I once heard it said that the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was to convince the world that he does not exist.

The fiftieth anniversary of C.S. Lewis's death (November 22, 2013) has sent me back to Lewis's classic work The Screwtape Letters. In this hellish drama, he alludes to this same devilish idea when the book's senior demon, Uncle Screwtape, informs his nephew Wormwood that demonic hiddenness is indisputable hell-policy (Chapter VI). "That question, at least for the present phase of the struggle, has been answered for us be the High Command. Our policy, for the moment, is to conceal ourselves."

While only a fool would contradict the patron saint of latter twentieth-century Protestantism, I think the devil has a much more devious trick than mere demonic disappearance.

The hard work of deeper risk

Recently I sat in a circle of men who have been meeting together for over twenty years. It is a diverse group, as diverse as any I have ever witnessed. Looking around the circle, there ...