The Gelsemine Correspondence: Concerning a Christian Home

Welcome readers to our first issue of the Gelsemine Correspondence! In case you've missed my last post, the Gelsemine Correspondence is a serial that's a reimagining of the Screwtape Letters. Written as if two demons are corresponding about how best to lead a teenage girl astray, I pray that it encourages and blesses you.

I believe C.S Lewis said it best in the introduction to the Screwtape Letters:

"I have no intention of explaining how the correspondence which I now offer to the public fell into my hands.... Readers are advised to remember that the devil is a liar."

And with that in mind, I give you the very first issue of the Gelsemine Correspondence. ♥

Dearest Foxglove,

So, you've finally been assigned to your subject. What a stir you caused in the Archive branch when the communication came through about your assignment. Everyone in the G.A.S.H (Grouping of Archives about Stygian Humans) Department was in an uproar for the rest of the period. Really, darling, you would think they had no confidence in you!

I, of course, never doubted you for a moment. Why should your failure with the American Civil War define your future? It's not your fault that you needed several centuries to re-cooperate. I do hope your time in rehabilitation has screwed your head on straight, and you understand what an important assignment this is.

I have reviewed your file extensively, and I am happy to offer you my services as an older, wiser, and much more experienced mentor in the field of leading astray those sniveling creatures that bear the image of the Enemy.

First, let us consider your subject. You have been assigned an individual that is the hinge of the human race: a girl. How old did you say she was? Fifteen? Sixteen? What a small spattering of years against the landscape of time, and yet what a blot those sixteen years are on the canvas of our success! She's never been properly guided or shaped before, and now she considers herself a servant of the Enemy. If you do not work diligently to unravel the threads the Enemy has already begun to stitch on her heart, you will find her soul completely locked away from you before you know it.

It would have been best if you had had charge of her from the moment she was pushed into the world, but we will make the best of it. As it was, she ended up in the hands of Oleander, and that weak idiot certainly didn't understand the treasure the young soul is.

Most young tempters, like you, sigh and moan at the thought of their first case being a child- in your case an adolescent. They are fools who forget that they have millennia to feed on humans and lead them off the Enemy's path and deeper into the house of Our Father Below.

They miss the priceless jewels these young immortals actually are.

From the moment a new baby enters the world, dumped unceremoniously into a sterile white hospital room, they are branded with the Enemy's mark. He actually touches them before they enter that black mess of Planet Earth, and He spends nine long months crafting them to perfection- or as near perfection as they will be with that cursed and fallen soul of theirs.

During these nine months, they are completely out of our reach. They are too under-developed for us to plant thoughts in their little heads, for what could we tempt them to do? Kick their mother's side all day and night?

But they are completely and irreversibly His, already marked with the promise of Forever. He actually takes the time to build them to His liking, and then He kisses them between the eyes and gives them a taste of His love, only to turn His back and throw them into the twisted pit of the real world. 

You will note, Foxglove, that this is why we have had such success convincing the humans that these half-formed organisms are not truly human. We teach them to avoid using words like baby and tell them that they are not really people, not like they are. And so we turn them in the opposite direction, and the horrifying reality, the one we cannot change, the one that says that a wriggling unborn child is the Enemy’s greatest delight, slips right past their simple little heads. 

By the time this red jellybean of a girl is born, she will be assigned to one of our tempters, and our real work begins. 

Consider a child. How easily led astray children are! If handled correctly, with the right measure of temptation and guidance from someone like yourself, they will be completely in our clutches by the time they reach the age of your girl. Teach them to regard their desires as the highest form of morality and pleasure, and you will be sculping what will become self-centeredness and perverse lusts in adulthood. Teach them to think that they are absolutely wonderful and that will become pride, a belief that they are always in the right breeds disrespect, and so on. You see how easy it is to handle a child, and why Oleander was disposed of. 

Because, my dear Foxglove, once a child is led astray, we have toppled the base of the Enemy’s pyramid. He actually builds His future off of them. This is why we focus so intently on children, and why it is such a pity that you have not had charge of your girl since she first entered the world. 

But we will do the best we can, and Oleander has done us one favor already: he never discouraged her interest in the faith, which means that while she calls herself a “Christian”, we have an excellent foundation to begin molding her perception of the church, and those other Christians around her. 

We will begin by subtly changing the way she views the home she is being raised in.

You say that she is growing up in a Christian home. I don’t need any more details to imagine what this means: a short and irreverent prayer before each meal, strict, hypocritical standards regarding what movies she is allowed to see, even stricter rules concerning what clothes she is allowed to wear, and sometimes, perhaps, even the dreaded family-worship. 

(As an aside, you must conspire with Venefica, who is charge of the father, to never allow family-worship to get out of hand. The Enemy is always present in those times, hovering close to observe as the family listens to the reading of a couple lines from His book and then goes through the motions of actually talking to him. It makes me shudder to think of it–vile, detestable practice! Take care to not be tricked into false security, Foxglove. The family that worships together has no idea of the ways they are pushing the Enemy's kingdom.) 

Your girl has lived nearly her whole life with these standards. Perhaps she imagines that they make her happy. Perhaps, at the very advanced age of sixteen, she imagines she has reached “personal convictions” and she pretends to be happy about the standards imposed on her. 

Poke holes in that happiness whenever you have the chance. Twist her thoughts until she starts to wonder why can’t I go see that movie with Jenna’s family? And these shorts aren’t that short. And even, Mom and Dad are so old-fashioned. If they could just see it from my point-of-view they would understand. 

It’s a tale as old as time itself, Foxglove. By making her question the standards of her parents, you have effectively made her believe that it’s not a spiritual issue, when in fact it very much is. You will make her begin to be disrespectful and unhappy with her parents, and you will make her think that she is so much more “in-the-know” than they are. And this, dear Foxglove, is where pride will begin to spawn for her. 

The other major benefit to the Christian home is that you will be able to easily lull her into complacency. 

No doubt she’s heard that despicable story of how the Enemy’s son wormed his way into humanity just to display pathetic weakness and actually die for them and then claim it as an act of great love a hundred times. 

This Story is dangerous. So dangerous, in fact, that I have had patients slip from my hands in the blink of an eye after a brief encounter with just a touch of it.

So therefore, you must do whatever you can to keep her from realizing the true power of this story. Let her mind wander during each church sermon. Keep her pretty little head constantly coming back to think about her and never about Him. 

And teach her, Foxglove, to believe herself fully capable of understanding the Story. She’s heard it a million times, why would she need to hear it again? She’s not the one who needs to hear it after all- she's already saved and on the path to Heaven.

Such thoughts keep her happily unaware that the true power of the Story is found in repetition and careful meditation on the particulars of it, and that is just how we want her to think.

Until my next letter, heed my advice and memorize it well. You will need every piece of it, especially with your record. 

Sincerely, 

Lady Gelsemine, Senior Temptress and head of T.E.A.R (Tempters Engaged in Activities leading to Ruin).