Screwtape is saying to make use of the word love because of its vagueness. He wants Wormwood to persuade his patient that he has solved his problems with love, when really he has just put them aside, hidden behind of the effects of enchantment.
Chapter XXVII- “If the thing he prays for doesn’t happen, then that is one more proof that petitionary prayers don’t work; if it does happen, he will, of course, be able to see some of the physical causes which led up to it, and ‘therefore it would have happened anyway’, and thus granted prayer becomes just as good a proof as a denied one that prayers are ineffective.”
I think what Screwtape was trying to convince man was that when prayers do not have the desired results, they could be considered ineffective. When they do, they could also be seen as ineffective because the events that led up to the answered prayer would have happened even if there were no prayer at all.
Chapter XXVIII- “Prosperity knits a man to the World.”
Screwtape is saying that when one experiences success, he becomes more and more attached to the world. You normally do not want to quit or leave something that you are doing well in.
Chapter XXIX- “The point is to keep him feeling that he has something, other than the Enemy and courage the Enemy supplies, to fall back on, so that what was intended to be a total commitment to duty becomes honeycombed all through with little unconscious reservations.”
Screwtape wants man to believe that he can rely on something other than God. He wants man to expect that the worst will never happen. When it does, he can trick them into an act of cowardice.
Chapter XXX- “Exaggerate the weariness by making him think that it will soon be over; for men usually feel that a strain could have been endured no longer at the very moment when it is ending or when they think it is ending."
Screwtape is saying that by making situations of suffering to seem like they will be over soon will make it harder for one to endure longer. He explains that the moment it seems to be ending, it is the hardest to carry on.
Chapter XXXI- “One moment it seemed to be all our world; the scream of bombs, the fall of houses, the stink and taste of high explosive on the lips and in the lungs, the feet burning with weariness, the heart cold with horrors, the brain reeling, the legs aching; next moment all this was gone, gone like a bad dream, never again to be of any account. “
Screwtape is describing the moment that the patient died and went to heaven. In an instant, he was taken out of all the sufferings of the world and brought into the presence of God, never to be reminded of them again.
Lewis, Clive S. The Screwtape Letters. New York: HarperCollins, 1996. Print.
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