Memo to Demons: “The Gift Box Principle”

In my last memo I began to describe the delicious deception I call “the gift box principle”. Your client’s life (their experiences and circumstances) is the “gift box” but the real point, in the Enemy’s plan, is that they find and enjoy Him in it. Your job is to keep them completely preoccupied with the gift box until they drop into their well-deserved graves.

As I intimated in my last memo, the human scum is easier to keep if they have a pretty gift box, a nice life. When things are good they more easily forget the Enemy because they are delighted with the wrappings. This compromise, allowing them to experience happiness, is regrettable but we must keep our eyes on the end game. You see, if they go through life not wanting Him, He eventually gives way to their demand. Fortunately for us he honors their choice. We have to encourage the right choice. Once here they never want him again.

Far more gratifying for us is if their lives are uncertain and painful. But we play that game at a risk. If we get carried away by the pleasure of their pain and think we have them in hand -- devoid of hope, incapable of faith -- they sometimes turn to Him. The wretches see, quite correctly, no other hope. The trick is always to maintain the deception of hope in other things while we increase their fears, self-loathing, and pain. Put the thought into their minds that with just a little more effort or the acquisition of more things or another experience they will get relief and even the continuous pleasure they instinctively want. I say “instinctively” because He has made them for continuous pleasure and they seem to know that. But it has to be His way and His time or not at all. You see how He is. And as I’ve said elsewhere, He is a hedonist at heart. “In His presence is fullness of joy”. Ugh. Do not let it enter their minds the value of knowing and enjoying Him. Give them pleasure if you must.

If you keep a fine balance you can win in three ways. You can feed on their daily misery, rob them of the gift (Him) and not even leave them a pretty gift box. Ultimately their lives without Him will be discarded like used Christmas wrap and they will have nothing. I can’t tell you the pleasure I find in that.

Apollyon. (Written in imitation of C. S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters)