Screwtape explains how to exploit the normal ups and downs of life. Feelings of loneliness, weariness, and numbness are conducive to indulgence in sinful habits, and to applying worldly “perspective” to one’s former religious zeal. Screwtape recommends that Wormwood encourage his “patient” to see his current “trough” not as a temporary downturn but as a return to reality after his conversion. Wormwood need not talk the patient out of his faith entirely, but just persuade him to take a more relaxed approach to it. “A moderated religion is as good for us as no religion at all—and more amusing,” Screwtape points out. As an alternative, Wormwood can convince the patient that his Christianity was simply a phase that he went through, in an ongoing process of growth, with the trappings of organized religion having become unnecessary in his wiser, more evolved state.
Inverting Screwtape’s devilish advice leads us to truth: the darker valleys of life are temporary, and faithful adherence to absolute eternal truths is the path to true wisdom and happiness.
And if thou shouldst be cast into the pit, or into the hands of murderers, and the sentence of death passed upon thee; if thou be cast into the deep; if the billowing surge conspire against thee; if fierce winds become thine enemy; if the heavens gather blackness, and all the elements combine to hedge up the way; and above all, if the very jaws of hell shall gape open the mouth wide after thee, know thou, my son, that all these things shall give thee experience, and shall be for thy good.
Elder David A. Bednar, “Come and See,” October 2014 General Conference
Absolute truth exists in a world that increasingly disdains and dismisses absolutes. In a future day, “every knee [shall] bow” and “every tongue [shall] confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Philippians 2:10–11).