I read this interesting novel for entertainment at first, but then I realized that this book is not funny but quite serious, or possibly as an allegory? I enjoyed it because Lewis wrote this book from book from his heart and so there is bias from him as a layman in the Church of England. I understand that Lewis struggled with atheism. What comes to mind when you read this book? I think that it is normal to have these scrupulous thoughts if contemplating conversion and changing one's life, but these thoughts should not last. It must the Devil that is delaying people's actions to do good or think positively. It takes courage to stand up to temptation and the world out there. (It is just a casual association that I am making, but if Lewis wrote these prose excerpts during the war, this maybe the Covid times are like a biological war? (not meant to be offensive, just speculation).
I adore the Screwtape Letters. There's a lot to learn from them, and I've quoted some passages from the letters a few times in this forum. I'm a big fan of the thought exercise of approaching a problem from your opponents perspective. I would say his letter on war can be read in light of a pandemic without much difficulty. For those without the book here is an excerpt (for the unfamiliar, the book is written from the perspective of a demonic bureaucrat in Hell, giving advice to his nephew): You say you are "delirious with joy" because the European humans have started another of their wars. I see very well what has happened to you. You are not delirious; you are only drunk. Reading between the lines in your very unbalanced account of the patient's sleepless night, I can reconstruct your state of mind fairly accurately. For the first time in your career you have tasted that wine which is the reward of all our labours-the anguish and bewilderment of a human soul-and it has gone to your head... ...Let us therefore think rather how to use, than how to enjoy, this European war. For it has certain tendencies inherent in it which are, in themselves, by no means in our favour. We may hope for a good deal of cruelty and unchastity. But, if we are not careful, we shall see thousands turning in this tribulation to the Enemy, while tens of thousands who do not go so far as that will nevertheless have their attention diverted from themselves to values and causes which they believe to be higher than the self. I know that the Enemy disapproves many of these causes. But that is where He is so unfair. He often makes prizes of humans who have given their lives for causes He thinks bad on the monstrously sophistical ground that the humans thought them good and were following the best they knew. Consider too what undesirable deaths occur in wartime. Men are killed in places where they knew they might be killed and to which they go, if they are at all of the Enemy's party, prepared. How much better for us if all humans died in costly nursing homes amid doctors who lie, nurses who lie, friends who lie, as we have trained them, promising life to the dying, encouraging the belief that sickness excuses every indulgence, and even, if our workers know their job, withholding all suggestion of a priest lest it should betray to the sick man his true condition! And how disastrous for us is the continual remembrance of death which war enforces. One of our best weapons, contented worldliness, is rendered useless. In wartime not even a human can believe that he is going to live forever.
Never read them before but have been intrigued by others mentioning them. Have just been to Amazon where for the price for the Kindle edition they were practically giving them away. I now have a copy and shall next find the time to read them.
The audiobook is available on YouTube and John Cleese's voice performance is quite good. https://youtu.be/kbS7cmi0G38
My rector loves everything by C.S. Lewis, and he's referred to Screwtape in some of his sermons. Personally, I don't care for Lewis' stuff very much. If anyone likes his writings and can draw great lessons from them, more power to them.
Reading Mere Christianity is what brought me back to the Faith as a young man. His book answered every question and objection I had. Brilliant! I also love The Great Divorce and The Abolition of Man (which so appropriate for these times).