THE TWIST

 C. S. Lewis wrote a brilliant book which he said was his most difficult to author. He called it "The Screwtape Letters" about which he said that he had to think backwards. The book is about one senior demon (Screwtape) advising a junior inexperienced demon (Wormwood) on how to deal with Christians, those people Screwtape describes as having "gone over to the Enemy." Writing such a book was wearing on the author as we can easily imagine. 

One piece of counsel Screwtape offers Wormwood, who's also his nephew, concerns something rampant in the church today.

 Screwtape writes. “On the other hand, we do want, and want very much, to make men treat Christianity as a means.” This would amount to using Christianity

A means toward what? Preferably toward personal advancement, Screwtape writes, “but, failing that, as a means to anything—even to social justice.” He continues:

“The thing to do is to get a man at first to value social justice as a thing which the Enemy demands, and then work him on to the stage at which he values Christianity because it may produce social justice. For the Enemy will not be used as a convenience. Men or nations who think they can revive the Faith in order to make a good society might just as well think they can use the stairs of Heaven as a short cut to the nearest chemist's shop. Fortunately, it is quite easy to coax humans round this little corner.”

"The Screwtape Letters" was published in that great year in American history, 1942, and as you can tell in the above paragraph, it's much more apropos now than back when. Televangelists promote Christianity as a means to more corpulent bank accounts, ever-flourishing health, and upward mobility. Their church services become pep rallies to get up and go out to live your best life now. 

In the book, Screwtape advises his young ward to influence men to work toward a Utopia on earth, something impossible since God placed an angel with a flaming sword at Eden's gate, thus preventing mankind from getting back to Paradise in a fallen state. The message is a clear warning to those who’d be tempted to use the Gospel to build utopias here on Earth. Isn't that what the social justice warriors are trying to do and, sad to say, many churches and Christian authors are caving in to them.