Christian Living: Spiritual Warfare
Memo to Demons: Encouraging Distraction
In my last memo, I began to describe the delicious deception I call “the gift wrap principle”. Your client’s life (their experiences and circumstances) is the “gift wrap” but the real point, in the Enemy’s plan, is that they find and enjoy him within that wrapping. They are meant to find him in every experience of their lives. Your job is to keep them completely preoccupied with the gift wrap itself until they drop into their well-deserved graves. It sounds infantile, but they really are that foolish. Make a relationship, a career, money, anything in life their focus and priority without any thought that those things hold him, who intends to be their true happiness.
As I intimated in my last memo, the human scum is easier to keep if they have a pretty gift box, that is, a nice life. When things are good, they more easily forget the Enemy because they are delighted with the wrappings alone. This compromise (allowing them pleasure) is regrettable, but we must keep our eyes on the endgame. You see, if they go through life absorbed with the wrappings and not wanting Him, He eventually gives way to their demand. Fortunately for us, he honors their choice. We have to encourage the right choice. Once here, they never want him again, for death cements and hardens attitudes permanently. The important thing is to get them here. Contrary to sentimental thought, no one here is pleading for a second chance at heaven. We’d rather be free in hell than the slaves of him in heaven.
Far more gratifying for us is if their lives are unhappy and painful. But that is a risky game. If we get carried away by the pleasure of their misery and think we have them in hand – unhappy, ashamed, in pain -- they sometimes turn to Him. The wretches see, quite correctly, no other hope. The trick is always to maintain the deception of hope elsewhere while we increase their fears, self-loathing, and pain. Put the thought into their minds that with just a little more effort they will find happiness and the continuous pleasure they instinctively want. I say “instinctively” because He has made them for continuous pleasure and they seem to know that. But it has to be His way and His time or not at all. You see how He is. And as I’ve said elsewhere, He is a hedonist at heart. “In His presence is fullness of joy”. Ugh. Do not let it enter their minds that their true happiness (inexplicitly) is him.
That brings me to an obvious warning: We have lost more to the Enemy through suffering than anything else. It is a delicate balance. If you sense that they are beginning to think of Him on account of their suffering, give them momentary relief as quickly as possible. Let them find some solace in a banal television program, a drunken stupor, a sexual conquest, a holiday, a new… anything, or something like that. We prefer to give them empty and wicked relief. If they are too insulated by the Enemy for that, you might even have to allow a legitimate distraction. Things like a beautiful sunset, a day of rest, or even an encouraging exchange with another of their kind, can do the job. But once their thoughts are away from their felt need of Him, carefully return them to their former misery. If you do this well, you can feed on their misery and rob them of the gift that is always so close to them. Ultimately, their lives without Him will be discarded like used gift-wrap. They won’t have Him, and neither will they have those things they pursued. I can’t tell you the pleasure I find in that.
Apollyon. (Written in imitation of C. S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters)