The Screwtape Letters for Christian Teenagers
What you do after high school is one of the most important questions of a young person’s life. In many ways, this was a topic of a book written by C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters, first published in 1942.
This is the story of a fictional series of letters from a master demon, named Screwtape, to his nephew and apprentice demon, named Wormwood. These brief letters from the older Screwtape provide devilish advice to the younger demon about how to tempt and trap a “patient” who is a young man (his age isn’t specified, but we read he might be called into military service).
I imagine that this young man had not yet left his parents’ home and was possibly headed to college.
In the letters, the demons are focused on at least four things to keep the young man from staying faithful to Christ in his future efforts.
1. Keep from experiencing Jesus daily.
If Wormwood could get the student to only pray and experience the presence of God at church, then he could wear him down. They didn’t want the student to see Jesus and worship of God as a daily lifestyle, but only as an event he went to at church.
The effectiveness of this devilish strategy is seen today. A recent survey by the Barna Group reports that only 1 out of 10 young people, who were regular church-going Christians at home, remain Christians who regularly attend service and trust in Jesus and Scriptures. The same studies show that the best antidote to this loss of faith is having a daily joyful experience of Jesus.
This is the great thing about the Florida College summer camps, and it’s the great thing about Florida College, where daily Bible chapel and Bible classes and other daily devotions keep you praying, and singing, and living towards Jesus. Worship isn’t an event, it’s a lifestyle, and that keeps you connected to Christ. To be sure, all the employees and students at Florida College are sinners and seeking to be more faithful, but we’re doing it by daily seeking to follow Christ.
2. Avoid wisdom for how to live as a Christian.
Screwtape is constantly telling Wormwood to distract and deflect the young man from people and other sources of information that teach him HOW to live as Christian in a hostile world. The demon tempts the young man away from friends who can show him how to see God. They didn’t have cellphones back during the WWII era, but the demon encourages the young man to hang out with friends and to have adults in his life that didn’t read spiritual books, especially the Bible, and who only consumed popular secular media.
A recent survey of young people reports that the type of videos and other media content consumed daily is the biggest difference between resilient young Christians and those who wander from their faith in college. This latter unfaithful group read or watched 83% percent less spiritual content than young people who held onto their faith. That’s 99 hours per year vs 562 hours per year on average. The question is what kind of summer camp and what kind of a college campus will help keep you directing your eyes to books, music, images, and videos that will build up and not break down your faith?
Did you know that at Florida College all the faculty are this summer reviewing their course content and one of the major questions is how the curriculum can not only teach you the most important academic content, but how can it also provide wisdom for how to live as a Christian in this world? Did you know that last year we had several student groups, both males and females, who voluntarily met and worked to hold each other accountable for what type of things they viewed online so that they could best maintain their moral purity and focus on God? That should continue this next year, and I hope more will be a part of those intentional communities pursuing God’s wisdom in an ungodly world
3. Keep away from faithful older mentors.
Wormwood was always working to keep his young patient away from intergenerational relationships with honorable Christian teachers who he could aspire to be like, and away from honest teachers who would compassionately address real life challenges of faith: the doubts and failures that most of you experience in your Christian lives.
Did you know that, according to a recent survey, less than 35% of college professors in the US identified as firm believers in God? Another recent study reported that the single greatest predictor of whether a Christian student would remain faithful is whether they have a safe place to discuss and address their doubt and failures with sympathetic and loving friends and teachers.
This is why at Florida College all the faculty and staff are New Testament Christians dedicated to being a Christ-like example and honest friend to students, and why we have classes on “Apologetics” and the “Problem of Evil” where we can discuss challenges to our faith, and its why we encourage student led groups like “Sowers” and “Woven” and other devotions where students can discuss and deal with the various questions and weaknesses that we all have as Christians.
4. Focus on a career for money or worldly honor.
When the demons talk and work in The Screwtape Letters they are often trying to direct their patient towards work and a career that has worldly and entirely selfish motivations. They try to redirect the young man away from choosing a career in which he could serve God and others, and towards only what he’s interested in or the reputation it will give him in the eyes of other people. They don’t want him thinking about a godly vocation.
The author Frederick Buechner once said that “Your vocation in life is where your greatest joy meets the world’s greatest need.” That’s a powerful idea, that the place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.
And that’s why at Florida College every first-year student takes a personality test to help you determine what gives you joy and where your strengths are. And we provide opportunities for community service, servant leadership trips to distant locales, job internships with Christian businesses, and career advising from Christian counselors to help you consider how to have a fulfilling and successful vocation while also seeking first the Kingdom of God.
Part of the timeless power of C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters is it pulls back the curtain on a spiritual battle that is happening all around us. Ours is a world full of good and evil spirits but we can buffer ourselves from this by too often ignoring or disbelieving this underlying spiritual reality. We tend to focus too much on our bodies and the physical world. But the Apostle Paul reminds us that we need to be strong in our spiritual life and put on God’s armor to battle not flesh and blood, but Satan and other “powers of darkness” and “spiritual forces of evil.” (Ephesians 6:10-12)
My prayer for Christian teenagers is that, whatever they do after high school, whether it involves Florida College or not, they follow Christ to a place away from their parents’ home where they are armed and constantly being rearmed with a relationship with Jesus that gains faithful wisdom from experienced Christians for a lifetime of work that shows and shares the gospel of peace.*
*A previous version of this article was delivered as a presentation to parents and campers at Kamp Kennessee, a Florida College summer camp, June 20, 2025.
Image attribution: Chris Creagh, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons