Issue No. 555 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting invites you re-read a classic book by C.S. Lewis—and to view the new movie, Nefarious, opening on April 14. And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies), click here for over 550 book reviews, and click here for my reviews of The Case for Easter and Contagious Faith.
The pokes-in-the-ribs in The Screwtape Letters, the classic by C.S. Lewis, toy with our holy ground comforts of meetings, pamphlets, policies, movements, causes, and crusades! Whew! Convicting!
Nefarious—A Modern Screwtape Letters!
Really, Pearson? You now want me to read or re-read (or listen to) the C.S. Lewis classic, The Screwtape Letters? Ok. I can do that! Good idea. After all it was Lewis who said, “It is a good rule, after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between.”
But then…you’re also urging me to see the new movie, Nefarious, (opening April 14)? Really, John? Is this your week-after-Easter spiritual growth next step for me: dinner and a movie? Well—I’m all ears (and eyes). Go ahead—make my day!
It’s fairly simple, my faithful eNews reader. Just watch the news. Evil raises its grotesque head every day: shootings, scams, scandals, shameful sexuality. Add a daily dose of sacrilege, sleaze, smut, and selfishness—and sin is feeling right at home. Or, more accurately, Satan and his stooges are parading through town—undeterred it seems.
You’ll recall that The Screwtape Letters, by C.S. Lewis (1898-1963), is a series of 31 short letters from Uncle Screwtape, a senior demon to “Our Father Below” (Satan) to his young nephew, Wormwood (also on the same team). Screwtape’s letters urge the novice demon, Wormwood, to cajole, manipulate and deceive his “patient” so Hell can snatch another win.
Screwtape labels Holy God as the “Enemy” and his tutelage of Wormwood is what one person has called “at once wildly comic, deadly serious, and strikingly original.”
View this four-minute interview of Max McLean who plays Screwtape on stage.
Screwtape (played by Max McLean) instructs Wormwood, “All the healthy and out-going activities which we want him to avoid can be inhibited and nothing given in return, so that at least he may say, as one of my own patients said on his arrival down here, ‘I now see that I spent most of my life in doing neither what I ought nor what I liked.’”
Screwtape: “I do not think you will have much difficulty in keeping the patient in the dark. The fact that ‘devils’ are predominantly comic figures in the modern imagination will help you. If any faint suspicion of your existence begins to arise in his mind, suggest to him a picture of something in red tights, and persuade him that since he cannot believe in that (it is an old textbook method of confusing them) he therefore cannot believe in you.”
And this: “You should always try to make the patient abandon the people or food or books he really likes in favour of the ‘best’ people, the ‘right’ food, the ‘important’ books.”
“Let him, if he has any bent that way, write a book about it; that is often an excellent way of sterilising the seeds which the Enemy plants in a human soul.”
Remind me again, John—how The Screwtape Letters and the movie, Nefarious, relate to each other—and to me?
Once again—it’s fairly simple. Nefarious showcases an inmate on Death Row—just hours before his execution. The final checklist requires a psychiatrist to affirm that the convicted serial killer is sane. (Did I mention that the inmate is demon-possessed and prefers to be called “Nefarious.” And…did I mention that the psychiatrist is an atheist?) Yikes. Fasten your seatbelt and view this movie trailer:
Watch this two-minute movie trailer for Nefarious—and see why critics are calling it “a modern Screwtape Letters.”
The Nefarious filmmakers describe the movie as a “spiritual thriller” (It’s rated “R” for some disturbing content. Hmmm. My local news channels in Los Angeles should add an “R” almost every evening. Yikes.) Visit the website here to learn more and purchase tickets at a location near you. Click here for group discussion resources and click here for the EPK (electronic press kit), including how they filmed the movie at a working prison in Oklahoma.
POP QUIZ! Who said the following? Screwtape or Nefarious? Do you believe, as the Apostle Peter wrote, that “The Devil is poised to pounce, and would like nothing better than to catch you napping” (1 Peter 5)?
"Who Said This?" Quiz:
_____ 1. “In a week or two you will be making him doubt whether the first days of his Christianity were not, perhaps, a little excessive. Talk to him about ‘moderation in all things’. If you can once get him to the point of thinking that ‘religion is all very well up to a point’, you can feel quite happy about his soul. A moderated religion is as good for us as no religion at all—and more amusing.”
_____ 2. “You ignorant sack-of-meat. You think your atheism will protect you? Hell is full of pathetic trash who thought the same as you. Who spent their lives boldly proclaiming their views on how the universe functions—never contemplating that they could be wrong. You should see them now.”
_____ 3. “‘I played the flute, and you wouldn’t dance. I played a dirge and you wouldn’t weep.’ You don’t believe me when I say I’m a demon—and you don’t believe me when I say I’m not. So which story do you want me to tell?”
_____ 4. “The real use of Jokes or Humour is in quite a different direction, and it is specially promising among the English who take their ‘sense of humour’ so seriously that a deficiency in this sense is almost the only deficiency at which they feel shame. Humour is for them the all-consoling and (mark this) the all-excusing, grace of life. Hence it is invaluable as a means of destroying shame.” [More on humor here!]
_____ 5. “Our business is to get them away from the eternal, and from the Present. It is far better to make them live in the Future. Hence nearly all vices are rooted in the future. Gratitude looks to the past and love to present; fear, avarice, lust, and ambition look ahead.” [More on the Present here.]
_____ 6. “The cross was our greatest mistake. We thought we’d lost—until my Master realized man still wants to be his own god. To serve no one but himself... Whereas the carpenter demands—as the price for his ‘suffering routine’—that you fall to your knees and worship him.”
_____ 7. “Looking round your patient’s new friends I find that the best point of attack would be the borderline between theology and politics.”
ANSWERS: Read The Screwtape Letters and go see the movie, Nefarious.
To order from Amazon, click on the title for The Screwtape Letters, by C.S. Lewis. Listen on Libro (3 hours, 36 minutes). Note: a second audiobook is also featured on Libro.
YOUR WEEKLY STAFF MEETING QUESTIONS:
1) The Screwtape Letters has dozens of subtle and not-so-subtle pokes-in-the-ribs for the serious reader. Similarly, just a quick read of “The Inner Ring” speech by C.S. Lewis is so, so convicting. Yikes! On our egotistical desires to be invited into the various clubs, circles and inner rings in our society, Lewis warns, “Of all the passions, the passion for the Inner Ring is most skillful in making a man who is not yet a very bad man do very bad things.” Why do you think we strive so hard to be accepted into the inner ring?
2) In the movie, Nefarious, the character admits this: “We arrange a series of temptations—gradually increasing in terms of duration, intensity and degree of moral iniquity. Absence of baptism in this case allowed us to begin work well before the age of reason. At four or five, the theft of a toy car can do a great deal... later on we move to bigger things. At eight, his grandmother’s gift of a Ouija board—for Christmas of all things—gave us immediate access to controlling his decisions... so we began steering them... without him bothering to question where the guidance came from. Enough ‘yesses’ and few enough ‘no’s’ gave us increasing rights over the victim’s physical and mental processes.” Yikes! Do you believe “the Devil is poised to pounce” as Peter writes in the New Testament?
Mastering 100 Must-Read Books - Part 4: The Mount Rushmore of Leadership Legends
Book #26 of 100: How the Mighty Fall
For your team meeting this week, inspire a team member to lead your “10 Minutes for Lifelong Learning” session by spotlighting Book #26 in Mastering 100 Must-Read Books.
How The Mighty Fall:
And Why Some Companies Never Give In
by Jim Collins
Books #22 through #40 spotlight 19 books I named to “The Mount Rushmore of Leadership Legends” group—featuring Patrick Lencioni, Jim Collins, Ken Blanchard, and Peter Drucker. Part 4 features four books by Collins, including this unique study of failures! So why study failures? “We do ourselves a disservice by studying only success.” Collins adds that “most companies eventually fall, and we cannot deny this fact.”
• Read my review.
• Order from Amazon: How the Mighty Fall
• Listen on Libro (4 hours, 41 minutes)
• Download the 100 Must-Read Books list (from John and Jason Pearson)
This is not a happy book (applying all of today’s happy talk won’t do it!)—it’s a must-read book. Leaders that are in it for the long haul will learn principles and best practices for preventing, detecting, and reversing decline. Collins identifies five stages of decline:
• Stage 1: Hubris Born of Success
• Stage 2: Undisciplined Pursuit of More
• Stage 3: Denial of Risk and Peril
• Stage 4: Grasping for Salvation
• Stage 5: Capitulation to Irrelevance or Death
“Overreaching” is one of the symptoms of Stage 2. “When an organization grows beyond its ability to fill its key seats with the right people, it has set itself up for a fall,” he warns.
Date Board Prospects Before Proposing Marriage!
In my workbook and half-day workshop, we explore The 4 Big Mistakes to Avoid With Your Nonprofit Board (3rd Edition): How Leaders Enrich Their Ministry Results Through God-Honoring Governance. Mistake #2 is “Not Dating Board Prospects Before Proposing Marriage.”
Order the workbook to learn how to recruit and inspire the right people—with the right motives—to serve on your board by focusing on the four phases of board recruitment. Order from Amazon.
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“Why Can't Church Be More Like an AA Meeting?”
Imagine—if you could transport back to the 1950s and ask C.S. Lewis this question: “Why Can't Church Be More Like an AA Meeting?” Good news! Author Stephen R. Haynes asks and answers that question, plus “Other Questions Christians Ask About Recovery,” in his insightful book. He also asks this humdinger: “What is a clergyman and lifelong churchgoer to make of the fact that the spiritual highlight of his week more often than not is a secular recovery meeting?” Read my review here—and for more book reviews, visit the Pails in Comparison Blog.
PEARPOD | TELLING YOUR STORY. How do you communicate the facts (not the myths) of Heaven and Hell? C.S. Lewis wrote The Screwtape Letters. I’ve had the privilege of working with the Nefarious filmmakers as they leverage this “spiritual thriller” to get people thinking about the most important issues in life. We can help you tell your story! Contact me (Jason Pearson) at Pearpod (Design, Digital, Marketing, Social).
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