My dearest Wormwood,
You’ll remember our first correspondence on the issue, it
seems like eons ago, following a mass shooting at a school (I hardly need to
remind you of the country where it happened), in which I cautioned you to
temper your novice like hope that this event might be some great victory for the one
whom we serve. I believe I wrote to you something to the effect that the
dissolution of our Enemy’s creation is a marathon, not a sprint,
and that such loud, public outbursts of violence can be as much a hindrance as
a help to our cause. My concern at the time was that—in the same way that some
have said the crucifixion of the Despised One may have been the moment where we
went a step too far and showed our hand for what it was—such an outburst of
senseless violence might reveal, to even the dullest of our patients, the truth
of things. Things, I’ll say, that are better left to the obscuring,
point-counterpoint rhetoric of partisan politics. And there is certainly a
kernel of truth to what I said to you then, that one day of episodic
destructiveness gets us nowhere if it should lead the vile creatures whom our
Enemy inexplicably adores to start questioning the way of things and whether or
not it could be different.
Alas, though, nephew, I see the miscalculation that I made.
I had drastically underestimated the extent to which these patients of ours would
grow accustomed to these orgies of death. For they have very nearly become an annual
or biannual occurrence. And the citizens of said country seem to be
increasingly convinced that this is unavoidable, despite the fact, as surely
everyone knows by now, that such events are rarely if ever seen in other rich
nations around the world and the statistics of individual to individual murder
are dwarfed further still. Yet, far from
making the most obvious changes to reduce these occurrences in either frequency
or scale, the amount of press and attention that they give to each event seems
to be dwindling, steadily.
Now I know that it makes you nervous how, for a short time,
each of these episodes brings out all those Enemy-like qualities that we find
so incomprehensible in the biped creatures: the tears, the embraces, the songs,
the prayer vigils, yada, yada, yada. But I wouldn’t get too hung up on that.
Remember, a marathon, not a sprint. Their emotions of love and sympathy pose
little threat to our cause as long as they’re not channeled anywhere practical.
It’s real, concrete change that we want to mitigate. It’s not grief and human feeling that are
threats to our cause but hard questions asked, rights sacrificed, minds renewed.
Whatever produces that repulsive desire in them to hold each
other and to speak softly to one another on days like these, I suspect it’s too
deeply ingrained for you to try and rid them of it. So use it. Sometimes the
best way to keep compassion from getting away from us is to provide an outlet
for it. Make it routine. It’s normalcy that we’re after. Allow them to really
feel the catharsis of it. Try to get inside their heads and make a ritual of it:
“Bad stuff happens. Then we mourn. Then we sing. Then we pray. Then we go
home.” A typical patient’s memory tends to be short enough that each time they
say through tears, “Never forget” or “Never again,” they’ll genuinely expect
that that emotion will still be there to inspire action on the morrow. And once
you’ve convinced a patient that positive action is fueled by emotion, he’s
yours. Rest assured, by the time the sun sets again, the A/C unit will have
gone out in his condo, or his boss will have asked him to come in on Saturday,
or the Oscars will have been recorded on his DVR, or his father will have
shared with him all the devastations of yesteryear that caused him to become a
“realist” (oh, how I do love a “realist”), and your patient will go to bed
having forgotten all about the big plans he had to rally his society for
change.
Sure, with each new high profile shooting, there will be
some enthusiast, who shouts something idiotic about how you can kill someone
just as easily with a pillow (you can’t), or how other nations with heavy gun
restrictions see the same number of tragedies (they don’t), or in one inspired
case, how the victims brought it upon themselves by not going to Bible Study
armed to the teeth, as if thousands of years of civilization have only led us to an anarchist hellscape where the fastest trigger finger wins.
You’ll be tempted to think that this great sage is serving
our cause. Don’t be deceived. Evil is a poker game. We thrive on calm, even
keeled banality. It’s always the loudmouth who unwittingly threatens to pull
down the curtain on what we’re about. He was too clever by half who said that
evil does not happen on a large scale because of evil people but because of good
people who see what is going on but do nothing.
You’ve learned this sort of thing from past experience. Most
humans already agree that exploiting cheap labor is wrong. Everybody knows that
gang violence is devastating. Most believe that gross economic inequalities are
unjust. So we don’t waste our time trying to convince them otherwise. Instead,
we divert their attention to the benefits of cheap merchandise, the pros and
cons of increasing funding for inner city schools, and the successes of crass,
unregulated capitalism.
It’s no different with this. We’re not going to convince
anyone that gun related deaths are a good thing. Fine. No need to. We just need
to convince them that there is nothing that can be done. The goal is for
moderate, sensitive people to finally throw their hands up in the air and say,
“We are saddened that it must be so, but…you know…Que sera, sera.”
In short, don’t let imbeciles give the game away. Let the
prayer vigils go on. Let the flags fly at half-mast. Let the politicians give
their “Our hearts go out to…” speeches. These are the little gaskets that allow
us to safely dispose of the sympathies of your ordinary concerned citizen. In a
few days, the headlines will shift to some new political scandal or some
celebrity shenanigans, and we’ll be in the clear.
Now you’ll find some who do want to speak out against the
unregulated use of our Master’s favorite toys. Don’t beat your head against the
wall trying to censor these ones, either. Instead, encourage them to be as
abrasive and immoderate as possible. You want these ones to be all or nothing
in their reasoning and unflinching in their ideals. Make them so adamant that
all the guns should be thrown on the pyre, that they begin to dehumanize and
mock anyone with a more moderate position. I know, this always puts us in an
uncomfortable position where we seem to be encouraging the goals of our
Enemy—who, after all, wants all weapons beaten into plowshares and pruning
hooks (Is. 2:4).
Not to worry. Remember, it’s not the ideas but the
bipartisan division that we’re after.
They could all be agreed on giving bread to the poor, for all I care. As
long as one faction angrily insists that the bread should be rye and the other
is just as adamant that it should be wheat, we win, my dear Wormwood!
Finally, don’t get down on yourself. We’ve made real
progress, here. Last Sunday, I saw one of their bumper stickers. It had “Pro
Life,” “Pro God,” and “Pro Gun” all in a row (in that order!), same size, same
font, same sentiment. That’s not the end of it! The vehicle was pulling out of
a church in which the driver had just heard a sermon on the evils of idolatry.
I’m guessing the irony was lost on him.
All that’s to say, keep up the great work.
All that’s to say, keep up the great work.
Your
affectionate uncle,
Screwtape
The Screwtape Letters
is a famous book by C.S. Lewis in which each chapter is a letter from
Screwtape, a veteran demon, who is mentoring his less experienced nephew,
Wormwood. It was a clever enough concept, but the true brilliance was in Lewis’
ability to upset the notion, that all of us assume on some level, that evil
happens only in ugly, acute episodes and is perpetrated solely by a few bad
apples. Instead, he was able to use his fictional demons to bring out the day
to day “banality of evil” in a way that his more optimistic contemporaries
found uncomfortably indicting.
I hope that it will
not come off as flippant, publishing this right on the heels of the events in
Charleston. I’m horrified, if a shooting like that can ever become, as this
Screwtape suggests, something that we just begin to tolerate every few months.
But is that not precisely what the evidence would suggest? Since the issue of
mass shootings (let alone what goes on in our inner cities everyday, which is a
whole other can of worms) first came onto my radar with an event that I was
close to over 16 years ago, I’ve seen zero substantive policy changes and even
fewer and fewer policy suggestions.
I don’t want to sound
dismissive (as my Screwtape is) toward prayer vigils and other acts of concern,
which I truly do believe give us a glimpse of what’s best in humanity, albeit
for a short time. After a while, though, with the next candle lit memorial,
with the next moment of silence, with the next interchangeable “Our hearts go
out to…” speech, do we not have to be honest with ourselves? If our displays of
concern are never accompanied by even the most modest change and doing nothing
is still entertained as a serious political option, do we not have to admit
that we’ve decided, as a society, that tragedy every few months is acceptable?
Lastly, though I
consider it a matter of discipleship to never own a gun, I would never lay
responsibility for these tragedies at the feet of the peaceful and moderate majority
of people who do. I have many friends and family who fit this description, and
I’ve found that it’s just not politically constructive to get too all or
nothing on this point.
But to the Christians,
and only to the Christians, within that circle, with regard to the tired debate
on second amendment rights, I would ask (and let’s assume the constitution
provides for any and all firearms without restriction, with the loosest
possible interpretation of “firearm,” regardless of what inventions may come into
existence down the road), Since when do Christians take their ethical marching
orders from the constitution? And what more is taking up one’s cross and
following Jesus than giving up one’s “rights” for the sake of others? And most
importantly, what else is discipleship but following someone even when you
disagree with that person’s methods.
And to any who would reflexively
come back at me along the lines of “Sometimes you have to defend the weak by
use of force” or “What would you do if someone broke into your house…” and so
on, all I can say is that your arguments seem logical enough to me. But you
have to admit that your methodology is very different than the one that Jesus
chose. He didn’t defend anyone by use of force, though that was the very clear
job description of a Messiah at the time. He just died.
