking a Reese’s Peanut Butter Shake from Baskin Robbins.
We chatted about how to begin drinking scotch. My chief suggestion was to find a friend with a selection so you can sample a wide selection. Failing that, you can also buy sample sets.

Patreon Toast

We have a new Gold-level Patreon supporter to toast. Today we are toasting Gary Ayers:

Gary, we pray that you would always find a home with us here at Pints With Jack, and a welcoming community on our Slack Channel. But above all, may you always find your ultimate home in the only society which really matters, the Holy Trinity…
Patreon Toast for Gayer Ayers

Chapter Summary

Onto the one-hundred word summary for Letter #24, which was first published in The Guardian on 10th October, 1941…

Screwtape has discovered that the patient’s girlfriend regards those not sharing in the beliefs of her group, and the values with which she was raised, as “ridiculous” and even “stupid”. Screwtape wants to nurture this in Wormwood’s patient. He is now in love and part of an engaging, intelligent group – prime conditions under which to look down on others! As usual, the patient’s thinking must be kept confused, allowing explicit pride in neither Christianity or “his set”… but always being condescending towards outsiders. Screwtape then concludes, castigating his nephew for filling his letters with irrelevant news about the war.
Chapter Summary of Letter #24

Discussion

Other Works

As an aside, we’re going to be talking about exclusive groups, a lot in today’s episode….cliques (which some people choose to pronounce as “clicks”). If listeners would like to read more of Lewis on this subject, there are two other major works I can think of:

The first is an essay in The Weight of Glory collection called “The Inner Ring”
The second work where Lewis explores this is in the chapter on Friendship in The Four Loves.

A chink in her armour

Screwtape begins by saying that he’s been speaking to “Slumtrimpet”, the demon assigned to the patient’s new girlfriend. Screwtape sees something in Slumtrimpet report about the girlfriend which can be used to their advantage:

It is an unobtrusive little vice which she shares with nearly all women who have grown up in an intelligent circle united by a clearly defined belief; and it consists in a quite untroubled assumption that the outsiders who do not share this belief are really too stupid and ridiculous.
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #24)

Differences in the sexes?

Screwtape explains that this vice is typically unevenly distributed between the sexes:

The males, who habitually meet these outsiders, do not feel that way;
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #24)

I suggested that the difference between the sexes speaks more to the fact that, at this time in history, more men than women typically work outside the home… and therefore be more likely to come into contact with a greater variety of people with different points of view?
Screwtape says that the girlfriend’s confidence comes from what she assumes to be her Faith, but is, in fact, …

…in reality largely due to the mere colour she has taken from her surroundings. It is not, in fact, very different from the conviction she would have felt at the age of ten that the kind of fish-knives used in her father’s house were the proper or normal or “real” kind, while those of the neighbouring families were “not real fish-knives” at all.
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #24)

Screwtape is saying here that she has confidence in her own opinions just because they are the ones she’s grown up with. I suggested this is somewhat similar to the Genetic Fallacy.
Humans certainly do treat unusual, different things with suspicion. I’ve had Latin-Rite Catholics respond to Byzantine Catholicism with a great deal of suspicion, shocked at the absence of statues, the use of leavened bread for the Eucahrist, and married priests.

Wormwood’s patient

Despite this fault, Screwtape says that her naivety is so great and pride so small that it’s not a particularly useful line of attack against her…but it can be used with regards to Wormwood’s patient! Screwtape thinks that this is going to be useful against Wormwood’s patient because…

It is always the novice who exaggerates. The man who has risen in society is overrefined, the young scholar is pedantic. In this new circle your patient is a novice.
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #24)

Not only that, Screwtape says that it’s compounded because he’s mixing in high-quality Christian society (Christian lives he knows he’s called to imitate) and, of course, he’s looking through rose-tinted glasses because he’s so in luuuuurve. Screwtape gives his strategy:

Can you get him to imitate this defect in his mistress and to exaggerate it until what was venial in her becomes in him the strongest and most beautiful of the vices — Spiritual Pride?
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #24)

Something is “venial” if it is pardonable whereas something which is “mortal” is deadly (1 John 5:16–17).

Something other than Christianity

Screwtape says that there are many things about this new circle of friends for which the patient can be proud other than its Christianity.

It is a better educated, more intelligent, more agreeable society than any he has yet encountered.
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #24)

Screwtape wants him to focus on these – education, intelligence, niceness. That’s what makes this group important.

Finding my equals

Screwtape also says that the patient is…

…under some degree of illusion as to his own place in it.
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #24)

He goes on to say that the patient has no idea how forgiving and charitable the group are to him and the things he says, or how much his feelings for the girl are colouring everything.

He thinks that he likes their talk and way of life because of some congruity between their spiritual state and his, when in fact they are so far beyond him that if he were not in love he would be merely puzzled and repelled by much which he now accepts.
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #24)

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Screwtape wants the patient to look down his nose at other groups outside of his new set. Not only are they less stimulating, they also don’t have the advantage of having the girl colour everything for him:

You must teach him to mistake this contrast between the circle that delights and the circle that bores him for the contrast between Christians and unbelievers. He must be made to feel (he’d better not put it into words) “how different we Christians are”; and by “we Christians” he must really, but unknowingly, mean “my set”; and by “my set” he must mean not “The people who, in their charity and humility, have accepted me”, but “The people with whom I associate by right”
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #24)

Mistake #1: Pride in Christianity

Screwtape talks about a few mistakes Wormwood must avoid and goals he must achieve…
The first mistake would be for Wormwood to make the patient explicitly proud of being a Christian. If he does this the attack will probably fail – Screwtape seems to think this is just too obvious.

Mistake #2: Pride in “his set”

With mistake #2, Screwtape says that the patient shouldn’t be explicitly proud of his set (as opposed to Christianity). While it produces social vanity, it’s not anywhere near as potent as true spiritual pride. Listeners will remember when we spent an episode looking at a chapter in Mere Christianity where Lewis unpacked it.

Unchastity, anger, greed, drunkenness, and all that, are mere flea bites in comparison: it was through Pride that the devil became the devil: Pride leads to every other vice: it is the complete anti-God state of mind.
Mere Chrisianity (Book III, Chapter 8)

The difference between vanity and pride:

The vain person wants praise, applause, admiration, too much and is always angling for it. It is a fault, but a childlike and even (in an odd way) a humble fault. It shows that you are not yet completely contented with your own admiration. You value other people enough to want them to look at you… The real black, diabolical Pride comes when you look down on others so much that you do not care what they think of you.
Mere Chrisianity (Book III, Chapter 8)

Goal #1: Confusion

So, onto Wormwood’s goals… Screwtape explains the key to success is confusion:

What you want is to keep a sly self-congratulation mixing with all his thoughts and never allow him to raise the question “What, precisely, am I congratulating myself about?” The idea of belonging to an inner ring, of being in a secret, is very sweet to him. Play on that nerve.
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #24)

Goal #2: Condescension towards outsiders

The second goal is to foster a condescending attitude to those outside the group:

Teach him, using the influence of this girl when she is silliest, to adopt an air of amusement at the things the unbelievers say. Some theories which he may meet in modern Christian circles may here prove helpful; theories, I mean, that place the hope of society in some inner ring of “clerks”, some trained minority of theocrats.
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #24)

A theocrat is someone in a government run by God.

Screwtape notes that it doesn’t matter whether the theories are true or false…

I am not in the least interested in knowing how many people in England have been killed by bombs. In what state of mind they died, I can learn from the office at this end. That they were going to die sometime, I knew already. Please keep your mind on your work
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #24)

Once again we see that Screwtape is results-focussed. He doesn’t care about death per se, but about the state of the soul of those who died, and the only thing Wormwood should care about is the state of the soul of his patient…

Unscrewing Screwtape

Do beware of cliques (and how you pronounce ‘cliques’)
Do not be immediately dismissive of the ideas of those outside your circle
Do be grateful for your friends
Do consider what you take pride in and why
Do think of yourself accurately

I wasn’t sure how we went so long in the episode without mentioning the amazing movie, Mean Girls:

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Fr. Jeffrey Doyle

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