Screwtape continues his advice to his nephew, Wormwood, on how to keep his assigned young man from understanding true Humility and growing in his Christian walk. From The Screwtape Letters, Chapter 14.
My dear Wormwood,
(Humility - con't)
The Enemy wants him, in the end, to be so free of any bias in his own favor, that he can rejoice in his own talents as frankly and gratefully as in his neighbor's talents--or in a sunrise, an elephant, or a waterfall.
He wants each man, in the long run, to be able to recognize all creatures (even himself) as glorious and excellent things. He wants to kill their animal self-love as soon as possible; but it is His long-term policy, I fear, to restore them to a new kind of self-love -- a charity and gratitude for all selves, including their own; when they have really learned to love their neighbors as themselves, they will be allowed to love themselves as they love their neighbors.
For we must never forget what is the most repellent and inexplicable trait in our Enemy; He really loves the hairless bipeds He has created and always gives back to them with His right hand what He has taken away with His left.
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