my new motto

Jedidiah Jenkins is brilliant.

My dear Wormwood,  

I received your letter this morning and I must say I am not the least bit pleased. You brag and gloat that you got the face of the world’s largest youth movement to go mad. To tear off his clothes and cry out to the Enemy in the streets for all the world to see. You list the lies you whispered in his ear as if it was some brilliant chess move. I understand that you think this is a huge victory, but I’m afraid you are terribly wrong. You fool. You have ruined everything. You had a perfect opportunity to inflate his pride, to make him believe it was indeed his voice and vision that woke the world up to love and justice. You could have coached him to be eloquent and poised, and in so doing, trick the world into giving him the credit. These millions of disgustingly idealistic and optimistic young people could have believed that this man is the author of love and justice. You could have distracted them completely from the ideas of love and justice. You could have distracted them completely from The Enemy and His work in the individual hearts and minds of young people. You could have made them think ‘I’ll never be that smart, that creative, that loving, that handsome, that true, so I might as well do nothing.’  

But now, oh, what have you done? You’ve ruined the work that was started. You not only robbed us of the power of pride over the man, but now you’ve robbed us of the youth who look to him. I already see my fears coming true. The youth are now looking beyond the madness, beyond the man. They are looking at the ideas. They are looking at the Enemy. They are seeing their own flaws and calling them to the surface. They are loving the man behind the madness and seeing themselves in him. They are cleaving to the Enemy and singing songs of strength, brotherhood, and victory over evil. They are doing the most dangerous thing of all: they are giving grace and holding strong to the principles of love and justice. They now have no idol. They now have no icon. They only have the very things you were supposed to distract them from: the core message. I’m afraid all might be lost.  

I am convening an emergency meeting of devils and demons this very evening to do damage control. Our only hope is to empower the rumors and lies and convince these humans that mistakes and madness poison the message. It is a weak defense, I know, but it may be all you’ve left us with. 

With deep regret that I did not train you well enough, your devastated uncle, Screwtape. (this is from a conversation I had with Tom Shadyac, who used the example above to paint the truth of all of this)