《The Screwtape Letters》是一本由C. S. Lewis著作，HarperOne出版的Paperback图书，本书定价：USD 14.99，页数：209，特精心从网络上整理的一些读者的读后感，希望对大家能有帮助。

　　《The Screwtape Letters》精选点评：

　　●这将是一本 以后 会读了又读 时常拿出来翻看 的 书。。

　　●1942"It doesn't matter how small the sins are provided that their cumulative effect is to edge the man away from Light and out into Nothing. Murder is no better than cards if cards can do the trick. Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one-the gentle slope, soft and underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts"

　　●the toughest journal of mine.

　　●虽说面临很多“不像文学”“粗俗”的职责，L的幽默和睿智是抹不掉的. 况且怎么就叫不粗俗了呢？怎么就不像文学了呢？

　　●实不相瞒，我读的是旧书店里淘到的第一版。

　　●haha

　　●This is THE BOOK I force all my friends to read. The best book so far I have ever read =D It is reveal so much truth about one's spiritual life. Give me a fresh set of new eyes to re-see all the events in my life, which used to seem random now all start t

　　●self-examination

　　●It is only in so far as they reach the Will and are there embodied in habits that the virtues are really fatal to us.

　　●怪自己境界不够

　　《The Screwtape Letters》读后感(一)：非常棒的书

　　文采很好，信仰也比较正，说理有趣。初读可能有点费脑子，没有基督教背景的人读来可能会有诸多费解，但一直读下去会有很好的收获。

　　但这本书不是理论著作，不如说是一种文学作品。

　　另外，作者本人的成就我非常钦佩。

　　《The Screwtape Letters》读后感(二)：我对每一封信的总结。

　　从第六封信开始想要简单总结一下每一封的内容或者是有感触的部分，中间漏掉了一些。有些不是很明白，但英文版本很适合英语学习和阅读。

　　第六封：讲到恐惧

　　上帝让人们关注行动，而恶魔让人们关注后果；恶魔让人将好意放在遥不可及的群体上，而对身边需要爱的人视而不见；所有有利于恶魔的心理活动，恶魔会引导人们进入一种无意识的状态，单单关注外部物体本身，但对于有利于上帝的活动，恶魔引导人关于自己本身，进入自我意识的状态。

　　第七封：战争中如何让人结党成派远离上帝

　　首先，鼓励人们为了某一个“使命”而战，尽管这不一定是他们自己本身的选择。其次，让他们将这“使命”当作自己的信仰一般。再次，让真正的信仰成为达成这“使命”的手段，而非目的。

　　第十二封：恶魔让人将上帝与自己的罪联系在一起，导致人们因为不愿意去想自己的最而不愿去想上帝。恶魔让生活中无意义或仅仅用于满足短暂欲望的东西填满个人生活。

　　第十三封：恶魔让人们远离真实（真实的欢乐和痛苦），模糊对自己的认识和感知，用世界的标准和眼光替代自己对自己的思考和认识，鼓励人们不采取行动而仅仅将想法流于大脑。

　　第十四封：恶魔要破坏人们的谦卑，因为谦卑使人转向善的一面。恶魔巧妙地让人们以为：“谦卑”是自己努力而得来的美德，不是发自内心的愿意；把谦卑过度解读，恶化为自我批判和厌恶，进而影响人们去恶意批判他人。

　　第十五封：让人从对当下和永恒的向往中离开。

　　第十六封：让人陷入党派之争。

　　第十七封：让人被贪欲控制，不自知。

　　第十八封：让人将爱情与婚姻划等号，认为爱情是婚姻唯一必要条件，没有爱情那婚姻也可以随之解散；但恶魔掩盖的是爱情也是婚姻结合带来的结果，婚姻还有其他目的和好处。

　　第十九封：恶魔认为爱是别有用心的，而不是单纯的。

　　第二十封：让人们陷入对肉体身体欲望的追求。通过影响世俗文化而影响人们对美和美人的定义，让人们以为这就是所要追求的。

　　第二十一封：让人产生一种“拥有”的错觉，如“我的”时间，“我的”土地，“我的”。当无法掌控这些“我的”的东西时， 就会瞬间陷入黑暗和负面当中。

　　第二十四封：恶魔让人们骄傲，骄傲不是因为自己是谁是怎么样的人，骄傲是因为自己所在的团体比本人的优越，与众不同。

　　第二十五封：利用人类讨厌和恐惧，不断让人类重复原来的错误。人们不断追求所谓心得东西，看似真实，但其实是在围绕着真理大专，过于复杂却看不到本来简单的真理。

　　第二十六封：男女在关系中，恶魔让他们因着爱情而忽视自己的追求和问题。让两个人以为自己对对方是无私的。但当爱情支撑不住之后，就会陷入相互指责当中。

　　第二十七封：让人们将自己的价值深深植根于杂乱的世界，年轻人或许有可能最求真正的有价值的东西，但越是年长的人，越是有过社会阅历的人，越难以从世界对其的影像中走出来。

　　第二十九封：恶魔在天灾人祸中，要在人心里面种下胆小恐惧的种子，让人因着恐惧而去行动，与勇气隔绝。

　　第三十封：混淆人们对“真实”的理解。真实可以指看得到摸得到的真实，也可以指摸不到的真实的情绪和感觉。恶魔让人们在不同的环境中只看得到其中一面，忽略另一面。

　　《The Screwtape Letters》读后感(三)：地狱来鸿

　　老爷爷好有才，这本书是以地狱之神/魔鬼之神的口吻，以书信的形式写给在地上的魔鬼小弟，教导这群小弟们怎么去破坏人类的信仰，怎样最有效率地引导人们去行恶，怎样最大可能地把人性中的贪婪傲慢都发挥出来。与Heavenly Father/在天上的父相对的是，魔鬼之神自称“The Father Below”/在地下的父。并且魔鬼之神把天生的父成为“我们的敌人”

　　Chapter 6

　　这一章教导魔鬼如何利用恐惧的心理，使恐惧尽可能地破坏人们的活动。

　　“破坏祷告的原理是，引导人们把祷告对象转到自己本身的时候，祷告的作用就大大削减了；而与之相反的是，引导人们定睛在恐惧对象的时候，恐惧却最有杀伤力。于是魔鬼之神定下了一个“行为准则”，那就是：当人们从事有利于恶魔的心理活动的时候，尽可能引导人们进入无意识得状态；而当人们从事有利于敌人的心理活动的时候，尽可能引导人们进入有意识的状态，并且把这种意识归功到自己身上。比如，当人们面对人身侮辱或者美色的诱惑的时候，尽可能地使人们失去意识，不要让他们有机会来反思“我是不是变得失去理智准备发怒/我此刻经受诱惑”；反之，当人们在虔诚地思考“我的感觉越来越圣洁，我的心思越来越虔诚”的时候，让他们定睛在自我身上，而不会超越自我而看到更大的力量----比如人们的周遭以及我们的敌人

　　不要期盼战争本身能给人们带来仇恨，我们的路还长着呢。战争对人们带来的仇恨是遥远的，模糊的。试想一下人么憎恨德国士兵，可是有多少人亲眼见过德国士兵呢？当德国士兵出现在他们家后院的时候，他们还会送去烟和茶水呢。告诉你，人们心中多多少少既有慈爱，亦有残忍。最伟大的事情就是，让人们把残忍给周遭最亲近的朋友邻居，把慈爱给远在天边他们所不认识的人。如果一个人爱他的母亲，和老板和睦相处，那么，燃起他心中对德国士兵的仇恨根本没多大作用。把每一个人想象成一个中心，在他之外是智识的那一层，在外面一层是幻想的一层。你们要做的工作就是把所有的美德都挪到外面的那一层，最好到幻想的层面上去。把我们喜欢的东西放在最里面的那一层。如果美德跑到了最里面那一层，那对我们的打击是致命的。我们地狱从来不拒绝在幻想层上有诸多美好品质的人，我们还非常欢迎他们呢。”

　　Chapter 7

　　大榔头给朽木的建议：

　　尽量引导阿蛮成为极端主义者。要么是极端的爱国，要么极端的反战，只要不是极端地投入到老贼头那一边就好。最好让阿蛮找到一个小团体，融入其中，让他们有共同的喜好，让他们就像生活在温室里，对内彼此仰慕，对外充满骄傲和仇恨。

　　Any small coterie, bound together by some interest which other men dislike or ignore, tends to develop inside itself a hothouse mutual admiration, and towards the outer world, a great deal of pride and hatred which is entertained without shame because the "cause" is its sponsor and it is thought to be impersonal.

　　只要他们不是因为顺服老贼头而加入各样的团体就好。不管阿蛮是爱国主义者还是反战主义者，极力让阿蛮把这种“主义”看做他的信仰的核心部分。以至于信仰的好处就在于给他的观点提供了有力的例证。然后逐渐地让阿蛮认为信仰只是他所拥护的观点的起因。这样就很好！最要提防的是，不要让阿蛮把当下所发生的事情作为练习驯服的途径。要反过来，把世间上所发生的事情作为最终目的和追求，信仰只是手段和途径，如果是这样的话，我们征服阿蛮的可能就大大提升了，不管阿蛮在世间追求的是什么。只要会议，政策，宣传，运动，十字军东征，对他来说比祷告和圣事更重要，那他妥妥的就是我们的人了。

　　Chapter 8

　　有一段写的特别好，直接引用了：

　　This means while their spirit can be directed to an eternal object, their bodies, passions, and imaginations are in continual change, for to be in time means to change. THeir nearest approach to constancy, therefore, is undulation, the repeated return to a level from which they repeatedly fall back, a series of troughs and peaks. If you had watched your patient carefully you would have seen this undulation in every department of his life, his interest in his work, his affection for his friends, his physical appetites, all go up and down. As long as he lives on earth periods of emotinal and bodily richness and liveliness will alternate with periods of numbness and pverty. the dryness and duless through which your patient is now going are not, as you fondly supose, your workmanship; they are merely a natural phenomenon which will do us no good unless you make a good use of it.

　　偶寄几就有深深的这样的体会，一天里情绪跌宕起伏很多回，大概感性的人就容易想多。心情低落的时候就安慰自己，这也是生活的一部分，人不能总是很high很开心啊。自我安慰一番之后就总能找到平静，然后心情靓丽了起来。然而不多久，郁闷低潮又会在某个随机的时刻很随机地降临。就这样反复反复。。慢慢地我就看淡了，开心不开心都不那么重要了。重要的是一直保持一颗平和的心。在这一章里，大榔头对朽木说到：当阿蛮在低谷的时候，你可不能太得意。因为这是老贼头的圈套，并不是我们工作的结果。老贼头让阿蛮的生活有起起伏伏，老贼头笼络人其实更依靠给人吃苦头，而不是给人甜头。读到这里想起了圣经诗篇23章4节的一句话“ 我雖然行過死蔭的幽谷，也不怕遭害，因為你與我同在，你的杖、你的竿都安慰我。 ” Now it may surprise you to learn that in his efforts to get permanent possession of a soul, he relies on the troughs even more than on the pkeaks, some of his special favourites have gone through longer and deepere troughs than anyone else. ” 大榔头千方百计拐走人的灵魂，是为了能以他们的肉体为食，喝他们的血吃他们的肉；“老贼头”却是真真实实地只想要人们的灵，希望人们能顺服他，像他一样做一个义人/完全/没有瑕疵的人。读完这一章，教我如何看待生活中的起起伏伏。陷入低谷，遇到苦难，这些本身并没有什么不好，也不完全是恶魔的计谋，相反，也许是上帝给你的一次试炼的机会。

　　“He wants them to learn to walk and must therefore take away His hand; and if ony the will to walk is really htere He is pleased even with their stumbles. Do not be deceived, Wormwood. Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy's will, looks upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.”

　　Chapter 9

　　大榔头写给朽木的“如何在阿蛮的低谷期获取他的灵魂”，大榔头告诫朽木，如果阿蛮正在经历低谷期，千万不要太得意，而是要冷静地采取行动，才能确保阿蛮不被大榔头拐走，最终才能真正拿下阿蛮。这是对阿蛮发起进攻的绝佳时刻，对他进行各种感官上的诱惑。当阿蛮走在人生巅峰的时候，也是对感官诱惑需求很大的时候，但是对我们来说，低谷时期还是比巅峰时期是更好的进攻时机。首先，在人生巅峰的时候，精力充沛的阿蛮不仅对感官诱惑有很大的需求，也同时对工作，和正当的游戏有类似的需求，这就会大大减弱我们进攻的果效。其次，在巅峰时期的阿蛮，在体验感官享受的时候，更有可能获得生化的“牛奶与蜜”的情感的满足感，更有可能获得爱的感受和体验，这对我们来说不是好消息。要知道，享受也是那老贼头发明的，我们的研究表明目前还没有发明这类东西的能力，但是我们可以诱导阿蛮用老贼头所不喜悦的方式，不合适的时间，不恰当的数量来享受感官的娱乐，这是我们想要做的。“An ever increasing craving for an ever diminishing pleasure is the formula”

　　Chapter 11

　　大榔头说，音乐是天上的某种节奏 acceleration in the rhythm of celestial experience，音乐是个坏东西。

　　Chapter 12

　　大榔头告诫朽木不要操之过急，要让阿蛮慢慢走向地狱，而不是让他的生活突然陷入困境。否则，陷入困境的阿蛮很容易投入老贼头的怀抱里。就像圣经里说的，地狱的路是康庄大道，而通往天堂的路确是狭窄。让阿蛮慢慢地失去对生活的热情。在一开始，朽木要不停地给阿蛮提供虚假的快乐，但是不用多久，阿蛮的心就会被麻痹，他的心思开始飘忽不定，甚至不需要诸如他喜爱的书来让他分心，甚至旧报纸的过去的报道都可以让他心思飘忽（偶深感躺枪）。不要让他把时间浪费在他喜欢的事情，和人身上，相反，让他无所事事，无所事事。当他走到我们地狱的门口的时候，他会感叹“我这一生，既没有做我应该做的事情，也没有做我想做的事情。”

　　魔鬼自然会给你尝到一点点甜头才能成功引诱到你，如果他给你一坨大便希望能笼络你，自然是不能成功的，你肯定扭头就走。魔鬼最终的目的就是让我们远离神，透过各样看上去（虚假）的美好的事物。

　　The christian describe the enemy as one 'without whome Nothing is strong'. And Nothing is very strong: strong enough to steal away a man's best years not in sweet sins but in a dreary flickering of the mind over it knows not what and knows not why, in the gratification ofcuriosities so feeble that hte man is only half aware of them, in durmming of fingers and kicking of heels, in whistling tunes that he does not like,or in the long, dim labyrinth of reveries(daydream) that have not even lust or ambition to give them a relish, but which, once chence association has started them, the creature is too weak and fuddled to shake off.

　　You will say that these are very small sins; and doubtless, like all young tempters, you are anxious to be able to report spectacular wicked-ness. But do remeber, the only thing that matters is the extent to which you separate the man from the Enemy. It does not matter how small the sins are provided that their cumulative effect is to edge the man away from the Light and out into the Nothing. Murder is no better than cards if cards can do the trick. Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one--the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.

　　Chapter 13

　　[阳光大好，坐在车站的长椅上，一边读着这本书，一边等车。好像不那么盼望公交车会来了，晚点也没关系。]

　　这章读完我很感动，因为它回答了一个我心里一直以来对基督教的一个困惑。当我读到圣经里“不要爱这个世界”的时候，当我在教堂里听牧师教导我们不要沉迷这个世界的享乐时候，我心里有点别扭，想反抗这样的观点，可是又不敢。我很疑惑，难道做我喜欢的事情是“沉迷世界”吗？难道追求享乐/效用最大化是应该鄙视的么？难道一定要过压抑自己内心喜好的生活吗？难道追求一份事业追求一种爱好一定要遭到信仰的唾弃吗？我总是感到两股相互排斥的力量，体系和价值观，可是具体是什么我也说不上来。有时候觉得这个好些，有时候觉得那个又好些。因此我的信仰之路也是起起伏伏，有时候很受感动，觉得圣经就是真理，热血地想要照着圣经里的教导去生活；有的时候却很低迷，觉得宗教/信仰让我倍感压抑。有一次我去问我们教会的z牧师，他告诉我换一种读经方式。他应该说对了，这段时间读《地狱来鸿》，我好像又找回圣经的真理了，这一回，它是活泼的，生动的，令人信服的，而不像偶尔的曾经，是沉闷的，说教的，阻碍思考的。【但是鲁大师也提醒偶们，人们/英国人对幽默如此推崇，以至于，某种低下的行为，当披上幽默的外衣之后，就变成了喜剧，艺术，和值得称道的。顺道想起了朋友最近对川普和希拉里的评论，她说，人们会选择真小人的川普而不是伪君子的希拉里，意味着这已经是一个道德沦陷的时代了，否则人们还是会努力去维持一个君子的形象，而不是肆无忌惮地袒露失掉的节操。'资中筠”】圣经里常说“不要效法这个世界”，我觉得这里的“世界”的意思是指世界里被魔鬼攻击的地方，而不是笼统地指世界上所有的东西。比如我正在对的这本“地狱来鸿”就不是这里所说的“世界”的意思。

　　He（Enemy）hates to see them drifiting away from their own nature for any other reason. and we should always encourage them to do so. the deepest likings and impulses of any man are the raw material, the starting point, with which the enemy has furnised him. to get him away from those is therefore always a point gained; even in things indifferent it is always desirable to substitude the standards of the world, or convention, or fashsion, for a human's own real likings and dislikings. i myself would carry this very far. i would make it a rule to eradicate from my patient any strong personal taste which is not actually a sin, even if it is something quite trivial such as a fondness for county cricket or collecting stampsor drinking cocoa. such things, i grant you, have nothing of virture in them; but there is a sort of innocence and humility and self-forgetfulness about them which i distrust. the man who truly and disinterestedly enjoys any one thing in the world, for its own sake, and without caring twopence what other people say about it, is by that very fact fore-aremed against some of our subtlest modes of attack. 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.

　　大榔头责备朽木没看好阿蛮，让阿蛮读了一本他很喜欢的书。大榔头告诫朽木，让阿蛮追求他真正喜欢的东西，很可能让计划功亏一篑。因为真正的爱好带来的喜乐和开心是真实的，会让阿蛮有“回家的感觉”。这些发自内心的喜爱会逐渐融化我们在阿蛮内心建造的crust。

　　大榔头给朽木提供的一个阻止阿蛮成长的妙招就是，阻止他采取行动，让他的一切虔诚都停留在他的感情和假象中。他可以写一本书来描述他情感上对虔诚地认知，但是只要他不付诸行动，这都不会破坏我们的计划。当他越来越能用感情去感知他的虔诚，他 就越发失去行动的能力，慢慢地他也会失去对情感的感受。【对丈夫表达爱意，与其在心情很好的时候给他打电话告诉他我爱你，也许更体现在，为他打理好家里的事情，过好自己的生活，让他少为我操一点心，也对他多包容一点,少苛刻一点】

　　想起今天在系里听学士报告，讲的是接受有关吸烟方面的信息对吸烟行为的影响，他有一个很有意思的发现，就是信息的积累会显著改变吸烟的行为，但是单次的信息的接受影响不大。就像哈佛幸福课里面说的，改变向来是缓慢的，渐进的，而不是突然的，革命式的。老我的力量总是很强大， 只有反复去尝试去改变才能有慢慢地变化。想要通过看一篇文章，接受一次信息就改掉习惯真的很难。有一次做助教的时候，我惊叹老教授的事无巨细的严谨很认真，系里的慈祥的退休教授很意味深长地对我说，C, 这就是习惯的力量。

　　Chapter 14

　　是不是有句老话叫做“谦虚就是骄傲”？从前我不明白这句话，现在明白了。真正的谦虚应该是忘我，并不是说自己不好，而是欣赏他人的才能能够和欣赏自己的才能一样，一视同仁。因为一切的创造都来自神，而非我们自己。

　　The enemy wants to bring the man to a state of ind in which he could design the best cathedral ofin the world, and kow it to be the best, and rejoice in the fact, without being any more or less or otherwise glad athaving done it that he would be if it had been done by another. The Enemy wants him, in the end, to be so free from any bias in his own favor that he can rejoice in his own taletns as frankly and gratefully as in his neighbor's talents , or in a sunrise, an elephant, or a waterfall. He wants each man, in the long run, to be able to recognise all creatures as glorious and excellent things. He wants to kill their animal self-love as soon as possible; but it is His long term pllicy, I fear, to restore to them a new kind of self-love a charity and gratitude for all selves, including their own; when they have really learned to love their neighbors as themselves, they will be allowed to love themselves as their neighbours.

　　He would rather the man thought himself as great architect or a great poeit and then forgot about it, than that he should spend much time and pains trying to think himself as bad one.

　　The Enemy will also try to render real in the patient's mind a doctrine which they all profess but find it difficult to bring home to their feelings, the doctrine that they did not creat themselves, theat their talents were given them, and that they might as well be pround of the color of their hair. But alwyas and by all methods the Enemy's aim will be to get the patient's mind off such questions, and yours will be to fix it on them. Even fo his sins the Enemy does not want him to think too much: once they are repented, the sooner the man turns his attention outward, the better the Enemy is pleased.

　　Chapter 15

　　这一章其实有点没大读懂。貌似在说把眼光总是放在未来是不好的。神希望我们定睛在两件事情上：现在和永生。不是过去，也不是未来。因为过去已经过去，未来确是不确定。当未来燃起希望和害怕的时候，魔鬼就在动工了。“Hence nearly all vices are rooted in the future. Gratitude looks to the past and love to the present :fear, avarice, lust, and ambition look ahead.Do not think lust as an exception. When the present pleasure arrives, the sin is already over. The pleasure is just the part of the preocess which we regret and would exclude if we could do so without losing the sin; it is the part contributed by the Enemy, and therefore experienced by the Enemy, and therefore experienced in a Present. The sin, which is our contribution, looked forward.

　　To be sure, the Enemy wants men to think of the Future too--just so much as is necessary for now plannng the acts of justice or charity which will probably be their duty tomorrow. The duty of planning the tomorrow's work is today's duy; though its material is borrowed from the future, the duty, like all duties , is in the Present. He does not want men to give the Future their hearts, to place their treasure in it. We do. His ideal is a man who, having worked all day for the good of posterity, washes his mind of the whole subject, commits the issure to Heaven, and returns at once to the patience or gratitude demanded by the moment that is passing over him. ..... We want a whole race perpetually in pursuit of the rainbow's end, never onest, nor kind, nor happy now, but always using as mere fuel wherewith to heap the altar of the future every real gift which is offered them in the Present.”

　　Chapter 16

　　阿蛮成为了基督徒，大榔头给朽木出的主意是让他去很多个教会，然后在选择教会中迷失，从而成为宗教的鉴赏家，而不是信徒。另外，最好让阿蛮在加入一个教会之后，好像是加入了一个俱乐部，最好是经常和固定群体的人一起。

　　The search for a suitable churchmakes the man a critic where the Enemy wants him to be a pupil. What He wants of the layman in church is an attitude which may, indeed, be critical in teh sense of rejecting what is false or unhelpful, but which is wholly uncritical in the sense that it does not appraise--does not waste time thinking about what it rejects, but lays itself open in uncommenting, humble receptivity to any nourishment that is going.

　　Chapter 17

　　这一章是讲，生活讲究的老太太，一面说自己很随意，一面又对服务生各种苛求的事情。也算提醒我平时生活里不要太吹毛求疵了吧。恩，不错。

　　Chapter 18

　　这一章灰常好。讲性与爱的。本来偶想跳过这一章，后来发现内容相当好。前面几段大概讲，在魔鬼的世界里，人与人是竞争性的，世界是一个零合游戏，一人的成功基于另一个人的失败，弱肉强食，强大的人夺取弱小者的意志和自由。在属神的世界观里，天下大同，爱能消弭人与人之间竞争的心情，神希望所有的人都能像他一样去爱这个世界，爱自己的邻居，最后才是爱自己。

　　在神看来，性不过是用于繁衍的一种方式，这和蜘蛛为了哺育后代而吃掉自己的丈夫并没什么区别。神说一对夫妻是“one flesh”，神从来没有说过一对夫妻是“a happily married couple”,“a couple who married because they were in love”。大榔头建议朽木尽量让人们忘记这一点。魔鬼们就能利用人们对爱情的渴望来搞破坏了。在鲁大师看来，男女相遇最初的“爱情”不过是性冲动，人们在追寻“爱情”以致组建家庭的过程中，会产生忠贞，情感和美好的愿景。就好像对宗教的热情常常会（虽然不总是）让人们改变自己的行为。魔鬼常用的一条计谋就是让人们认为“爱情”是婚姻幸福的基础，让人们永远在追寻“爱情”的过程中，因而迟迟难以进入婚姻真正的改变自己。这条计谋有两方面的作用，一方面，一些自制力不够的人往往难以进入到婚姻中来，因为他们会不断地对人产生“一见钟情”的感觉，产生性方面的冲动，然而因为没有他们所期待的“爱情”到来，他们不愿意进入婚姻，对他们来说，为了“爱情”以外的目的结婚是低劣的。另一方面，也促使人们会以追求“爱情”为借口而犯各样的罪恶。

　　前几天一个朋友L问我，怎么才知道两个人相爱。我觉得只有进入到婚姻中，我们才知道是不是真正的爱对方，因为在婚姻中，两人会卸下所有的盔甲和面具，当你把一个人都看清之后，能不去跟他计较，彼此包容，对方也是这样包容自己，我觉得这就是爱了。圣经哥林多前书说道

　　愛是恆久忍耐，又有恩慈；愛是不嫉妒； 愛是不自誇不張狂，不做害羞的事， 不求自己的益處，不輕易發怒， 不計算人的惡，不喜歡不義只喜歡真理； 凡事包容，凡事相信，凡事盼望， 凡事忍耐，愛是永不止息。

　　我觉得自结婚以前/在深入了解彼此并愿意为对方做出妥协之前，两人的感情只是在喜欢的层面上。不过这都是我自己的看法，也跟我的个人经历有关，鲁大师对爱情的看法和我的爱情观很像。看过很多爱情小说电影里面，对爱情那么美好的描写，不知道是不是真的存在，好像我真实经历的世界里面，并没有看到过。

　　摘录一句大榔头给朽木的话“Humans can be made to infer the false belief that the blend of affection, fear, and desire which they call being in love is the only thing that makes marriage either happy or holy”。今天读到的这一章很合时，偶骨子也是一个追求浪漫爱情的人，时常对婚姻质疑。我想人们常说的要找到自己passion所在，其实更多的意思是，要讲这样的passion付诸行动吧。

　　Chapter 20

　　The aim is to guide each sex away from those members of the other with whom spritually helpful, happy, and fertile marriages are most likely.

　　Chapter 21

　　谁又真正拥有呢？恐怕到最后，能真正拥有的，要么是天父，要么是魔鬼。我的人生，我的时间，我的经历，我的世界，我的爱人，我的孩子，真的是我的吗？

　　Chapter 22

　　阿蛮谈恋爱了，恋爱的对象还是一位虔诚地基督徒。大榔头十分气愤，在给朽木的信件中表达出极度的不满。大榔头指责绝不应该让阿蛮和这样的姑娘谈恋爱。这姑娘的家庭背景太可怕了，他们家笼罩着一股像极了天堂的神秘氛围，甚至是周末的家庭访客都被这样的气息沾染，他们家的人，狗，猫，都带着这样的气息。读这一段的是我我想起了圣经上说的“ 为无论在得救的人或灭亡的人中间，我们都是基督的馨香，是献给上帝的 ”。希望我的家庭也能弥漫这种馨香之气。

　　“He has filled His world full of pleasures, There are things for humans to do all day long without His minding in the least-sleeping, washing, eating, drinking, making love, playng, praying, working. Everything has to be wtisted before it's any use to us.”

　　大榔头描述他是多么憎恶音乐和静默。在地狱里要用噪音来填充这一切。

　　Music and silence --how I detest them both! How thankful we should be that ever since our Father enterred Hell--though longer ago than humans, reckoning in light years, could express--no square inch of infernal space and no moment of infernal time has been surrendered to either of those abominable forces, but all has been occupied by Noise--Noise, the grand dynamism, the audible expression of all that is exultant, ruthless, and virile--Noise alone which defends us from silly qualms, despairing scruples, and impossible desires. We will make the whole universe a noise in the end.

　　Chapter 28

　　The long, dull monotonous years of middle-aged prosperity or middle-aged adversity are excellent campaigning weather. You see, it is so hard for these creatures to persevere. The routine of adversity, the gradual decay of youthful loves and youthful hopes, the quiet despair of ever overcoming the chronic temptations with which we have again and again defeated them, the drabness which we create in their lives and the inarticulate opportunities of wearing out a soul by attrition. If, on the other hand, the middle years prove prosperous, our position is even stronger. Prosperity knits a man to the World. He feels that he is finding his place in it, while really it is finding its place in him. His increasing reputation, his widening circle of acquaintances, his sense of importance, the growing pressure of absorbing and agreeable work, build up in him a sense of being really at home in earth which is just what we want. 他心中的恐惧越大，仇恨也就越深。

　　Chapter 29

　　战争的年代让人勇气倍增，所以老贼头允许战争这样的事情。Courage is not simply one of the virtures, but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means, at the point of highest reality. A chastity or honesty, or mercy, which yields to danger will be chaste or honest or merciful only on conditions.

　　Chapter 31

　　恶魔们最终失去了阿蛮--阿蛮在战争中战死了。大榔头十分痛心，他们全面的溃败。他们差一点就夺取了阿蛮的灵魂。阿蛮似乎已经了悟痛苦的过程，那就是最终一定会得到解脱。

　　读这本书好累，逻辑分析很多，句子都是很长的从句。但是读这本书的过程很开心，收获也很多，值得一生慢慢回味。好像是鲁大师把他一生的经验毫无保留地献上，我觉得真本看上去发育不良的小册子，其实真的担得起“信仰的瑰宝”这样的称谓。

　　《The Screwtape Letters》读后感(四)：人类一思考，魔鬼就发笑

　　不曾想我这一辈子第一次读“家书体”著作，居然是这大魔头写给初出茅庐的小侄子的31封信。

　　1941年夏天，英国大约正处在二战中最艰难的一段时期。欧洲大陆上德军所向无敌，亚洲战场则是日军的天下；法国已经投降，美国尚未参战；伦敦在空袭中损失惨重，食物配给制日趋严格……而C.S.Lewis作为一名教授、学者、作家，没有为爱国军民写下鼓舞士气的文字，也没有怒怼纳粹、揭露其丑恶嘴脸，反倒为魔鬼立言、传播什么蛊惑人心之术……还好是他身处把“幽默”视为天条的英国（大魔头对此也毫不留情地讥讽了一番），若是搁在今天的中国，不被查个底掉、送进大牢，恐怕是不会让某些人甘心的。

　　然而大魔头Screwtape本人并不怎么在意“大战” —— 只有Wormwood那样的菜鸟才会为轰炸、死人什么的欣喜若狂 —— 除非是“迄今发生的事件对某个人类个体的精神状态所产生的明显影响”：此人（the patient）以怎样的心态来面对不得不面对的灾难，他的所思所为究竟是让他离天国的日光更近了一步，还是在不知不觉中搭乘上了通往寒冷阴暗的地狱的列车。（Chapter 12）

　　所以Lewis写的实际是所谓“护教文”（Christian apologetics）—— 还是啥用没有！你咋不去参军呢，你咋不去造大炮呢！—— 越是艰难时期，人性越要接受艰苦的考验，越要抵挡各种诱惑招致的“平庸之恶”。Screwtape十多年后在小魔鬼们的毕业典礼上说了（Screwtape Propose A Toast），这个年代，让魔鬼失望的是例如希律王啊，亨利八世啊，甚至希特勒这样的大恶人都难觅踪影了，供其咀嚼的灵魂的“质”大大下降了；值得欣慰的是平庸的坏蛋的“量”大大增加，完全无需担心填不饱肚皮。

　　Lewis在文中对上帝和一些神学观念的阐释，对教派、宗教思潮的批判，我作为一个每次读到《利未记》就卡壳的人未必有多深的理解。而他剖析一个个的小确sin，从极端（“一切极端，除了对敌人的极端投入，都是要鼓励的”, Chapter 12）、宗派、傲慢、虚荣、世故、暴食（挑食更准确些？）、愚蠢、愤怒、贪婪、仇恨到自我中心、自我欺骗、自以为是……刀刀见血；即便不是基督教徒，也免不了要心惊胆寒。

　　举几个最刺激我的片段：

　　当这位新皈依者来到教堂

When he gets to his pew and looks round him he sees just that selection of his neighbours whom he has hitherto avoided. You want to lean pretty heavily on those neighbours. Make his mind flit to and fro between an expression like "the body of Christ" and the actual faces in the next pew. It matters very little, of course, what kind of people that next pew really contains. You may know one of them to be a great warrior on the Enemy's side. No matter. Your patient, thanks to Our Father below, is a fool. Provided that any of those neighbours sing out of tune, or have boots that squeak, or double chins, or odd clothes, the patient will quite easily believe that their religion must therefore be somehow ridiculous. ... I have been writing hitherto on the assumption that the people in the next pew afford no rational ground for disappointment. Of course if they do - if the patient knows that the woman with the absurd hat is a fanatical bridge-player or the man with squeaky boots a miser and an extortioner - then your task is so much the easier. All you then have to do is to keep out of his mind the question "If I, being what I am, can consider that I am in some sense a Christian, why should the different vices of those people in the next pew prove that their religion is mere hypocrisy and convention？" (Chapter 2)

　　无法摆脱的虚无的一生：

so that at last 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". The Christians describe the Enemy as one "without whom Nothing is strong". And Nothing is very strong: strong enough to steal away a man's best years not in sweet sins but in a dreary flickering of the mind over it knows not what and knows not why, in the gratification of curiosities so feeble that the man is only half aware of them, in drumming of fingers and kicking of heels, in whistling tunes that he does not like, or in the long, dim labyrinth of reveries that have not even lust or ambition to give them a relish, but which, once chance association has started them, the creature is too weak and fuddled to shake off. (Chapter 12)

　　接上，空想者最终走向虚无。

The great thing is to prevent him doing anything. As long as he does not convert it into action, it does not matter how much he thinks about this new repentance. Let the little brute wallow in it. 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. Let him do anything but act. No amount of piety in his imagination and affections will harm us if we can keep it out of his will. As one of the humans has said, active habits are strengthened by repetition but passive ones are weakened. The more often he feels without acting, the less he will be able ever to act, and, in the long run, the less he will be able to feel... (Chapter 13)

　　因错觉产生所有权，继而产生愤怒（下面的例子几乎是我的日常）：

Men are not angered by mere misfortune but by misfortune conceived as injury. And the sense of injury depends on the feeling that a legitimate claim has been denied. The more claims on life, therefore, that your patient can be induced to make, the more often he will feel injured and, as a result, ill-tempered. Now you will have noticed that nothing throws him into a passion so easily as to find a tract of time which he reckoned on having at his own disposal unexpectedly taken from him. It is the unexpected visitor (when he looked forward to a quiet evening), or the friend's talkative wife (turning up when he looked forward to a t¨ºte-¨¤-t¨ºte with the friend), that throw him out of gear. Now he is not yet so uncharitable or slothful that these small demands on his courtesy are in themselves too much for it. They anger him because he regards his time as his own and feels that it is being stolen. You must therefore zealously guard in his mind the curious assumption "My time is my own".

　　以及各种盲目的“我的”：

We produce this sense of ownership not only by pride but by confusion. We teach them not to notice the different senses of the possessive pronoun - the finely graded differences that run from "my boots" through "my dog", "my servant", "my wife", "my father", "my master" and "my country", to "my God". They can be taught to reduce all these senses to that of "my boots", the "my" of ownership. Even in the nursery a child can be taught to mean by "my Teddy-bear" not the old imagined recipient of affection to whom it stands in a special relation (for that is what the Enemy will teach them to mean if we are not careful) but "the bear I can pull to pieces if I like". And at the other end of the scale, we have taught men to say "My God" in a sense not really very different from "My boots", meaning "The God on whom I have a claim for my distinguished services and whom I exploit from the pulpit - the God I have done a corner in".(Chapter 20)

　　对“新”的贪婪：

The horror of the Same Old Thing is one of the most valuable passions we have produced in the human heart - an endless source of heresies in religion, folly in counsel, infidelity in marriage, and inconstancy in friendship. The humans live in time, and experience reality successively. To experience much of it, therefore, they must experience many different things; in other words, they must experience change. And since they need change, the Enemy (being a hedonist at heart) has made change pleasurable to them, just as He has made eating Pleasurable. But since He does not wish them to make change, any more than eating, an end in itself, He has balanced the love of change in them by a love of permanence. He has contrived to gratify both tastes together on the very world He has made, by that union of change and permanence which we call Rhythm. He gives them the seasons, each season different yet every year the same, so that spring is always felt as a novelty yet always as the recurrence of an immemorial theme. He gives them in His Church a spiritual ear; they change from a fast to a feast, but it is the same feast as before. Now just as we pick out and exaggerate the pleasure of eating to produce gluttony, so we pick out this natural pleasantness of change and twist it into a demand for absolute novelty. ...Only by our incessant efforts is the demand for infinite, or unrhythmical, change kept up.

　　我一直很喜欢“时间的祖国”这个说法，但是绝不能因此忽视了根本的问题：

But the greatest triumph of all is to elevate his horror of the Same Old Thing into a philosophy so that nonsense in the intellect may reinforce corruption in the will. It is here that the general Evolutionary or Historical character of modern European thought (partly our work) comes in so useful. The Enemy loves platitudes. Of a proposed course of action He wants men, so far as I can see, to ask very simple questions; is it righteous？ is it prudent？ is it possible？ Now if we can keep men asking "Is it in accordance with the general movement of our time？ Is it progressive or reactionary？ Is this the way that History is going？" they will neglect the relevant questions. And the questions they do ask are, of course, unanswerable; for they do not know the future, and what the future will be depends very largely on just those choices which they now invoke the future to help them to make. As a result, while their minds are buzzing in this vacuum, we have the better chance to slip in and bend them to the action we have decided on. And great work has already been done. Once they knew that some changes were for the better, and others for the worse, and others again indifferent. We have largely removed this knowledge. For the deｓｃｒｉｐｔive adjective "unchanged" we have substituted the emotional adjective "stagnant". We have trained them to think of the Future as a promised land which favoured heroes attain - not as something which everyone reaches at the rate of sixty minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is... (Chapter 25)

　　有关"无私"，男女间（或者说人与人之间）可能存在着差异：

The grand problem is that of "unselfishness". Note, once again, the admirable work of our Philological Arm in substituting the negative unselfishness for the Enemy's positive Charity. Thanks to this you can, from the very outset, teach a man to surrender benefits not that others may be happy in having them but that he may be unselfish in forgoing them. That is a great point gained. Another great help, where the parties concerned are male and female, is the divergence of view about Unselfishness which we have built up between the sexes. A woman means by Unselfishness chiefly taking trouble for others; a man means not giving trouble to others. As a result, a woman who is quite far gone in the Enemy's service will make a nuisance of herself on a larger scale than any man except those whom Our Father has dominated completely; and, conversely, a man will live long in the Enemy's camp before he undertakes as much spontaneous work to please others as a quite ordinary woman may do every day. Thus while the woman thinks of doing good offices and the man of respecting other people's rights, each sex, without any obvious unreason, can and does regard the other as radically selfish. (Chapter 26)

　　这一条是前面所说有关英国人的“幽默感”的：

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. If a man simply lets others pay for him, he is "mean"; if he boasts of it in a jocular manner and twits his fellows with having been scored off, he is no longer "mean" but a comical fellow. Mere cowardice is shameful; cowardice boasted of with humorous exaggerations and grotesque gestures can passed off as funny. Cruelty is shameful - unless the cruel man can represent it as a practical joke. A thousand bawdy, or even blasphemous, jokes do not help towards a man's damnation so much as his discovery that almost anything he wants to do can be done, not only without the disapproval but with the admiration of his fellows, if only it can get itself treated as a Joke. And this temptation can be almost entirely hidden from your patient by that English seriousness about Humour. Any suggestion that there might be too much of it can be represented to him as "Puritanical" or as betraying a "lack of humour". (Chapter 11)

　　有关未来的思考也极引人深思：

It is far better to make them live in the Future. Biological necessity makes all their passions point in that direction already, so that thought about the Future inflames hope and fear. Also, it is unknown to them, so that in making them think about it we make them think of unrealities. In a word, the Future is, of all things, the thing least like eternity. It is the most completely temporal part of time - for the Past is frozen and no longer flows, and the Present is all lit up with eternal rays. Hence the encouragement we have given to all those schemes of thought such as Creative Evolution, Scientific Humanism, or Communism, which fix men's affections on the Future, on the very core of temporality. Hence nearly all vices are rooted in the future. Gratitude looks to the past and love to the present; fear, avarice, lust, and ambition look ahead. Do not think lust an exception. When the present pleasure arrives, the sin (which alone interests us) is already over. The pleasure is just the part of the process which we regret and would exclude if we could do so without losing the sin; it is the part contributed by the Enemy, and therefore experienced in a Present. The sin, which is our contribution, looked forward.But we want a man hag-ridden by the Future - haunted by visions of an imminent heaven or hell upon earth - ready to break the Enemy's commands in the present if by so doing we make him think he can attain the one or avert the other - dependent for his faith on the success or failure of schemes whose end he will not live to see. We want a whole race perpetually in pursuit of the rainbow's end, never honest, nor kind, nor happy now, but always using as mere fuel wherewith to heap the altar of the future every real gift which is offered them in the Present. (Chapter 15)

　　最近“人权没了”和“人全没了”在某些人那里成了笑谈，看看这句话：

It is obvious that to Him human birth is important chiefly as the qualification for human death, and death solely as the gate to that other kind of life. (Chapter 28)

　　还有比较有意思的是，在(我理解的）西方文化语境中，被称作“胆小鬼”可谓奇耻大辱。但Screwtape却并不把这作为可以大加利用的工具，他对仇恨、怯懦、恐惧有这样一番高论：

But hatred is best combined with Fear. Cowardice, alone of all the vices, is purely painful--horrible to anticipate, horrible to feel, horrible to remember; Hatred has its pleasures. It is therefore often the compensation by which a frightened man reimburses himself for the miseries of Fear. The more he fears, the more he will hate. And Hatred is also a great anodyne for shame. To make a deep wound in his charity, you should therefore first defeat his courage.Now this is a ticklish business. We have made men proud of most vices, but not of cowardice. Whenever we have almost succeeded in doing so, the Enemy permits a war or an earthquake or some other calamity, and at once courage becomes so obviously lovely and important even in human eyes that all our work is undone, and there is still at least one vice of which they feel genuine shame. The danger of inducing cowardice in our patients, therefore, is that we produce real self-knowledge and self-loathing with consequent repentance and humility. And in fact, in the last war, thousands of humans, by discovering their own cowardice, discovered the whole moral world for the first time. In peace we can make many of them ignore good and evil entirely; in danger, the issue is forced upon them in a guise to which even we cannot blind them. There is here a cruel dilemma before us. If we promoted justice and charity among men, we should be playing directly into the Enemy's hands; but if we guide them to the opposite behaviour, this sooner or later produces (for He permits it to produce) a war or a revolution, and the undisguisable issue of cowardice or courage awakes thousands of men from moral stupor.

　　而勇气是一切美德的试金石：

This, indeed, is probably one of the Enemy's motives for creating a dangerous world--a world in which moral issues really come to the point. He sees as well as you do that courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means, at the point of highest reality. A chastity or honesty, or mercy, which yields to danger will be chaste or honest or merciful only on conditions. Pilate was merciful till it became risky. (Chapter 29)

　　怯懦或能使人更深入地认识自己，只有怯懦演变为绝望，才是魔鬼的胜利！(Chapter 29)

　　本以为这样小小一本书最多三天便可结束，然而今天已经是第八天了。读了两遍文字之外，还听了大约四遍有声书，分别是John Cleese（《弗尔蒂旅馆》）和Ralph Cosham（才发现他已经去世，悼念）的版本。两版都有Audie Awards的奖项或提名，前者几乎要从播放器里跳出来喷你一脸口水，后者一贯的克制老成，看个人的口味吧。

　　在读的过程中常常觉得Lewis教授太厉害了，把我那点小心思都看穿了，然后看到别人引用他在平装本前言里的一段话：

Some have paid me an undeserved compliment by supposing that my Letters were the ripe fruit of many years’ study in moral and ascetic theology. They forgot that there is an equally reliable, though less creditable, way of learning how temptation works. “My heart”—I need no other’s—“showeth me the wickedness of the ungodly.” 来源

　　无论什么种族文化学识信仰，人性真的是差不多的。

　　昨天早上写下这个书评题目，晚上看ER，好巧那一集也叫做“人类一计划，上帝就发笑”。而Lewis在本书的题词处分别引用了Martin Luther和Thomas More这对老对头的话：“最好的驱魔法，如果它不能被圣书降伏的话，就是嘲笑和藐视它，因为它受不了轻蔑”；“魔鬼，那骄傲的精灵，承受不住嘲弄”。笑对自以为掌握了宇宙真理的人也好、对魔鬼也好，都不啻为最有力的武器；但要小心，“只有聪明人才能拿美德，或者任何别的什么东西开玩笑”（Chapter 11），别把自己变得轻浮、或者玩世不恭，那可是魔鬼最爱的笑。You will say that these are very small sins; and doubtless, like all young tempters, you are anxious to be able to report spectacular wickedness. But do remember, the only thing that matters is the extent to which you separate the man from the Enemy. It does not matter how small the sins are provided that their cumulative effect is to edge the man away from the Light and out into the Nothing. Murder is no better than cards if cards can do the trick. Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one--the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts. (Chapter 12)