Making Pleasure Displeasing - C S Lewis

When I was growing up, C. S. Lewis' Screwtape Letters was a big hit. Later he wrote so many more books that Screwtape's (Screwtape was a senior demon) letters to his trainee (Wormwood, a junior demon)) have been almost forgotten, at least neglected.

Narnia, Mere Christianity, Weight of Glory and Til We Have Faces are on most people's bookshelves. I don't see Screwtape much any more.

These "Letters" were among Lewis' earliest writings. He was still a relatively new Christian.

He describes Screwtape  as a demon who holds an administrative post in the bureaucracy ("Lowerarchy") of Hell. He is mentor to Wormwood, the new, inexperienced apprentice tempter.

Screwtape gives Wormwood detailed advice on various methods of undermining faith and promoting sin.

Here's Screwtape's letter to Wormwood about Pleasure:

Screwtape -- Hell's View of Pleasure

Never forget that when we are dealing with any pleasure in its healthy and satisfying form, we are, in a sense, on the Enemy's ground.

I know that we have won many a soul through pleasure. All the same, it is His invention, not ours. He made the pleasures: all of our research so far has not enabled us to produce one.

All we can do is to encourage the humans to take the pleasures which our Enemy has produced, at times, or in ways, or in degrees, which He has forbidden.

Hence we always try to work away from the natural condition of any pleasure to that in which it is least natural, least redolent of its Maker, and least pleasurable.

 An ever-increasing craving for an ever-diminishing pleasure is the formula. It is more certain; and it is better style. To get the man's soul and give him nothing in return--that is what really gladdens our Father's heart.
             
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Lewis includes a lot of doctrine and observations of human nature in these illuminating letters.

The world that Screwtape and Wormwood live in is a messed-up (or bent as Lewis would say) morally reversed world, in which greed and self-indulgence are seen as the greatest good. Neither demon is able to understand, or acknowledge, true virtue when he sees it.

Sounds like the same world we live in today!