Dear Wormwood
A modern-day adaptation.
As I walked past the nurses’ station earlier this week, a sign pinned to the wall caught my attention: a rainbow-colored heart beneath the word “PRIDE,” emblazoned in bold letters. I paused for a moment, struck by the irony. Here was one of the oldest and most deadly of the seven deadly sins, its name displayed openly and proudly for all to see yet almost no one seemed to notice the deeper irony…
Letter IV: The Religion of the Self
My dear Wormwood,
You have misunderstood our objective.
You wrote to me triumphantly that the humans have become “more individualistic,” as though individualism itself were the victory. It is not.
Individualism is merely the soil.
The harvest is godlessness.
The human creature was never meant to exist alone. He was made for communion: with God above him, with family beside him, with neighbors around him, and with generations before and after him. He was meant to inherit a language he did not invent, customs he did not choose, stories he did not write, and obligations he did not negotiate.
Most importantly, he once received an answer to the question that terrifies him most:
Who am I?
For centuries, the answer was remarkably simple:
I am a beloved child of God.
From that one sentence followed an entire architecture of meaning.
He had a Creator, and therefore a purpose.
He had parents, and therefore obligations.
He had neighbors, and therefore duties.
He had ancestors, and therefore gratitude.
He had children, and therefore sacrifice.
He had a Church, and therefore a truth larger than himself.
This is precisely the architecture we must destroy.
And notice how much easier it is to destroy when the human creature no longer believes he belongs to anyone.
First, separate him from God.
Then separate him from his family.
Then separate him from his neighbors.
Then persuade him that his community is merely a collection of strangers whose interests compete with his own.
Finally, leave him alone with himself.
The Americans have been particularly useful in this regard.
Their churches are empty. Their families fracture. Their communities become increasingly transactional. Their politics becomes increasingly tribal. Their entertainment becomes increasingly narcissistic. Their neighbors become abstractions, categorized by political allegiance, race, class, sexuality, religion, or some other dividing characteristic.
And then comes the beautiful part.
Once the bonds between human beings have weakened, hatred becomes easier.
A man is much less inclined to love his neighbor when he no longer knows his neighbor.
A woman is much less inclined to sacrifice for a community she regards as nothing more than an obstacle to personal fulfillment.
A citizen is much more willing to despise millions of people whom he encounters only as caricatures on a screen.
The old Christian command was inconveniently simple:
Love your neighbor.
We have found it much more effective to make the neighbor into an enemy.
Do not allow the patient to think of his political opponent as a person with a soul. Give him instead a category.
Do not allow him to encounter the immigrant as a human being. Give him an abstraction.
Do not allow him to encounter the Christian, atheist, conservative, progressive, homosexual, heterosexual, rich man, poor man, or stranger as a person. Give him a tribe.
Then watch.
A society of persons can practice charity.
A society of tribes practices suspicion.
A society of neighbors can practice sacrifice.
An atomized society demands rights.
And a society in which everyone is primarily concerned with protecting his own identity has very little energy left for God.
This is where your particular assignment becomes important.
The Americans have become increasingly uncertain about what their identities mean. They have inherited fewer common religious and cultural traditions than their grandparents did, while simultaneously being told that the individual must construct himself from nothing.
You can imagine the resulting anxiety.
The creature who no longer knows what he belongs to desperately wants something to belong to.
So give him identity.
Tell him:
You are whatever you say you are.
Do you see the elegance?
The old religion said:
You received your identity.
Our new religion says:
You manufacture it.
The old religion said:
You belong to something larger than yourself.
Our new religion says:
The self is the largest thing there is.
The old religion demanded humility.
Our new religion demands affirmation.
And affirmation is one of our finest inventions.
We do not even need the patient to become wicked in the conventional sense. We merely need him to become fascinated with himself.
Once the self becomes sacred, every disagreement becomes persecution. Every criticism becomes hatred. Every limitation becomes oppression. Every inherited tradition becomes suspicious. Every moral boundary becomes an assault upon personal authenticity.
And once identity becomes sacred, the human creature will defend it with the fervor of a religious convert.
This is why I particularly enjoy the transformation of Pride.
Observe the name.
Once, Pride was understood as a vice: the ancient temptation to elevate oneself above one’s proper place.
Now the word has been rehabilitated and placed upon banners.
There is something almost unbearably amusing about it.
For thousands of years, we whispered to mankind:
You shall be as gods.
Now they proclaim it themselves.
The spectacle is not nearly as important as the symbolism.
Our triumph is not simply that people march, nor that they wear particular colors, nor that they celebrate particular sexual identities.
Our triumph is that the creature who was once taught to say,
“I am not the center of the universe,”
is increasingly being taught to say,
“My identity is the center of the universe.”
That is a much more durable victory.
And so we have given them a secular religion.
It has its sacred vocabulary, its rituals, its festivals, its symbols, its moral commandments, its heresies, its evangelists, and its public confessions of allegiance. It offers belonging to people who have forgotten how to belong.
Most importantly, it offers what every religion must offer:
meaning.
The difference is that our religion locates meaning entirely within the self.
The Christian says:
“I belong to Christ.”
The modern disciple says:
“This is who I am.”
The Christian asks:
“What does God ask of me?”
The modern disciple asks:
“What does my authentic self demand?”
The Christian understands the self as something to be offered.
The modern disciple understands the self as something to be expressed.
And expression without transcendence eventually becomes worship.
But do not make the mistake of thinking that this is our final objective.
The identity itself is not the prize.
God is the prize.
More precisely, the destruction of faith in God is the prize.
For as long as the human creature believes in God, he possesses an authority above the self.
He can say:
There is something higher than my desires.
There is a truth I did not invent.
There is a moral law I did not write.
There is a neighbor whom I am commanded to love.
There is a Creator before whom I am accountable.
These are dangerous thoughts.
They place limits upon the self.
They make repentance possible.
They make humility possible.
They make forgiveness possible.
They make sacrifice possible.
And, worst of all, they make love possible.
Therefore, Wormwood, do not attack belief in God directly if you can avoid it.
Make God unnecessary.
That is far more effective.
Give the creature endless entertainment so that he never becomes silent enough to pray.
Give him politics so that he always has an enemy.
Give him identity so that he no longer needs vocation.
Give him self-expression so that he no longer understands self-denial.
Give him therapeutic language so that every sin becomes an injury and every obligation becomes oppression.
Give him a thousand communities organized around fragments of the self, so that he never discovers the universal community of mankind.
And above all, keep him atomized.
Let him live among millions while feeling alone.
Let him have hundreds of acquaintances while possessing no genuine community.
Let him communicate constantly while rarely encountering another person face to face.
Let him believe that freedom means having no obligations to anyone.
Then, when he finally asks why he is lonely, anxious, angry, and dissatisfied, give him another identity to adopt.
Anything will do.
Just do not let him look upward.
Do not let him discover that his loneliness might be the consequence of having been severed from God and neighbor.
Do not let him discover that freedom without communion becomes isolation.
Do not let him discover that the self cannot save the self.
And whatever you do, do not let him encounter Christianity in its fullness.
Because Christianity makes a scandalous claim that undermines our entire enterprise:
You are loved before you accomplish anything.
Not because society has approved you.
Not because you have constructed the correct identity.
Not because you have achieved perfect authenticity.
Simply because you are a creature loved by God.
That doctrine is intolerably dangerous.
It means the human being does not need to manufacture a self worthy of worship.
It means he can repent.
It means he can receive.
It means he can belong.
It means he can forgive and be forgiven.
It means the stranger can become a brother.
It means the enemy can become a neighbor.
It means the isolated individual can become part of a Body.
And it means that beneath every constructed identity lies something far more profound:
a human soul made in the image of God.
So keep him looking inward.
Keep him asking:
“Who am I?”
But never allow him to ask the more dangerous questions:
“Whose am I?”
and
“Whom am I called to love?”
Because the first question can produce an obsession.
The second can produce belonging.
And the third can produce a saint.
Your affectionate uncle,
Ba'al Zabub