Uncle Lewis and Immigration
May 4, 2010
As I have read articles on our state’s new immigration law and thought through the church’s response, by far the most helpful thing I have encountered was written 60 years ago by an Oxford professor. C.S. Lewis wrote The Screwtape Letters as a fictional correspondence between an older, experienced demon and his young protege. The letters are Screwtape’s advice as to how best divert “the patient” (a man who has recently converted to Christianity) from focus on and service to “the Enemy” (God).
This particular letter is set in the context of World War II, as the young demon is inquiring whether to influence the patient toward pacifism or patriotism. Here is an excerpt:
“I had not forgotten my promise to consider whether we should make the patient an extreme patriot or an extreme pacifist. All extremes, except extreme devotion to the Enemy, are to be encouraged. Not always, of course, but at this period. Some ages are lukewarm and complacent, and then it is our business to soothe them yet faster asleep. Other ages, of which the present is one, are unbalanced and prone to faction, and it is our business to inflame them. Any small coterie, bound together by some interest which other men dislike or ignore, tends to develop inside itself a hothouse mutual admiration, and towards the outer world, a great deal of pride and hatred which is entertained without shame because the “Cause” is its sponsor and it is thought to be impersonal. Even when the little group exists originally for the Enemy’s own purposes, this remains true. We want the Church to be small not only that fewer men may know the Enemy but also that those who do may acquire the uneasy intensity and the defensive self-righteousness of a secret society or a clique. The Church herself is, of course, heavily defended and we have never yet quite succeeded in giving her all the characteristics of a faction; but subordinate factions within her have often produced admirable results, from the parties of Paul and of Apollos at Corinth down to the High and Low parties in the Church of England.
“Whichever he adopts, your main task will be the same. Let him begin by treating the Patriotism or the Pacifism as a part of his religion. Then let him, under the influence of partisan spirit, come to regard it as the most important part. Then quietly and gradually nurse him on to the stage at which the religion becomes merely part of the “cause”, in which Christianity is valued chiefly because of the excellent arguments it can produce in favour of the British war-effort or of Pacifism. The attitude which you want to guard against is that in which temporal affairs are treated primarily as material for obedience. Once you have made the World an end, and faith a means, you have almost won your man, and it makes very little difference what kind of worldly end he is pursuing. Provided that meetings, pamphlets, policies, movements, causes, and crusades, matter more to him than prayers and sacraments and charity, he is ours-and the more ‘religious’ (on those terms) the more securely ours. I could show you a pretty cageful down here.”
God willing, on Sunday, I will address how we keep our mission and calling as God’s people central in the midst of the various “causes” surrounding the immigration debate. Pray the God would give us clarity and reinvigorate our sense of purpose in this world as we anticipate the return of our King.
Pastor Chris