How Satan Tempts us to Make Christianity into an Exclusive Club

As we draw closer to the end of our series on the tactics of the devil, we come to a topic many of us fall into, but few ever address. One very clever way the devil tries to influence us is by putting thoughts in our mind that we Christians are a part of an exclusive group or clique.

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The devil seeks to have us associate Christianity not with Jesus Christ, the Gospels or the Catholic Church as a whole, but with the subset of fellow Christian people we associate with on a regular basis.

Screwtape elaborates on this devious plan:

“You [Wormwood] must teach him [the Patient] to mistake this contrast between the circle that delights and the circle that bores him for the contrast between Christians and unbelievers He must be made to feel (he’d better not put it into words) ‘how different we Christians are’: and by ‘we Christians’ he must really, but unknowingly, mean ‘my set’; and by ‘my set’ he must mean not ‘The people who, in their charity and humility, have accepted me’, but ‘The people with whom I associate by right’…..

The idea of belonging to an inner ring, of being in a secret, is very sweet to him. Play on that nerve….the great thing is to make Christianity a mystery religion in which he feels himself one of the initiates.” (The Screwtape Letters, 132-133, emphasis added)

Unfortunately this plays out in our lives on a regular basis and is a very real temptation.

This particular temptation is active and alive in many different ways in America. What has happened is that in the process of striving for orthodoxy, we end up attaching ourselves to groups of people where we view those people who do not line up exactly with our views as equivalent to “unbelievers.”

This temptation extends to every little bit of Catholic practice and devotion. For example, if we belong to a parish that uses a Communion rail, we can be tempted to look down on anyone who doesn’t use it and who stands to receive the Blessed Sacrament. Or, we can go so far as to equate a visitor to our parish who receives the Eucharist on his/her hands as a pagan.

I know that personally those thoughts do come into my own mind and I struggle sometimes with my initial reaction.

Or we may be confused by a new priest, who does things differently than the previous pastor. A group of parishioners quickly set-up a meeting with the pastor to explain to him “how we do things here.”

Along with these different practices in Catholicism, there is a strong temptation to attach oneself to a particular parish or pastor. It is very common to see a group of parishioners follow a priest wherever he goes in the Diocese. Every other pastor who comes to their parish is just not the same and is not orthodox enough as this one priest. As a result, they follow him and form an “inner ring” or “set” of people and failure to follow this one priest equates to being a pagan.

What results is the fact that Christianity or Catholicism is no longer focused on Jesus Christ, but on these particular beliefs and practices that our specific group adheres to and failure to adhere to them is blasphemy. It also makes our small group of Christians into some sort of athletic team, whereby we pit ourselves against other Christians or Catholics in hopes that we “win.”

Let us combat this temptation and return our focus to Jesus Christ and the Church He founded. Our faith should not be about a set of rules or customs that we follow that somehow make us superior to other people, but it should always be about Jesus Christ, who died for us upon the cross to bring us all to Heaven.

Let us examine our lives and determine where we pledge our allegiance. I know that I am not perfect and a sinner who sometimes struggles with focusing my attention on Jesus Christ, so I do not say these things in condemnation as if I were perfect (which I am not).

Above all things, let us together seek to follow Christ and His Church.

***If you would like to follow-along reading the The Screwtape Letters, I suggest to purchase your own copy of C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters. If you don’t like reading, I highly suggest buying the dramatization of the letters by Focus on the Family, called The Screwtape Letters: First Ever Full-cast Dramatization of the Diabolical Classic (Radio Theatre). It features Andy Serkis, who played Gollum in The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit and is well produced.

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