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Copywork
About This Passage
This single sentence traces, in three steps, how worship can quietly die. Lewis builds it as a descent: 'the Creator adored by its creature' (total worship of a real, present being), then 'a leader acclaimed by a partisan' (mere cheering by a supporter), and finally 'a distinguished character approved by a judicious historian' (a faraway figure given a careful grade). Notice how the verbs cool as the sentence goes — adored, acclaimed, approved — each one a step further from love and a step nearer to detached opinion. Screwtape's point is that once you replace a living presence with a 'historical' theory, you do not merely change how people think about it; you change what they can do with it, until reverence shrinks into the polite approval of a scholar. Copying this sentence trains a writer to make a sentence's structure carry its meaning — here, a steady cooling from worship to mere assessment.
Instead of the Creator adored by its creature, you soon have merely a leader acclaimed by a partisan, and finally a distinguished character approved by a judicious historian.
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Discussion Questions
Narration Prompt
Reconstruct Screwtape's twenty-third letter to Wormwood in sequence — the decision to corrupt rather than remove the man's faith, the manufactured 'historical Jesus' aimed at 'something which does not exist,' the concealment of the old universal moral law, the shrinking of worship into mere approval, and the climactic 'rift,' 'Believe this, not because it is true, but for some other reason.' Then state what single corruption you think ties the whole letter together.
Discussion Questions
- Screwtape's prize move is to get a person to 'Believe this, not because it is true, but for some other reason.' Is the harm here that the belief might be false, or that the person has stopped caring whether it is true at all — and why might the second be worse than the first? What in the letter to Wormwood helps you decide, and why?
- In his very first letter Screwtape worked to keep the man from ever asking 'Is it true?', steering him toward what is 'practical' or familiar instead; here, generations later, the goal is openly named — 'Believe this, not because it is true, but for some other reason.' Reading the two letters together, is the climax of Hell's strategy better described as making people believe falsehoods, or as making them indifferent to truth itself — and why does the difference matter? Use details from this letter and the earlier one to Wormwood, and explain why your reading is stronger.
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Vocabulary Builder
Item 1
A gradual build-up of added layers or material.
Item 2
A twisting of something away from its right or proper use.
Item 3
To make a teaching or idea widely known; to proclaim it.
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Critical Thinking
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