Context: Inspired by C.S. Lewis’s classic – The Screwtape Letters, this fictional series features letters from a senior demon to his young protégé, exposing hell’s subtle strategies against believers. These are not meant to amuse, but to awaken.

This isn’t just satire – it’s a mirror. A sharp one. Because sometimes the enemy’s strategies sound uncomfortably familiar.

My dear Wormwood,

I nearly laughed myself sick when I saw your patient skim past that dreadful passage in Hebrews again – “who for the joy set before Him endured the cross (12:2).”. How harmless those words have become in their minds! They recite them as if they were little more than poetic fluff, never grasping the dangerous reality: they are the joy. 

Do you see the threat in that? If they ever understood that the Son went to the cross with them in His heart as His prize, their obedience would be unstoppable, their worship uncontainable, and their identity unshakable.

So, here is your task: keep that truth blurry. Let them think “the joy set before Him” was something abstract – a throne, a victory, some vague heavenly concept. Distract them from the terrifying intimacy of the thought that He endured nails, thorns, and spit because He could see them on the other side of it. Keep them asking, “Could it really be me?” until they stop asking altogether.

If they dare to realize they were His joy, they will finally grasp how deeply loved they are; and worse, how secure. Love like that cannot be bargained with, shamed away, or shaken loose by our whisperings. It roots them, strengthens them, and gives them courage we cannot endure. If they were to know that their weak prayers, faltering songs, and trembling faith were enough for Him to call “joy,” our work would collapse.

So feed them a steady diet of comparison. Let them measure their worth by the applause of people rather than the cross of the Enemy. If they look at their failures, sins, and flaws long enough, they’ll convince themselves they could never have been His joy. That way those words remain a verse to quote, not a reality to live.

Remember, Wormwood: our aim is not to erase the Scripture, but to gut it. Leave the words intact while you strip them of weight. If they ever see themselves as His joy, they will run with endurance the very race we are trying to trip them in and that, my boy, we cannot allow.

Your affectionate uncle,
Screwtape