Advice to Wormwood

My dear Wormwood,

It is reported to me that the pastor of the church under your scrutiny is encouraging his people to be ministers. Be warned, this is dangerous stuff.

Do everything in your power to keep the distinctions between the ministry and the people. Two classes of Christians, Wormwood. Two classes. The first group should be the priests, ministers, pastors, elders—call them what you will. They are the ones who should have the secret language, they are the ones who should do the praying, preaching, witnessing, etc. etc. etc. They are the religious class.

By exalting the first class and not confusing the two classes, you enable the second and much larger class to do nothing at all. Instead of praying for others, they should go to the first religious class to be prayed for. The second class of common people should not need to witness or share the gospel, they should leave it to the ministers (that way the ministers of the first class are overburdened and burned out, which is an added benefit to our cause .) The people of the second class should not be encouraged to read their Bibles, but they should be encouraged to leave it to those who have been trained for Bible study. They should not be encouraged to sing in church but to allow a choir to do that for them. After all, they are not professional musicians, and are not trained to sing.

More deliciously, we have infiltrated many of the places of Bible training and have planted ultra liberal views so as to infect the ministry class of people. Further the study of God can be cloaked in mysterious terminology and religious language that common people can not understand. Even so, quite frankly, we have not even begun to approach the “Golden Age” back in what they call the Middle Ages where we could keep the Bible in a different language from the people. In those days, Bibles were not available and so rare that they were locked up and the common man did not have access to them. Now, that was the good old days and may we return to them.

By the way, encourage your pastor and ministers to always use the King James Version or the oldest and most archaic version of the Bible possible. The use of a version far from the language of the common people is always preferred. Otherwise, they might actually understand what the Bible is saying.

The use of religious sounding language is also good. Only the church members will understand it and the unsaved will have no idea of what the religious terminology means. I was always disappointed that we could never persuade the “Prostestants” in the Reformation to retain the use of Latin in their churches. But can’t win them all.

Wormwood, discourage any concept of the priesthood of the believer and concepts that the believer actually has direct access to God and to the Bible. This should be avoided at all costs. We don’t want the average church member to think that he or she has any actual communication with You know Who, or believe that He can actually speak to their lives.

The so called Christian Life should be for the priests and ministers only. Keep the common man and woman away from these concepts. We find that sometimes that they begin to take what the Bible says seriously and actually try to place the precepts into their own lives. This could result in disaster to our infernal kingdom.

So Wormwood, encourage a sharp distinction between ministers and the people. Encourage them to avoid concepts like believing that they themselves are “priests.” Cloud their minds from remembering that “You know Who” actually stepped down to walk the earth as a mere man and did not even choose to come as a member of the priesthood or even as a member of the priestly tribe of Levi.

Encourage the concept that they need to leave religion to the priests and to exalt modern day Pharisees as those who have the requisite knowledge of the things of God. Disenfranchise them of the rights that “You Know Who” has granted to them.

They shall not be “priests and kings.” Not now and not ever.

Your Uncle,

SCREWTAPE