If you’ve never read The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis, let me catch you up because it might be the most chillingly relevant book you’ve never picked up. Published in 1942, it’s a fictional collection of letters from a senior demon named Screwtape to his bumbling nephew Wormwood. The nephew has one job: to tempt a single human (referred to only as “the Patient”) away from faith and into damnation.

Here’s the twist: everything is written from the demon’s point of view. God is “the Enemy,” Hell runs like a messed-up office, and temptation usually shows up in small, sneaky ways, not big, obvious sins. Instead, Screwtape delights in the little stuff: distraction, pride, resentment, self-righteousness, and spiritual laziness. Lewis uses this upside-down lens to show us just how easy it is to drift off course without ever realizing it.

Reading it today feels… uncanny. It’s like Lewis time-traveled, took one look at our group chats and newsfeeds, and thought, “Oh yeah, this is prime Screwtape material.”

Distraction as a Weapon

Screwtape would love TikTok, not for the dances or dog videos, but for the endless stream of half-baked takes that eat hours of our lives. In Letter 1, Screwtape tells Wormwood to keep the Patient from thinking deeply. Don’t argue against truth, just distract him. Keep him “safe in the hands of the media,” if you will.

Fast forward to now: the news cycle is a slot machine, and we’re all pulling levers hoping for clarity but getting more noise. Screwtape’s strategy? Working perfectly.

Division Dressed Up as Righteousness

In Letter 7, Screwtape says it’s better if humans don’t believe in demons at all, but if they must believe in something, get them to latch onto ideologies. Let them fight over politics, culture wars, or even what type of milk belongs in coffee, as long as they stop seeing each other as human.

You don’t need demons with pitchforks when there are comment sections.

Pride in the Age of “Virtue”

Lewis was way ahead of his time in terms of performative morality. In Letter 14, Screwtape warns Wormwood that humility is dangerous, but if you can get someone to notice they’re being humble, you’ve flipped it into pride. In today’s world, that kind of trap looks a lot like virtue signaling, curated vulnerability, and arguments over who’s more “aware.”

Hashtags don’t save souls. But they sure make us feel like we’re doing something important.

Hope in Spite of It All

Despite the darkness, Lewis never leaves us in despair. Spoiler: Screwtape loses. The Patient finds grace and love, inconvenient and unglamorous as it is, wins, not in a fairy-tale way, but in a stubborn, resilient way that keeps whispering even when the world feels like it’s yelling.

Hell, in The Screwtape Letters, isn’t some fiery pit or horror movie set; it’s a bureaucratic nightmare. A soulless, paper-pushing machine where demons trade memos and pride themselves on red tape and inefficiency. It’s not dramatic; it’s exhausting. And lately, that image feels less like fiction and more like a metaphor for the world we’re trudging through.

Temptation doesn’t usually show up with a pitchfork and a neon sign. It’s quieter than that. It looks like endless emails that drain your creativity. Like news cycles that make you angry but change nothing. Like spending an hour “just checking” social media and realizing you forgot what you were even looking for in the first place. It’s the weight of too much information and not enough wisdom. The slow creep of cynicism disguised as savvy.

Here’s the kicker, most of us don’t even realize it’s happening. That’s Screwtape’s whole strategy: keep us comfortable, distracted, and busy. Not wicked, just numb. Numb enough to miss joy. Numb enough to stop asking big questions. Numb enough to think spiritual warfare sounds a little dramatic when really, it’s as subtle as choosing not to care.

Lewis got it. He saw that the real danger isn’t in losing your soul in one catastrophic moment, it’s in leaking it out, one overlooked decision at a time.

If Screwtape’s genius is in the slow fade, then our resistance starts with awareness. Choosing to pay attention. To unplug. To think. To hope. Maybe that’s the quiet rebellion we need right now.

Perhaps the lesson is this: if you find yourself overwhelmed by the noise, chaos, and endless scrolling, take a breath. Read something eternal. Talk to someone face-to-face. Do something kind without making a fuss because Screwtape may know how to exploit our weaknesses, but he’s never been great at hope.