To Wormwood on Pain

My Dear Wormwood,

I understand that you are trying a new tactic on your patient – the sudden onset of physical pain. Even my hardened heart cringes a little at this ploy, as you naively tinker on the edge of your own destruction. Prolonged suffering will either seal your patient forever in your grip of despair and anger or seal her ever deeper in the grasp of the Enemy. If you wish to make this hasty gesture, you must be well studied in how to use this misery most to your advantage.

Weapon #1: Feelings

Don’t misunderstand me, suffering is a great weapon in our hands. But it is an even greater weapon in the hands of the Enemy. You must keep your patient ever unconscious of this fact. Do not do this by tinkering directly with her doctrine. This rarely works, even on the newest of believers. Do this by tinkering with her emotions.

Humans are silly creatures. They think they can have mere feelings without thoughts behind them, especially if those thoughts stay below their level of consciousness. Many Christians, particularly those drawn more to the intellect than emotions, also seem to think that these feelings can be meaningless, shifting, have no ultimate impact on their souls, or cause no true corruption in their walk with the Enemy.

So have your patient feel things. Have her think she is only feeling them. Just feeling this is all a little unfair. Just feeling that it may not be so hard except for the timing of it all. “It’s just one thing on top of the other, you know.”  “It wouldn’t be quite so hard if only X.” This can be effective even if she doesn’t believe it to be true.

Sooner or later, without her knowing it, these feelings will subtly shift her thoughts of the Enemy – the way she perceives him, not because her doctrine is changed, but because she just feels about Him differently. The best part is she will probably not even notice the shift as it’s happening. If you are tactful enough, you can even get her to stop praying.

Weapon #2: Victimhood

Now, I bring this up because pain seems like an easy weapon – it is so deliciously brutal, so all-consuming, so life-shattering. But if you think you can use pain alone to turn a patient to our side, you are woefully mistaken. Pain by itself only touches the body. As we know, the mere body of a human does not satisfy either us or the Enemy. It is the soul, which we both need. But pain – and here’s the joy of it – pain can be so easily twisted to include the soul, that the patient may not even know where one ends and the other begins.

For example, pain by itself, may not do anything to weaken the faith of your patient. However, we can corrupt our patients without them realizing it by making sin seem not like sin, but like inevitable components of their pain. Thus, even their own sin becomes part of their sickness, one of the things that make them a victim, one of the things they must suffer upon everything else. This, in turn, adds to the patient’s misery, which can further add to their sin, causing a glorious, vicious cycle.

Let me explain.

Make things like irritation, anger, bitterness, despair, isolation, hopelessness all seem like inevitable parts of this pain or illness. Make the patient feel like they are the victim of their story. That their anger is justifiable – that they may even lash out and make other people miserable because their misery is “so much worse.”

Do you remember when the Enemy said: “Love covers a multitude of sins”? We may make the patient twist this in her favor – “Sorry, I’m just in pain,” becomes, not genuine repentance, but a demand for love that covers their multitude of sins. False love, of course, that really only affirms their own misery. When others are unwilling to supply this false love, make it add to the patient’s victimhood. Do not ever let the patient see that they are the ones who are unreasonable. Make them feel like they are being victimized because “No one understands.” This is where things become much more fun for us. I am almost envious now of what you have in store.

Weapon #3: Loneliness

The loneliness of pain is another wonderful weapon we have with us. Of course, every human pain is unique in some way, yet the Enemy created a terrible comfort for His children when he became human as they are. We know – even if we cannot understand it – that our Enemy lowered himself so greatly as to experience more than the worst pain of all humans and that he promises to redeem them from it. He offers the same promise to each of them, saying things like: “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” He extends himself as a High Preist that “knows their weakness,” saying that he too was “tempted in every way, even as they are”, and somehow has made these weak, silly little humans “more than conquerors” in Him.

These may be great comforts to your patient if she believes them. Keep these truths – or at least, their emotional impact, as far from her mind as possible. Have her truly believe in her own loneliness. This is where a great deal of cleverness comes in, for you can even make the presence of other humans make her feel more lonely.

It is quite easy. You can make her feel alone in a million different ways. Of course, debilitating pain causes canceled plans and outings cut short. This may cause a great deal of disappointment, but it is not enough. The true gift is to make her feel lonely when she is sitting side by side with someone she loves – watching a movie, reading a book, among friends, enjoying a meal – have her remember the pain she is in and cause that feeling to build separation, set itself up as a barrier only she can feel, as if there is a third presence unknown to any other, twisting around her body and her heart.

This is a perfect tactic, Wormwood. Humans yearn to feel connected. And in the moments your patient most wants to feel the same as the person next to her, she is barraged by pain, ripping her end of the universe – and just her end – reminding, constant: “There is one thing here that no one else can feel. You’re alone in this, you’re alone, you’re alone.” 

A lie of course, for the Enemy, is always present, always knows. But humans are so wonderfully forgetful. And we serve a Father of Lies, after all.

Weapon #5: Human Strength

Your patient is a typical human – stubborn, driven, seeking fulfillment, seeking happiness. She wants to seem strong and capable. Disabilities are delightfully humiliating to humans. It is funny because of course, humans are always weak, silly creatures, who rely wholly upon the Enemy for every breath, every heartbeat, every second of their lives. But they like to think they do this all on their own. Pain makes them feel and appear how they really were their whole lives: utterly dependant, weak, not in control.

This humiliation gives us another wonderful tool: a false sense of strength in themselves, made not weaker, but stronger, through their disability.

In the beginning, this will be more obvious. People will ask what’s wrong, the patient will say, “Nothing.” Or if she explains, she will follow it up with, “But it’s not that terrible.” “Nothing I can’t handle.” Have her think this is her being strong or brave or selfless. This is wonderful for us because the more she feels like she must appear strong and brave and selfless the less she will see that she is actually not any of these things.

This means she will still feel as if she doesn’t need to rely on the Enemy. Once she begins to rely on the Enemy, it is the end-game for us. You must never let her see this. You must make her feel like the only way she can turn is inward. That is always as far from the Enemy as humans can go.

Remember, as powerful as a weapon that pain may be for us, it is even more powerful in the hands of the Enemy. This is equally true for all bad things – grief, suffering, sadness, sorrow – there is a way in which the Enemy may enter and redeem these things to be His own. Humans are prone to forget this, to think all these things belong solely to us. Let them think so. Let them think we are the ones in charge of this tragedy on wheels. That we brought them to the low place they are in, and that the Enemy has no part in it. There is a way your patient may sorrow and grieve that honors the Enemy. Let her never realize how much of her pain is actually not our own.

Weapon #6: Hopelessness

As we’ve already seen, pain will make your patient more susceptible to your lies. Don’t let her see herself from the outside – objectively, as a child of the Enemy, or in any way that allows her to see her life more clearly. Let her always remain introspective, stuck in this cycle, if you will, the rat-hole of her own thoughts and desperate feelings.

Turn things that will help her into things that seem overwhelming and unnecessary. Have their exclusion from her life further victimize her.

For example, let her feel that she has a right to be angry. She has a right not to smile and be interested in the everyday conversation of other people because she is in pain. She has a right not to eat, not to pray, not to laugh, not to speak. She has a right to shut the world out – they’ll never understand anyway. She has a right to turn her head to the wall until it’s over. Fighting is exhausting after all.

Do not let her only fight whatever she is feeling right now, in this moment. Make her fight the whole future. Let her feel that all her days to come – which, of course, will hold many unexpected joys and blessings and gifts from the Enemy – will inevitably be just like the one she’s in, or worse. That this pain will never end.

Even if she realizes the self-destructive cycle that she is in, have her feel that she is only giving in a little now. Just a little despair today. Just a little anger today. “I’m just having a hard day.” Humans are fond of this phrase. They don’t see how each moment determines the next. Each moment – full of the gloriously unnecessary – is significant because they are what make up life – they will determine the trajectory of the next 50 years, how they will be lived, whether or not the patient spends her life serving us or serving the Enemy.

Of course, we – and the Enemy, for that matter – who see how short and feeble a human life is, know the value of every second they get. Humans don’t. They are wonderfully short-sighted. So much the better for us.

Weapon #7: Self-Pity

Sometimes being angry feels good; giving into despair so woefully satisfying. Oh, but self-pity – this is the greatest of them all! What a wretched character that makes! The self-pitying character is the worst of all, worse than the villain. Let it never look like self-pity. Let it seem like self-care, setting boundaries, weariness from bearing this all alone and for so long. Let her not see the ways the Enemy offers to lift these burdens. Let her never see how prideful and self-absorbed it truly is.

There is, of course, a way the patient may grieve what she has lost, may grieve her pain and her suffering, set boundaries, care for herself, in a way that honors the Enemy. This, we must never let her see. Instead, allow her to see only what she has lost through her pain, not what has been given. Make her feel that her pain means she must receive help from others, and can never give help herself. Wire her mind and her emotions to focus steadily on the bad things in her life and not see the grace of the Enemy in the good things he gives her – until even minor inconveniences simply become another chapter in the tale of her victimhood. Her story, indeed, must seem harder than all the others.

Of course, we know, that if the patient is having a bad time of it, the Enemy is at work. In fact, He is often most at work, right at the moment that any work of His seems impossible. Even in their own stories, humans make it so that it always looks bleak – every chapter a bit worse – before the turning point. In their stories, happy endings always seem impossible until the end. They forget this is actually true.

Pain, after all, may be one of the Enemy’s most powerful tools in the patient’s salvation. Perhaps, I don’t envy you this task, after all.

Your Affectionate Uncle,

Screwtape