One of my favorite books is The Screwtape letters, by C. S. Lewis. I decided to write a spin-off from that book, more as a salute to Lewis than anything else. I call it Sculpture 666. The next several posts will be installments from that book. So, without further ado...

Preface

"A passionate or inordinate desire, especially sexual". That was the first definition I had of lust. However, as I thought more and more about the sin of lust, the more inadequate that definition became. I have often had extended periods of passionate or inordinate sexual desire for my wife, particularly if I haven't seen her for a while, yet I would never label those thoughts and feelings "lust". On the other hand, a fleeting glimpse of an unknown, half-naked women might cause a feeling not nearly so "passionate or inordinate", yet I would not hesitate to call it lust. There was some emotional or spiritual line I would not cross with my wife that I did with other women, something dark and unseen, but massive and powerful. So, like an archeologist walking on the back of a dinosaur looking for a "find" with a magnifying glass, I searched for this missing link, and one day it showed itself, or rather, I believe, was shown to me.

It happened on the rare occasion of a spat with my wife. Both of us were tired and irritable and snappy. I forget what the disagreement was, but during the sullen silence that occurs towards the end of most of these little quarrels, I felt something very strange. I felt sexual desire for my wife at a time when I would have most liked to shake some sense into her. Then it loomed before me, the dark, unseen force, the line I would not cross sexually with my wife: hatred. It was then that I knew what lust was: Love infected, diseased, twisted, torn, lacerated, mangled, whipped, bludgeoned, starved, infested, and otherwise horribly violated and crushed by selfish Hatred. I suppose that could be the definition for any sin, but never was a revelation more clear to me. It is this definition that churns the violent thoughts of the tempters in Sculpture 666.

The focus of this book first began to clear when I heard a particular anecdote. I have no way of verifying it, and it seems a bit implausible, but still it was what set me on my track. It went like this: a church was having difficulty in hiring a pastor. They advertised in many religious magazines with no success. Finally, whether as a joke or a spiritual hunch, they put an ad in Playboy. Before the end of the week, they had received over 200 resumes! (One wonders what has since happened to that flock if they chose their shepherd from that lot). I began reading and hearing of other accounts pointing to lust in the Christian leadership and was appalled at its magnitude. As a first-time author, I thought that with such a big target, I could not fail to hit my mark.

As this was my first book, I found great security in "spinning off" from one of my favorite books, The Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis. I first read it in my early teen years, and since then, I think that not a year has gone by that I haven't read it again. It has become like an old friend to me, something that makes me laugh while gently bringing me to my senses. And it felt more than right that I should "hold the hand" of my old friend in my writing debut. There are several similarities between the two books, but enough contrasts to make my book different, interesting, and entertaining, I hope.

The personality of my hero is very different than that of Screwtape. For the most part, Screwtape is a suave demon, a smiling murderer. He is a devil of discomfort, ill-manners, and misunderstanding. He builds petty gripes into death scenes. He is the subtle destroyer of common courtesy. My hero, Rake, is not nearly so well-mannered or subtle. He is a devil of fiery passion, glaring hatred, and enthusiastic destruction. He either exaggerates or lies outright about events in his life and Hell in general. Everything about him is swollen, blown out of proportion. His bloated ego is much more visible than Screwtape's. My reason for creating him thus was two-fold. First, the sin in which he specializes practically mandates open vulgarity. blatant uncouthness, and inflamed imagination if we observe the behavior of his less secretive human counterparts. Second, the fact that he does specialize goads him into greater anger and more violent rhetoric and action because he knows more precisely what he wants from a patron and how to get it. He is an art lecturer, and to produce a particular effect, he knows to do thus and so; he does not have near the latitude of Screwtape. Ah, the tortures of an artist!

It was with the same reasoning behind the creation of my hero that I decided to end my story with a minister who does not escape the clutches of his personal demons. It is true that I also wanted my story to be different from Screwtape, but more importantly to me, I felt that far more are trapped and tortured by lust than escape it, and the insidious hatred and degradation of the sin seemed to demand a violent and painful end. Horrible as it was, it seemed to fit with the tone of the book.

My book is not a collection of letters, but a transcription of a class at the College of Temptation to which Lewis refers in Screwtape. Even so, a person could hardly hope to be more academic or "classroom" structured than Lewis was in his personal letters from Screwtape. However, Lewis was much more concrete in the ideas he presented. Almost anyone can identify with the scenarios and temptations Screwtape writes about. To a certain extent, I went along with that, but at the same time, I wanted to know more about the nuts and bolts of temptation and Hell in general. As no one can know the actuality of Hell until after death, I simply let my imagination satisfy my curiosity and as a result, my book is more fanciful than Lewis's. His book is full of spiritual existence. Mine adds a little spiritual possibility.

I also differed from Lewis in naming my demons. Lewis's aim in naming his demons was merely to make them sound "nasty". I too, wanted my names to sound nasty, but I thought that since I was dealing with demons of lust, their names should necessarily have some "lusty" connotation about them. For the rest, I depended on the demons' actions speaking louder than their names.

I did not experience a "spiritual cramp" as Lewis put it, or really any kind of oppression at all in writing my book. In the beginning, I did have some interesting dreams that by all rights should have been nightmares. I dreamed of hideous demons doing awful things, yet I was not fearful and did not awaken in the night. I might just as well have dreamed of butterflies and flowers for all the apparent emotional effect the dreams had on me. The dreams were very vivid, yet I have all but forgotten what they entailed, and I did not even feel a need to speculate or discuss with my wife their possible meanings. It was as if my mind fired a visual bombshell but an emotional blank. That was the only disagreeable, or rather, strange experience I had in writing this book.

I am very aware of the risk I take in associating my writing with that of Lewis. The comparison could be fatal to this book. I haven't a pool of encyclopaedic knowledge nor near the religious ardor of Lewis from which to draw; my main inspiration is my own experience and that of others. It is a general base, but a sound base as well. Perhaps age will enable me in the future to pinpoint with Screwtapian accuracy some of the ideas I present in this book. Still, I believe many will be able to sketch themselves in these pages, and it is on the basis of that shared humanity that I confidently present Sculpture 666 to the reader.

John Oberon
Columbus, Ohio