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Pray do not ask me, dear reader, how the following correspondence fell into my possession. Suffice it to say that the C.S. Lewis Estate's legal counsel prevents me from revealing very much on that subject, and my own legal counsel says I mustn't tempt fate on this score. I chafe sorely at these constraints; nonetheless, the litigious nature of modern society is not easily gainsaid.
In any case, to the point: if you ever doubted that devils desire to destroy marriages between humans as much as they desire to destroy the marriage between a soul and its creator, here is some evidence for you. The names have been changed to protect those innocent of copyright infringement.
Eric Metaxas
New York, 2004
My dear Gallstone,
The question as to whether you shd. encourage yr. male subject to covet his neighbour's wife made me shriek with laughter. You are such a literal devil! Of course if opportunity presents itself, you certainly should. But our Enemy's command can be broken in much more general ways, so there's no need to try and focus yr. patient toward any one specific person. Badness, no! Getting your man to covet anyone at all, including fictional characters, is just as good, and sometimes even better, about which more later. But this brings up a subject I've long meant to expand upon and now shall: that of creating unrealistic expectations.
Traditionally this is one of the most effective techniques by which our tribe has weakened and sundered marriages since the hateful institution began, and you would do well to master it. The simplest way of doing this is immed. following some kind of row (great or small, it doesn't much matter), by drawing yr. patient's attention to someone who appears, at that moment, to have all of the qualities yr. patient's spouse so pointedly lacks. For example, if the man's wife had during their squabble been screaming at him or loudly criticizing him, all you must do is put in his path some reasonably attractive human female who is for some reason not talking and lo! he will see her as the perfect embodiment of demure womanhood, and as the very sort of person he ought to have married all along! Never mind the fact that the reason she is not talking is because she is sitting on a bus, reading her horoscope in one of those "women's" magazines—or that away from these rare quiet moments on the bus she is an incessant chatterer a malicious gossip of the first order. He wouldn't believe it if you told him anyway. Only let her read about how she might meet a darkly handsome Aries that month and say nothing and he will be inflamed with ingratitude for every good thing his wife has ever done, and simultaneously beside himself with rage that he didn't somehow marry this mute woman two rows ahead of him.
But creating unrealistic expectations in general has become infinitely easier than it was a mere century ago, owing to the rise of our Father's ingenious invention, what our fatuous patients call the "media culture." Good hell! What real spouse today can ever compare with the surgically and digitally enhanced models of perfection that are everywhere! In fact today, thanks to the proliferation of our technologies, these fictitious sirens are often more in our patients' lives than their actual spouses. Fiction is the new reality, Gallstone! Take advantage of it. You see, inasmuch as our annoyingly inventive Enemy created reality, we are in a bit of a bind—so whenever one may encourage a substitute for it, one mustn't lose the opportunity! It doesn't matter if the substitute is a rouged, mascaraed face on a magazine cover in a convenience-store checkout line; a bewigged tartlet on a billboard as yr. drowsy patient "commutes" to work; or an intensely sophisticated and clever actress in a banal sitcom (never mind that her witty words were scripted by a tubby, chainsmoking bald man!). Any of these can be used to great advantage in creating absurdly unrealistic expectations every bit as much as a real "neighbour's wife", so to speak. More on this later. Till then I remain,
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