Demonic Linguistics

Dear Wormwood,

I am writing to commend you on your recent activity down below in the realms of relevance and blogospheres.

My particularly favorite turn of phrase came in a recent interview, where the individual claimed, “Like every generation before and after, we’re looking for Jesus—the same Jesus who can be found in the places he’s always been: in bread, in wine, in baptism, in the Word, in suffering, in community, and among the least of these.” This is excellent work, my dear Wormwood, worthy of true accolades amongst the word-smithing elites. We must keep as many of the Enemy's words as possible, while questioning, switching, or inverting one or two. Yes, keep the verb looking instead of obeying (or Hell forbid submitting). Maintain those horrifying words of love, inclusivity, community, and even baptism while sucking all the marrow of the definition. Blow, my dear Wormwood, with the pleasant breeze of prosperity or the mighty winds of adversity and eventually watch the breaking of both word and speaker.

This is how it was from the beginning, Wormwood, and you do well to emulate your Master. We must always whisper in the ear, “did he really say?” In the beginning was the Word, and so the beginning of every philosophy and action now not only involves what each individual does with that one Word, but every word thereafter.

Thus, as you have exhibited, we must first divide words from that Word. We must take words like love and sunder them fully from their Referent. Once we have unmoored the boat from the dock, so to speak, we are free to diabolical steering. A particularly effective method here is to continue entrenching in the humans' worldview one of our glorious victories, the Endarkenment, when we presented the utterly ludicrous separation of truth and fact, reason and faith. Because love is no longer moored to anything Other (whereby you understand I am speaking of the Enemy) or factual, it can become entirely relative, allowing us to redefine love as selfish, blindly accepting, and untethered to anything like justice, righteousness, or sacrifice. Because they have lost the standard of sweetness and goodness against which they could understand our artifice, we are free to feed them poisoned filth, their new delicacy! 

Once we have removed that Referent (you know of Whom I speak), and Man considers himself the new Lord of Language (foolish worms! No offense, my dear demon), then we have him. We can parade out the intellectuals who throw empty (but truly artistic) rebuttals at the enemy, reducing him to no more than an anti-intellectual, judgmental, and closed-minded individual (glorious words, these).

What a tremendous victory, my Wormwood! That very sentiment and word that (supposedly) compounded elements, hung gravity, schizemed atoms, hefted waters, moulded hands, and allowed rough iron to pierce that flesh – all to the goal of true love! - has become ours!

Continue your work within the Enemy's own supposed ranks, my dear Wormwood. Use the polished, the learned, the hollowed-out emotionally empathetic to bring along the poor, weak, lonely sheep who – often through the laziness and error of the Enemy's own camp! - have been left by the wayside, no Shepherd, no Word to warn them of the deadly predators right beside them.

Screwtape