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From the Associate…
ON TIME AND ETERNITY: MORE ADVICE FROM SCREWTAPE
There is a natural temptation in times of uncertainty to learn to look at the world mainly through the lens of this-worldly concerns. We can oscillate between feelings of anxiety and feelings of confidence about the future, all based on the latest news report. Screwtape, the master Tempter, advises his nephew Wormwood on how best to make use of this to distract and destroy his "patient."
My dear Wormwood,
Tortured fear and stupid confidence are both desirable states of mind. Our choice between them raises important questions.
The humans live in time, but our Enemy destines them to eternity. He therefore, I believe, wants them to attend chiefly to two things, to eternity itself and to that point of time which they call the Present. For the Present is the point at which time touches eternity. . . . He would therefore have them continually concerned either with eternity (which means being concerned with Him) or with the Present - either meditating on their eternal union with, or separation from, Himself, or else obeying the present voice of conscience, bearing the present cross, receiving the present grace, giving thanks for the present pleasure.
Our business is to get them away from the eternal and from the Present. With this in view, we sometimes tempt a human to live in the Past. But this is of limited value. It is far better to make them live in the Future. Biological necessity makes all their passions point in that direction already, so that thought about the Future inflames hope and fear. Also, it is unknown to them, so that in making them think about it we make them think of unrealities. In a word, the Future is, of all things, the thing least like eternity. It is the most completely temporal part of time - for the Past is frozen and no longer flows, and the Present is all lit up with eternal rays. Hence the encouragement we have given to all those schemes of thought such as Creative Evolution, Scientific Humanism, or Communism, which fix men's affections on the Future, on the very core of temporality. Hence nearly all the vices are rooted in the Future. Gratitude looks to the Past and love to the Present; fear, avarice, lust and ambition look ahead.
To be sure, the Enemy wants men to think of the Future too - just so much as is necessary for now planning the acts of justice or charity which will probably be their duty tomorrow. The duty of planning the morrow's work is today's duty; though its material is borrowed from the future, the duty, like all duties, is in the present. He does not want men to give the Future their hearts. We do. We want a man hagridden by the Future - haunted by visions of an imminent heaven or hell upon earth - ready to break the Enemy's commands in the Present if by so doing we make him think he can attain the one or avert the other. We want a whole race perpetually in pursuit of the rainbow's end, never honest, nor kind, nor happy now, but always using as mere fuel wherewith to heap the altar of the Future every real gift which is offered them in the Present.
Your affectionate uncle,
SCREWTAPE
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