Faith as a Means

In Screwtape’s seventh letter to Wormwood he suggests, “Once you have made the World an end, and faith a means, you have almost won your man, and it makes very little difference what kind of worldly end he is pursuing” (34).

This quote stuck out because it relates to the book we just finished reading in class—The Great Divorce. The mother Pam wants to see her son Michael so badly that she was “treating God only as a means to Michael” (99). But, if Pam wishes to see her son she must “learn to want Someone Else besides Michael” (98) and no longer use faith as a means to her worldly end.

This sort of connects to something I read for another class of mine about the philosopher Sartre. Sartre was an existentialist, who believed that we as humans try to authenticate ourselves through an act of will, stressing the freedom of choice and responsibility for the consequences of one’s acts.

Pam, then, could be said to be authenticating herself through her actions which the Spirit called a mistake—“‘All that ten years’ ritual of grief. Keeping his room exactly as he left it; keeping anniversaries; refusing to leave that house though Dick and Muriel were both wretched there’” (101-102). Pam is angered by the fact that her son was stolen away from her and she lets this event define her.

Even more than that, though, is the fact that Screwtape tells Wormwood that “you have almost won your man” (34) when faith is simply a means to what you desire most—and in this case, for Pam, faith is a means to Michael. Pam cannot journey toward the mountain because her mind is still controlled by the demons. She does not seem willing to “‘want God for His own sake’” (99).