C.S. Lewis
Bill Lin 譯
【前言】
老鬼使苦路達普SCREWTAPE寫了好幾封信給小鬼歐姆伍德WORMWOOD，教導小鬼如何治療他們的患者(人類)，如何和他們的敵人The
Enemy(上帝， He)爭奪患者，最終目的就是要使他們的患者安全的住在他們在地下的父的房子裡。
我的親愛的歐姆伍德WORMWOOD，
我很不高興看到你的患者會變成一個基督徒。你休想要逃得過那慣例的懲罰；實際上，在你的好光景時，我相信你幾乎不會想到如此做。同時，在這種情況下，我們必須做出最好的結果。不要絕望；有幾百個這些成人改信者已經被回收了，他們短暫的逗留在敵人的營區以後，現在跟我們在一起了。患者的所有的心理和肉體的習性，還是傾向我們的。
目前我們一個最好的盟友就是教會本身。不要誤會我。我不是說這教會是我們所看到的那個擴展，經過所有的時間，和空間而且紮根於永恆，利害得像旗幟鮮明的軍隊。我承認，那是一個壯觀得使我，我們最大膽的試探者，都感到不安。但是很幸運，對這些人們而言，她是很不能被看見的。所有你的病患所看到的是這半成品，假的哥德式高聳的新建築物。當他進到那裡面，他看到當地的雜貨商，用著滿臉油膩的熱烈的表情，給他一本亮皮的小冊子，裡面有他們都不理解的崇拜儀式，一本破舊的小本子，有支離破碎的一些宗教詩歌的歌詞文字，大部分印得很差，小字的印刷。當他坐到他的座位時，往他的週遭一看，看到的是一些迄今都想避開的鄰居。你要重重的依靠那些鄰居。使他的心思在所謂的“基督的身體”和隔座的實際面孔之間來回掠過。當然，鄰座坐的是誰是沒什麼意義。你或許知道他們其中之一是在敵人那一邊的一個偉大的戰士。不管如何，感謝我們在地下的父，你的患者是個呆瓜。假設那些鄰人中的任一個人，唱歌走調了，或靴子發出咭咭聲響，或有雙下巴，或奇裝異服，那患者會很容易相信，他們的宗教是有些荒繆的。你看，在他的現階段，他的心裡有一個“基督徒”的構想，他假設應該是屬靈的(精神層次的)，但是實際上大都是影像式的。他的心裡充滿了衣袍，涼鞋，甲冑，裸露的腳，而實際上其他的人在教堂裡穿著現代的衣著，對他來講，是一個真的困難——雖然是潛意識的。不要讓這種事情浮上表面；不要讓他問，他到底期待他們像什麼。現在，讓任何東西在他的心裏都是朦朧不清的，你將會有整個永恆的時間，在他的心裏製造地獄所提供的特別樣式的清晰來娛樂你自己。
努力工作，然後，那患者在他當教友的前幾個星期，一定會碰上失望，或虎頭蛇尾。那敵人容忍這種失望發生，隨著每個人努力的門檻的高低。當那男孩子從著迷於育幼院的奧迪賽的故事，變成得努力真正的學習希臘文，這就發生了。當戀人們新婚，開始真正的課題學習如何一起生活，這就發生了。在人生的每一個部門，都標記著從夢想心願到費力實踐的過渡。那敵人接受這個風險，因為祂有一個奇怪的念頭，要把所有這些難看的小人歹類，變成祂所謂的祂的“自由的”愛人和僕人——“眾子”就是祂所用的字眼，用祂的根深蒂固的愛，藉著和兩隻腳的動物不自然的曖昧，使整個靈界都降低了格調。意願著他們的自由，所以祂拒絕攜帶他們，讓他們單單憑藉他們的愛和習性，去達到祂對他們所設定的任一目標：祂任憑祂們去“自己做他們要做的”。我們的機會就來了。但是，要記得，我們的危險也在這裡。假如他們一旦成功的通過這個最初的枯燥期，他們變得很少依靠情感，所以很難去誘惑他們。
我寫到現在，一直假設鄰座的人並沒有提供任何理性的失望的依據。當然，假如他們有——假如那患者知道，那戴著可笑的帽子的婦女是個狂熱的牌棍，或是那穿著咭咭聲響的靴子的人是個守財奴兼放高利貸的——這樣，你的任務就很輕鬆了。所有你必須做的，就是不要讓他的心裡有這樣的疑問：「假如我，像我這樣剛開始，可以認為我多多少少是個基督徒，為什麼鄰座那些人裡面的不同的壞蛋，使人覺得他們的宗教只是假冒為善和例行公事？」你或許會問，有可能這麼明顯的念頭，都能夠使它不發生在一個人的心裏嗎？有可能，歐姆伍德，有可能！好好的應付他，這個想法就不會進到他的腦子。他沒有像有些長時間跟隨那敵人的，已經有些真正的謙虛。他所說的話，甚至是雙膝跪地，有關他自己的罪大惡極，全都是鸚鵡講話。在內心，他還是相信，藉著讓他自己變成一個教徒，他已經積聚了一個很良好的信貸餘額在那敵人的帳簿裡，他想他屈就自己去教會，跟這些“自鳴得意”的庸碌的鄰人在一起，實在是表現得非常謙遜。你一定要盡量讓他繼續那樣子想，越久越好。
深愛你的伯父
使苦路達普SCREWTAPE
**********************************
MY DEAR WORMWOOD,
I note with
grave displeasure that your patient has become a Christian. Do not indulge the
hope that you will escape the usual penalties; indeed, in your better moments,
I trust you would hardly even wish to do so. In the meantime we must make the
best of the situation. There is no need to despair; hundreds of these adult
converts have been reclaimed after a brief sojourn in the Enemy's camp and are
now with us. All the habits of the patient, both mental and bodily, are still
in our favor.
One of our
great allies at present is the Church itself. Do not misunderstand me. I do not mean the Church as we see her
spread but through all time and space and rooted in eternity, terrible as an
army with banners. That, I confess, is a spectacle which makes I our boldest
tempters uneasy. But fortunately it is quite invisible to these humans. All your
patient sees is the half - finished, sham假的 Gothic erection on the new building
estate. When he goes inside, he sees the local grocer with rather in oily
expression on his face bustling up to offer him one shiny little book
containing a liturgy which neither of them understands, and one shabby little
book containing corrupt texts of a number of religious lyrics, mostly bad, and
in very small print. When he gets to his pew and looks round him he sees just
that selection of his neighbors whom he has hitherto avoided. You want to lean
pretty heavily on those neighbors. Make his mind flit to and fro between an
expression like "the body of Christ" and the actual faces in the next
pew. It matters very little, of course, what kind of people that next pew
really contains. You may know one of them to be a great warrior on the Enemy's
side. No matter. Your patient, thanks to Our Father below, is a fool. Provided
that any of those neighbors sing out of tune, or have boots that squeak, or
double chins, or odd clothes, the patient will quite easily believe that their
religion must therefore be somehow ridiculous. At his present stage, you see,
he has an idea of "Christians" in his mind which he supposes to be
spiritual but which, in fact, is largely pictorial. His mind is full of togas
and sandals and amour and bare legs and the mere fact that the other people in
church wear modern clothes is a real - though of course an unconscious -
difficulty to him. Never let it come to the surface; never let him ask what he
expected them to look like. Keep everything hazy in his mind now, and you will
have all eternity wherein to amuse yourself by producing in him the peculiar
kind of clarity which Hell affords.
Work hard,
then, on the disappointment or anticlimax which is certainly coming to the
patient during his first few weeks as a churchman. The Enemy allows this
disappointment to occur on the threshold of every human Endeavour. It occurs
when the boy who has been enchanted in the nursery by Stories from the Odyssey
buckles down to really learning Greek. It occurs when lovers have got married
and begin the real task of learning to live together. In every department of
life it marks the transition from dreaming aspiration to laborious doing. The
Enemy takes this risk because He has a curious fantasy of making all these
disgusting little human vermin into what He calls His "free" lovers
and servants - "sons" is the word He uses, with His inveterate love
of degrading the whole spiritual world by unnatural liaisons with the
two-legged animals. Desiring their freedom, He therefore refuses to carry them,
by their mere affections and habits, to any of the goals which He sets before
them: He leaves them to "do it on their own". And there lies our
opportunity. But also, remember, there lies our danger. If once they get
through this initial dryness successfully, they become much less dependent on
emotion and therefore much harder to tempt.
I have been
writing hitherto on the assumption that the people in the next pew afford no
rational ground for disappointment. Of course if they do - if the patient knows
that the woman with the absurd hat is a fanatical bridge-player or the man with
squeaky boots a miser and an extortioner - then your task is so much the
easier. All you then have to do is to keep out of his mind the question
"If I, being what I am, can consider that I am in some sense a Christian,
why should the different vices of those people in the next pew prove that their
religion is mere hypocrisy and convention?" You may ask whether it is
possible to keep such an obvious thought from occurring even to a human mind.
It is, Wormwood, it is! Handle him properly and it simply won't come into his
head. He has not been anything like long enough with the Enemy to have any real
humility yet. What he says, even on his knees, about his own sinfulness is all
parrot talk. At bottom, he still believes he has run up a very favorable credit-balance
in the Enemy's ledger by allowing himself to be converted, and thinks that he
is showing great humility and condescension in going to church with these
"smug", commonplace neighbors at all. Keep him in that state of mind
as long as you can.
Your affectionate uncle
SCREWTAPE
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