A Screwtape Zeitgeist

BOSTON

IN THE Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis diagnosed a phenomenon that is today largely responsible for stunting the moral formation of this nation's youth.

In Letter 25 to his nephew Wormwood, a bombastic Screwtape declaimed, "The use of Fashions in thought is to distract the attention of men from their real dangers…we make it fashionable to expose the dangers of enthusiasm at the very moment when they are all really becoming worldly and lukewarm; a century later, when we are really making them all Byronic and drunk with emotion, the fashionable outcry is directed against the dangers of the mere 'understanding.'"

Proof of this -- that Zeitgeists have a penchant for deriding what might benefit society -- can be seen in the prevailing attitude towards morality these days.

In an America where single parent families, teenage pregnancies and teenage shooting rampages have become too frequent, the mere mention of God in a public forum evokes a guttural gasp and a frantic call to the lawyer. Talk of morality in public is uncouth and in your face; denuded women and gun-toting men, icons to a broad swath of culture, are not. As alcohol, sex, cars and money -- all elevated by culture as salve for the soul -- exacerbate its yearning once the evanescence of novelty dissipates, the idea of a transcendent remedy draws a haughty scoff.

Society rejecting its aegis is not a new phenomenon; these entreaties date back to the book of Jeremiah and beyond: "Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls." Jeremiah 6:16 (NIV).

Yet the symptoms of a broken soul still convulse our youth: alcoholism, drug addiction, anorexia, incarceration, truancy, gang violence -- the list goes on and on. Ironically, in what may arguably be the intellectual epicenter of hauteur towards morality, there is a law on the books that has the power to put a stop to it all. John Adams, the chief framer of the Massachusetts Constitution and 2nd President of our nation, wrote into that document a provision that requires public schools to educate for virtue. In fact, so certain was he that moral education engendered societal flourish, he once exalted it to rival representative government in importance. He once said, "Two things are to be indispensably adhered to,--one is, some regulation for securing forever an equitable choice of representatives; another is, the education of youth, both in literature and morals."

In his extensive writings, Adams defined virtue as, among other things, a principle of justice where one treats others as one wants to be treated at all times and in all circumstances. His unequivocal handling of the subject made circumvention by legislative progeny impossible. How, then, is public education in Massachusetts today constitutional when it omits character formation? Simple -- it isn't.

Many will parry that this is the responsibility of family, which is true, or that, since God can't be taught in schools, people of faith should take their ball and go home, which is false -- but neither recrimination addresses the real issue -- there is no safety net catching youth left behind by the dissolution of the family unit and concomitant moral erosion of society.

The Screwtape Zeitgeist churns. Lewis continues, "Cruel ages are put on their guard against Sentimentality, feckless and idle ones against Respectability, lecherous ones against Puritanism; and whenever all men are really hastening to be slaves or tyrants we make Liberalism the prime bogey." Today, observation of our great society compels the following addition: "An age of weary souls on guard against the way that provides rest."