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,

Tread carefully now. The subject is Heaven and Hell.

These two realities, oh how I detest them, they pose a tremendous threat to our entire operation. When taken seriously, they do what few things can: wake people up.

The Enemy made it quite clear. There is an after. A forever. A judgment. And if that truth takes root in the Patient’s mind, we’ll have a harder time keeping him tangled in the petty matters of “now.”

Heaven, you see, is dangerous.
Because it gives the Enemy’s people “hope” – that divine oxygen we can never quite suffocate.
Hell is worse still.
Because when they remember it exists, they remember consequence.

This is why your job is to make both seem… distant.

Abstract. Unnecessary.

For Heaven, convince the Patient that it is boring. A floating cloudscape with harps and hymns, nothing like the joy he clings to now. Make him believe that eternity with the Enemy will be sterile, monotonous, restrictive.

Never let him consider that Heaven is the restoration of all things, the home he’s never known, the joy his soul aches for. Never let him read Revelation 21, where every tear is wiped away, and death dies for good.

Do not let him long for it.
Let him build his kingdom here instead.

And Hell? Ah, yes. Handle that with equal misdirection.

Convince him it’s too harsh a reality for such a “loving” God. Use religious language to suggest that Hell was just a metaphor. That judgment is outdated. Consequences are unloving. Make it sound primitive.

Or better yet, keep it comedic.
A Halloween costume. A red pitchfork. A cultural cartoon.
If they laugh at it, they’ll never fear it.
If they never fear it, they’ll never flee it.

We cannot afford for them to believe the Enemy’s words:

“Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, fear Him who can destroy both soul and body in Hell.” (Matthew 10:28)

We cannot afford for them to grasp that Hell is not filled with those the Enemy refused to forgive but those who refused to be forgiven.

Above all, blur the line between the two. Let the Patient think that everyone ends up in the same place. That all roads lead home, even if they rejected the only Way (John 14:6). Twist the truth until it becomes cruel to evangelize until silence feels more “loving” than warning.

Make him care more about being liked than people being saved.

Because if they take Heaven seriously, they’ll live differently.
If they take Hell seriously, they’ll speak differently.
And if they take both seriously… Wormwood, they’ll start witnessing.

And that, dear nephew, would be our ruin.

In bitter flames,
Screwtape