In a recent post, I talked about how the Law of Undulation was featured in a chapter of C.S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters. That all came from Letter #8. Then, in Letter #9, Screwtape tells Wormwood that, while God uses the valleys (troughs) people go through for their growth and maturing as Christians, it is also a good time to tempt “the patient.” He provides three specific pieces of advice.

In the first place…Trough periods of human undulation provide excellent opportunity for all sensual temptations, particularly of those sex.

While God will use the trough periods for our strengthening, they are also a time of danger, for temptations seem stronger when we are at our weakest. “The attack has a much better chance of success when the man’s whole inner world is drab and cold and empty,” wrote Screwtape.  Yet, if the Christian can just get through it, he/she will be the stronger for it.

That moves us on to the second suggestion from uncle to nephew.

But there is an even better way of exploiting the Trough; I mean the patient’s own thoughts about it.

Screwtape has previously advised his nephew that clarity of reasoning is not in the devil’s interest. Best to keep him in confusion, use lots of jargon. Convince him that his Christianity is just a phase, like other phases he has been through in his life.

Another possibility is that of direct attack on his faith.

The patient, still a new, adult convert to Christianity, probably thought his high following conversion would last forever. Now he’s in a trough. Wormwood should try to say to him, “Aha! It’s just a phase, this Christian thing. See, you’re right back where you were before that prayer you made a few weeks ago.” That’s not true, of course. The patient’s standing before God depends on the fact of his conversion, not the rise and fall of his feelings.

Lewis was an intellectual who came to faith by way of reason, not emotion. In this book, you actually see a lot of Lewis in the patient. The temptations that Screwtape suggests Wormwood use are likely such as Lewis himself faced. Since I last read this book about 15 years ago, I’ve learned much more about Lewis’s life and read many more of his writings, including the three volumes of his collected letters.

The Screwtape Letters has been called a work of Christian apologetics. But I don’t see it as that. To me, it’s a discipleship book. It is chock full of advice of how to live a more consistent Christian life, to be stronger in the face of the world’s temptations, and end your Christian walk stronger than you began it. I first read this in 1975 (or was it late 1974?) when I was a baby Christian. This book so helped me in my beginning Christian walk, it has been a book I’ve gone back to several times through the years, and I’m sure I will go back to it again.

As we go through this study, I may make other posts about it. I won’t let it hog the blog (ooh, I like that), but I’m sure I’ll have several more posts about this, one of the greatest books of the 20th century.