From Screwtape’s Blog:
My dear Wormwood,
It is a surprise to me to hear that the wife has taken the unusual step of buying a gun. Normally, it is the men who have an unusual fascination with these obviously phallic implements. Is suspect, well, more than suspect, that it is a result of her own guilty conscience. Feeling paranoia is a common human reaction to feeling guilt. The relationship between the two is worthy of much more study and observation.
Guns, as I should point out, have been an invaluable boon to our cause. A proliferation of them, wherever it is, leads to the happy result of producing more dead humans. This is always a good thing. Dead Christians (actual Christians) are good because they can no longer be a force for the Enemy in the world. Other dead humans are good because we can always use more food.
If you’re not familiar with C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters, it’s written as series of instructional letters from a senior demon in Hell to a new demon just learning the ropes. In this way, Lewis explains Satan’s line of thinking and how the young demon is to go about corrupting the human he’s been assigned to ruin. Apparently, the writer here (my guess is that it’s not C.S. Lewis) wants to share his thoughts about the evils of guns.
It’s fairly predictable:
Humans, particularly the American species, are terribly amusing in their attempts to defend or downplay the actual nature and purpose of these weapons; which is, of course, to kill…Increasingly, the number of animals killed by these weapons pales in comparison to the number of humans killing each other with them. In this capacity, the gun has an unusual felicity. Bowed weapons, even ones capable of firing multiple arrows, have a slow reload time. Some larger guns - rifles and shotguns - have this same disadvantage. Other guns do not. Some of them are capable of firing round upon round upon round - reducing whatever target aimed at to a pulp. These weapons are less for killing even, than they are for total annihilation.
Still, to be clear, make no mistake that these weapons have only one purpose, and that is to kill.
Blah blah blah.
What’s sort of ironic is that an underlying point of The Screwtape Letters is that good people will not fall for the deceptions of the demons. Many will live a generally good life despite evil’s unceasing attempts to destroy them and the continuous effort to sell evil deeds and thoughts as “normal.”
I’m not familiar with the blog, so maybe the writer’s point is that bad people project their badness on to others just as demons do. But I doubt it.
If interested, Murdoc highly recommends the audio version of The Screwtape Letters read by John Cleese. It seems to be currently unavailable in the US except by import. I checked it out the library a while back and listened to it twice.
Incidentally, I love the concept of the Screwtape Blog. It’s the sort of thing I wish I had thought of.
