My dear Bitterwood,
I stood in front of the Lowerarchy and presented your report with great anticipation, and my elation was followed by dejection. You visited two hundred of those college campuses—two hundred!—but you didn't persuade a single soul to fall into our camp. My dear Bitterwood, are you really that thick? Have I not taught you that college campuses are securely in the grip of Our Father, and there is nothing you could say that could possibly convince those empty-headed children to think of anything sacred at all? At the rate you're going, it will only be a matter of time before you share the fate of your uncle.
As if hanging about in the wrong places weren't bad enough, you wasted your time on the wrong targets. Instead of pursuing the few Christians who are actually deserving of the name, you mucked about with a handful of idiots. Those sandwich board-wearing, bullhorn-toting, sign-waving street preachers—Jesse Morrell, Ruben Israel, Kerrigan Skelly and others of their ilk—most of them are in our service. Oh, you thought you were so clever, thinking these people were working for the Enemy; but really they are working for us, and they're just too thick to realize it.
I say this for two reasons. Firstly, they claim to be holy and without sin. As they don't smoke, drink, masturbate, listen to gangster rap, or sleep hither and thither, they claim to be perfect. But these men do sin (and sometimes they commit the very sins they preach against), and they rationalize it by saying: "God gives us all things to enjoy," or "I'm just trying to avoid temptation," or "This ministry is putting a lot of pressure on me; I have to let it out somehow." (Granted, these so-called holy men won't admit that to their audience. If they did, they might start admitting it to themselves. After that, they might truly turn to our Enemy for his mercy and grace, and that would destroy whatever confidence they have in their intelligence and wits.)
Secondly, these preachers fill themselves up with pride, and their pride is blinding them to their failings, which makes them even less likely to turn to the Enemy. Better yet, their pride is repelling lost souls by the hundreds of thousands each year, because they see right through the preachers' words and think those buffoons are delusional. Those lost souls want nothing to do with those preachers' egotism and arrogance; they would rather wind up in Hell than have anything to do with the Enemy.
I do hope this reminds you of something I taught you when you were in primary school, dreaming of being like Our Father and leading hordes of ignorami to Hell: Religious people are on our side. Firstly, they claim to believe in the Enemy but don't practice it in private. Their personal lives, not to mention the counsels of the heart, are just as wicked as any ordinary blasphemer's. Secondly, they claim to believe in his salvation and grace, but they contradict that by telling people to stop sinning (as if it were within humans' power to change their own hearts). That turns the Enemy's plan for redemption into a self-help guide, and that makes the Enemy positively livid.
So let them sing all the hymns they want, say "God bless you" at every utterance, and wave their silly signs in people's face and scream into bullhorns until the batteries run out. Spend your time pursuing other cases—like the Protestant churches with the struggling pastors, and the Christian homes whose children are contemplating the Enemy's call for salvation. But don't waste your time by toying with those street preachers again, or you might actually wake them up to the Enemy's plan and Our Father's ulterior motives. After all, those who have been the most self-righteous can become the most zealous converts, and that's the last thing we need. Or do I have to remind you what happened to a man named Saul?
Your affectionate grandfather,
Screwtape