Sunday 18 December 2011

The Screwtape email

Wormwood,
What on earth is going on? How could you be so stupid? Did I not tell you that the best way to defeat the enemy is to stop talking about him and avoid drawing attention to him? Apathy and ignorance are far better weapons than any overt assault.
For a while the enemy’s agents were doing our work for us. Don’t you remember the successes of the last century? We didn’t need to do a thing, just sit back and watch as his supporters did their best to undermine his work. They were tripping over themselves to get into the media to debunk every aspect of belief.
But now, thanks to your incompetence, he’s back in the game. People can’t stop talking about him, even Prime Ministers are saying what a good thing he is. What possessed you? (O.K. I know what possesses you but that’s not the point). Thanks to your recruitment policy there are a few very vociferous people, destroying all our good work. Every time one of your agents opens his/her mouth, or puts fingers to keyboard, a whole new round of discussion and debate opens up. These ‘new atheists’ as they’ve become known, simply do the enemy’s work for him and I seriously suspect they are double agents so effective have they been in raising the enemy’s profile.
The enemy’s supporters have never been so motivated and engaged in the battle: demanding public debates; churning out books putting forward the argument for belief; speaking his name at every opportunity and never out of the media. There are intense discussions going on all over the place and that is not helpful to our ambitions. It’s true some of them overreact and a few make fools of themselves by their aggressive responses and I’d encourage you to play that for all it’s worth. Nevertheless, serious damage to our cause has been done.
As for that bus campaign! What made you think having his name on the side of the Number 23 to Tooting was a publicity coup for our side?
And encouraging our supporters to go to Carol Services to enjoy the singing but ignore the religious stuff, how was that ever going to work? Haven’t you read what’s in those carols? The only saving grace is that the enemy’s supporters are often too stupid to read and act on the words themselves.
I want the whole operation closed down before you wreck our mission for good.
Your seriously hacked off uncle,
Screwtape.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Excellent work!

Revsimmy said...

Marvellous stuff!

Fr Paul Trathen, Vicar said...

Cool! ;-)

Peter Kirk said...

PS I already started to wind up the operation by afflicting that Hitchens guy with cancer. Not surprisingly the enemy didn't do anything to protect him and let him join our little party below. But the next step is up to you. I'll just suggest that you have a close look at Dawkins' heart.

Philip Ritchie said...

I would like to make it clear that I do not want my post associated with the last comment and in no way agree with it. I have not deleted it because I would rather not censor comments.

Peter Kirk said...

Philip, just to clarify, I don't agree with Screwtape's theology either. I am not making a serious suggestion that he or any other evil spiritual being caused Hitchens' death. I am suggesting that they might have wanted to kill him, and might well have boasted of killing him even if in fact they had no part in it. And of course it is not myself but Screwtape who would like to be rid of Dawkins. I wish him long life and health, and that he would see the truth and accept Jesus Christ as Lord.

Peter Kirk said...

PPS (from Screwtape): I'm only presuming Hitchens is at the party below. I know we've lost a few in the past to those regrettable deathbed conversions and the like. No sign of that in this case, but I'm not going to count on anything until I get my own chance to torment him personally.