The C.S. Lewis Quote You Need to Memorize

Satan’s favorite tactic

There’s a reason C.S. Lewis is far and away Christians’ most-quoted author and a favorite of millions. His ability to explain concepts most of us struggle to put into words remains invaluable even 60 years after his passing.

Though Lewis has many memorable quotes, there’s one particular paragraph that keeps proving itself to be true over and over in today’s discourses. In The Screwtape Letters, written from the perspective of a veteran demon teaching his nephew how to tempt humans, he had this to say:

“We direct the fashionable outcry of each generation against those vices of which it is least in danger and fix its approval on the virtue nearest to that vice which we are trying to make endemic. The game is to have them running about with fire extinguishers whenever there is a flood, and all crowding to that side of the boat which is already nearly gunwale under.”

In other words, the truth we most need to hear is safely hidden from us if we can be convinced that the opposite of that truth is the real concern.

Notice, the play is not to get us to believe a false teaching. Instead, if outright deception hasn’t worked on us, Satan will get us to put our focus on less relevant truths. In the same way a fire extinguisher is a life-saving tool that ends up rendered entirely useless in a flood, some truths are due a hearty “amen,” but they don’t need a lot of attention when they aren’t a pressing issue.

Could he be any more spot-on? Any time we get close to a sensitive truth, the reflexive instinct to hedge from the other side kicks in. Once you grasp this deadly tactic you can’t help but see what I call C.S. Lewis’ fire department springing up everywhere.

A few examples

Submission

“Wives, be subject to your own husbands, as to the Lord” (Ephesians 5:22). It is almost impossible to hear someone explain what that sentence means without starting with caveats. “We’ll it doesn’t mean he gets to run over her” and “But the husband has a job too!” Amen, that’s true. But can you tell me what it does mean?

Submission is the command given to the wife. We have to be able to define it on its own and then define the husband’s command on its own before we can get into the interplay between the two. Imagine bizarro world where every time someone posted Ephesians 5:25 about husbands loving their wives, the first 10 comments were “But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t have to submit!” It would be ridiculous—just as ridiculous as it is now.

Yes, domineering husbands are a problem. But we have a far larger problem of women “wearing the pants” and driving the family, sometimes covertly and sometimes overtly. We live in a time where some almost think women can do no wrong, even saying that if there’s a problem in the marriage it wouldn’t have happened if the husband had done his job. These things won’t change until we can tell them what command they are supposed to keep.

Overbearing church leaders

I’m a big advocate for assertive, authoritative church leadership. But every discussion of authoritative leadership brings out people who are nervous about authoritarian leadership.

That’s certainly a ditch we can fall into, but it’s strange to worry about that ditch when far more churches are in the other ditch of having leaders who are driven by the will of the people rather than the Word. In the day of “the customer is always right” seeker-sensitive churches, constantly worrying about overbearing leaders is a misplaced concern.

Idolatry of _____

In recent years it’s become a popular tactic to warn Christians about overdoing their love of good things by casting them as potential idols. “Idolatry of the family,” “idolatry of health,” etc. While these things certainly can be idolized, take a look around.

We have young people actively putting off marriage and children for the sake of careers and “experiences” and you want to lecture the people who marry and multiply? We are surrounded by people in increasingly poor physical health and you want to chide the people who take care of themselves? No, the real idol of self-indulgence is creating perpetual consumers who don’t want families and live by what feels good in the moment.

Christian Nationalism

One of the biggest boogiemen in the Christian world today is Christian Nationalism. There’s a lot of hand-wringing that Christians might seize the levers of political power and eventually even force conversions by the sword and create a pure theocracy. As with each of these, they’re right that that would be wrong.

But 1) nobody is advocating that and 2) what are we more in danger from—Christians forcing our morality on people, or their morality being forced on us?

We live in a country where minors can get gender reassignment treatments, abortion happens by the millions, crime goes unpunished in many of our biggest cities, drag queens (read: predators) get access to kids, people can get fired for not using someone’s imaginary pronouns, you can’t watch a sporting event with your kids without 293 ads for gambling and alcohol, but what we really need to rail against is the person who says “You know, Sunday blue laws were nice?”

Give me a break.

Modesty

You would be hard-pressed to find any Christian who says a woman’s dress (or anything else) is an excuse for a man to ogle her. But any time modesty comes up, somebody insists what we should really be talking about is men’s need to keep their eyes to themselves.

But everybody agrees lust is wrong, men should control themselves, and women shouldn’t be objectified. However, a lot of people are mixed up on the importance of modest dress for women and need to hear the truth about it.

The list could go on.

You can take any of the day’s sacred cows—therapy, race matters, gentle parenting, etc.—and see Christians defending the drowning world with fire extinguisher in hand. This tells you just how clever Satan is. Even in telling the truth he can get us fighting the wrong battles.

This is a crucial lesson in discernment: the church’s internal battle today is less about truths and more about sensibilities.

A lot of Christians are almost perfectly aligned with truth and yet still miss the point entirely. Sensibilities are about whom you’re trying to please, which direction you’re pointed in. Notice with each of these the sensibility is pointed more toward what the world finds palatable.

A feminist world doesn’t want to hear about women’s submission or modesty, so we reroute those teachings to avoid the sore spot. A country that doesn’t want God telling them what to do will amen heartily with Christians who condemn Christian government.

Christian, our sensibilities have to be aligned with God. We are not people-pleasers: we are here to be pleasing to the Holy One (Ephesians 5:10). And pleasing Him in this matter means putting the fire extinguisher down and meeting the need of the hour.

So while you might not need to memorize the Lewis quote word-for-word, keeping the idea in the back of your mind will serve you well. Watch out for Lewis’ fire department and their endless supply of extinguishers that do nothing to get us out of this deluge.

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Notes

Check out my new YouTube show, Cultural Breakdown!

In the inaugural episode I break down the Harrison Butker speech that broke the internet.

Don’t have time to watch? The audio is also published to the Church Reset podcast feed (Apple, Spotify, or on any other podcast app), where you can hear Cultural Breakdown and the articles I post to this site.

And, as always, check out Think Deeper Podcast. On this week’s episode we discuss Pharisaism in the church.