And in Lewis's novel The Screwtape Letters, the demonic Screwtape instructs his pupil Wormwood to mislead his human "patient" by using the convoluted "progressive" concept of "social justice" in order to twist what appears to be Good into Evil and seduce the person into sin:
On the other hand we do want, and want very much, to make men treat Christianity as a means; preferably, of course, as a means to their own advancement, but, failing that, as a means to anything -- even to social justice. The thing to do is to get a man at first to value social justice as a thing which the Enemy [God] demands, and then work him on to the stage at which he values Christianity because it may produce social justice. For the Enemy will not be used as a convenience (pp. 108-9).
Copyright © 2010 by David J. Theroux
Read the concluding Part 3 of this series on C. S. Lewis' political philosophy at the Evangelical Portal .
David J. Theroux is Founder, President, and Chief Executive Officer of The Independent Institute and Publisher of The Independent Review. He received his B.S., A.B., and M.S. from the University of California, Berkeley, and his M.B.A. from the University of Chicago. Books produced by Mr. Theroux have received two Mencken Awards for Best Book, seven Sir Antony Fisher International Memorial Awards for Best Book, two Benjamin Franklin Awards, two Independent Publisher Book Awards, and three Choice Magazine Awards for Outstanding Book. He is Founder and President of the C.S. Lewis Society of California, and he was founding Vice President and Director of Academic Affairs for the Cato Institute and founding President of the Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy. Mr. Theroux has directed and published over seventy scholarly books, as well as articles and reviews that have appeared in USA Today, Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Times, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Dallas Morning News, Insight, other publications, and he has appeared on ABC, MSNBC, CNN, C-SPAN, NPR, Voice of America, and other local, national, and international TV and radio networks and programs.
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