Satan's Winning Strategy

In case you haven’t read about it, the devil doesn’t exist. Recent polling by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research has found that while seven in 10 U.S. adults believe in angels, when it comes to fallen ones – like the devil – it drops to 56 percent. A recent Gallup report found similar results with only 58 percent believing, down from 71 percent just two decades ago.

To be sure, belief in almost every other “spiritual” category is down as well: belief in God has dropped from 90 percent in 2001 to 74 percent in 2023; heaven from 83 percent to 69 percent; angels from 79 percent to 57 percent; and hell from 71 percent to 59 percent.

But dropping to 58 percent belief, it’s the devil that’s faring the worst. 

And he’s quite happy about it.

In The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis’ masterful fictional account of a senior devil, Screwtape, mentoring a younger devil, Wormwood, he notes the following in the preface: 

There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. They themselves are equally pleased by both errors, and hail a materialist or a magician with the same delight.

Later in the work, Screwtape writes the following to Wormwood:

I wonder you should ask me whether it is essential to keep the patient in ignorance of your own existence. That question, at least for the present phase of the struggle, has been answered for by the High Command. Our policy, for the moment, it to conceal ourselves…. When the humans disbelieve in our existence we lose all the pleasing results of direct terrorism…. On the other hand, when they believe in us, we cannot make them materialists and sceptics.

Then Lewis, writing in his normally prescient way, adds these words from Screwtape’s pen:

If once we can produce our perfect work – the Materialist Magician, the man, not using, but veritably worshipping, what he vaguely calls “Forces” while denying the existence of “spirits” – then the end of the war is in sight.

And that is precisely what the diminishing belief in Satan, and the increasing belief in all things paranormal,

… is achieving.

James Emery White

Sources

Holly Meyer, “Do You Believe in Angels? About 7 in 10 U.S. Adults Do, a New AP-NORC Poll Shows,” Associated Press, July 31, 2023, read online.

Bob Smietana, “As Organized Religion Falters, the Devil Falls On Hard Times,” Religion News Service, July 27, 2023, read online.

C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters.

About the Author

James Emery White is the founding and senior pastor of Mecklenburg Community Church in Charlotte, NC, and a former professor of theology and culture at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, where he also served as their fourth president. His latest book, Hybrid Church: Rethinking the Church for a Post-Christian Digital Age, is now available on Amazon or from your favorite bookseller. To enjoy a free subscription to the Church & Culture blog, visit churchandculture.org where you can view past blogs in our archive, read the latest church and culture news from around the world, and listen to the Church & Culture Podcast. Follow Dr. White on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram at @JamesEmeryWhite.

The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Christian Headlines.

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The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of CrosswalkHeadlines.

James Emery White is the founding and senior pastor of Mecklenburg Community Church in Charlotte, NC, and a former professor of theology and culture at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, where he also served as their fourth president. His latest book, Hybrid Church: Rethinking the Church for a Post-Christian Digital Age, is now available on Amazon or from your favorite bookseller. To enjoy a free subscription to the Church & Culture blog, visit churchandculture.org where you can view past blogs in our archive, read the latest church and culture news from around the world, and listen to the Church & Culture Podcast. Follow Dr. White on X, Facebook and Instagram at @JamesEmeryWhite.