A Screwtape File on Lystra and Our Idols
Idols.
They rob us of joy. Peace. And most of all… Jesus.
We have been sitting with that in Acts 14. The man in Lystra. The crowd. The bulls at the gate. The idols that make us bleed.
I want to come at the same thing from a different angle for a minute.
If you have been around here long, you already know this about me. I quote C. S. Lewis too much. I have probably quoted him more than any other writer who has ever lived. There is a reason. He does this thing where he peels the paint off our religious words and shows the bare wood underneath. Not prettier wood. Not stained and sealed wood. Just… the real thing. The grain. The knots. The stuff you can actually build on.
One of my favorites is The Screwtape Letters. If you have never read it, the setup is simple. A senior demon named Screwtape is writing letters to Wormwood, his nephew . Wormwood got assigned a human… a young man on earth. And Screwtape is coaching him. Teaching him how to keep this man from ever really following Jesus.
So you get temptation from the other side of the radio. The enemy's frequency. Not ours.
No pitchforks. No horror movie stuff. Just a seasoned tempter explaining how to nudge a man a few degrees off course… so slowly he never feels himself turning.
It is satire. But it is the kind that leaves a mark. Lewis does not invent new sins. He just shows how ordinary, respectable things… habits, opinions, even going to church… can become tools that bend a heart away from God. Quietly. Without making a sound.
That is why the book has stayed with me all these years. It puts language around things most of us feel but do not know how to name. Things we sense happening inside us but cannot quite catch in the act.
So here is what I want to do.
We are staying in Acts 14. Same text. Same dirt street. Same lame man. But I want you to imagine… as we walk through it… what it might sound like if Screwtape were advising Wormwood about that town of Lystra. About that crowd. And about our hearts.
Not to be clever. I am not trying to write fiction here. I just want to let the mask slip for a second. To hear how the other side might talk about things like panic and control and "worthless things"… and the God who actually bleeds for us instead of making us bleed for Him.
If Lewis is right… and I think he is… idolatry is not just bad theology.
It is a strategy.
It might be Hell's favorite one. Because it cooperates with something already inside us. A willing heart. And someone out there is very interested in keeping you paying at the wrong altars.
That is what Paul gets at in Romans 1. People "exchanging the glory of the immortal God for images." And dark powers riding that exchange all the way down into the basement.
Panic In Zeus Country
Acts 14 drops us into a town that would have felt like home to Screwtape.
No synagogue. No background in Moses. No Torah scrolls gathering dust on a shelf. Just a small place where Zeus stories hang in the air. Where fear has had a long, long time to harden into reflex.
There is a man there who has never walked. Luke does not dress it up.
"Lame from birth... had never walked." [Acts 14:8]
That is it. No backstory about what went wrong. No rehab plan. No "if he just tries harder." This man's entire life has been lived close to the ground. On the dirt. Looking up at everyone else.
He cannot walk.
But he can listen.
Paul is preaching. Jesus. Cross. Resurrection. Forgiveness. A King who did not stay dead. And this man… he is not just hearing words. He is leaning in. Something is happening in him that nobody in the crowd can see yet.
Luke tells us Paul was watching him. "Saw that he had faith to be healed." [Acts 14:9]
How do you see faith? I do not know. But Paul saw it. Something in the man's face. His posture. The way he was not just hearing but receiving.
Paul raises his voice. "Stand up on your feet!"
And the man does not ease into it. Does not test one ankle and then the other. Does not look around for permission.
He jumps. [Acts 14:10]
Just… up. Off the ground. For the first time in his life.
This is straight out of Isaiah. The prophet wrote that "the lame will leap like a deer" when God came to save. [Isaiah 35:3‑6]
That promise lands on a dirt street in Zeus country. And nobody in that town is ready for what it means.
Faith In The Ear, Idolatry In The Eye
Here is where you have to slow down. Because two things happen at the same time, and they go in opposite directions.
The man hears the Word. Believes. Leaps. [Acts 14:8‑10]
The crowd sees power. And reaches for the only categories they have ever known. "The gods have come down to us in human form!" [Acts 14:11]
Same miracle. Two completely different responses.
Barnabas gets labeled "Zeus." Paul does the talking, so he becomes "Hermes"… the messenger god. [Acts 14:12]
And now there are two sermons running side by side in Lystra.
One is faith. Growing quietly in a man who heard the word and leapt.
The other is idolatry. Growing loudly in a crowd that saw the power… and folded it right back into their Zeus story. Stuffed it into old wineskins because that is all they had on the shelf.
A heart captured by the Word.
A town captured by what it saw.
And then it gets worse.
"The priest of Zeus, whose temple was just outside the town, brought bulls and wreaths to the gates, because he intended, with the crowds, to offer sacrifice." [Acts 14:13]
Now fear is running everything. They are not worshiping. They are scrambling. Trying not to anger the "gods" they think just showed up unannounced.
What Screwtape Loves About Panic
If Screwtape were writing Wormwood about this scene… I think it would sound something like this.
My dear Wormwood,
You are far too focused on temples and statues. I have told you this before. Shrines have their uses, yes, but most of the real work… the work that matters… happens long before a human ever lights a candle or slaughters a bull.
The real altar is the knot in his stomach.
That little sentence he whispers when nobody can hear him. "If this falls apart, I am done."
Once you have that, you can build your worship service anywhere. Hospital corridors. Living rooms. Church parking lots. School drop-off lines. No idol requires a building permit. Only panic.
That is Lewis's whole book. He takes what you and I feel as ordinary fear… the kind that lives in your chest at 2 a.m. when you cannot sleep… and he shows how Hell hears it. Not as a problem. As an opportunity. As a door left unlocked.
That is Lystra.
Underneath the miracle and the shouting there is a town full of people who already know what it feels like to be small in front of powers they cannot see. They grew up on stories about gods who show up unannounced and get offended and level whole places. That is the air they breathed.
So when the true God finally keeps His promise… when He makes a lame man leap on a dirt street in their little town… the reflex is not worship.
It is survival.
"We are in trouble. Do not make them angry. Get the bull. Now."
A Screwtape Note On What We See
My dear Wormwood,
You must try to understand something. We care very little what the human sees. Very little. As long as we control what he does with it.
Let him see a healing. Let him see an answered prayer. Let him watch his child take a breath after a close call. Let him see a hundred small kindnesses from the Enemy's hand. We are not threatened by sight.
Our danger begins when his eyes drive him to the Enemy's words. When he stops and asks that awful question… "Who is this Person who keeps showing up in my life?"
Your task is simple. When he sees power, make him reach for the stories he already loves. In Lystra, that meant Zeus and Hermes. In your patient it may mean money. Safety. Romance. Reputation. The label hardly matters.
Just make sure he files the Enemy's work under something familiar. "I just caught a break." "I finally got my act together." "The universe was looking out for me." Anything. Anything but Him.
If you do your job well… he will see miracles his entire life and never once meet the Miracle-Worker.
That is the move in Lystra. And it is so much quieter than we think.
The town does not deny what happened. A healed man is right there in front of them. Hopping around. The evidence could not be louder. [Acts 14:10‑11]
But they do something more dangerous than denial.
They baptize it into their old story.
"The gods have come down to us in human form." [Acts 14:11]
Plural. Gods. Same facts. Wrong frame. Wrong name on the building.
They grew up on legends about gods who visit and get offended and burn things down. Not Scripture. Just… the wallpaper of their world. The only story they had ever been given. So when real power shows up, they grab the only explanation that feels safe.
They do what Screwtape loves most.
They rename grace.
Survival Logic Now
Most of us are not tempted to bow to stone statues. I know that.
But the old logic did not die. It just moved indoors. It runs under church clothes now. Under mortgages. Under career goals. Under the way we parent and the way we scroll and the way we plan our weeks.
We still work. We should. We are called to. [Colossians 3:23‑24]
We still keep relationships. We should. Love is not optional. Never was. [Colossians 3:18‑21]
Idolatry is not having those things.
Idolatry is what you ask them to be.
It is the weight you hang on a gift that was never designed to hold you up. It is the hidden claim you attach to something God gave you freely… and then you start expecting it to do what only God can do. You start building your identity on it. Pouring the foundation of your worth into it. And it was never meant to bear that kind of load.
You know you have crossed the line when sentences like these start forming way down deep… in that place where you do not let other people hear you think…
"If this person walks away, God has nothing left for me."
"If this job is gone, my identity is gone."
"If I lose this ______, I am nobody."
That is worship language. And we do not even hear ourselves praying it.
The job is not the idol. The hidden sentence underneath it is. Same with family. Same with ministry. Same with health. Same with the version of yourself you keep trying to become.
Good gifts. Terrible gods.
Jonah calls them "worthless idols" and says those who cling to them "abandon their faithful love." [Jonah 2:8]
Sit with that for a second. You cannot cling to an idol and cling to grace at the same time. One grip has to loosen. And most of the time… we do not even realize which hand is letting go.
A Screwtape Memo On "Good Things"
My dear Wormwood,
You keep asking whether work and family and church are "dangerous" to us. You still think in terms of objects. How very human of you.
The Enemy invented work. He invented marriage. He even… and I say this through gritted teeth… invented the Church. We cannot destroy those things outright. It would draw too much attention. And frankly, we do not need to.
Our method is simpler. We do not remove the good things.
We lean on them.
Gently. Over weeks and months and years. Until a job quietly slides from gift into god. Until a relationship starts carrying weight that only the Enemy was ever built to hold. Until the man does not even notice that his foundation shifted.
Take your patient's job. We do not need him to quit. We only need him to believe his name lives or dies with that company.
Take his marriage. We do not need him to hate his wife. We only need him to quietly decide that if she ever left, the Enemy would have nothing else for him.
Do you see? We are not after his calendar. We are after his sentence. That one sentence he has never said out loud but believes with everything in him…
"If this falls apart, I am done."
Once we own that sentence, we can leave everything else in place. He will be a very busy idolater. Respectable. Exhausted. Surrounded by good things. And quite useful to us.
That is the trap.
And the reason it works so well is that it does not look like a trap. It looks like a full life. A productive life. A life people admire from the outside.
"Worthless Things" And The Living God
Barnabas and Paul have had enough.
They see the bulls. The wreaths. The priest of Zeus walking toward the gate with sacrifice in tow. And something breaks open in them.
"The apostles Barnabas and Paul tore their robes when they heard this and rushed into the crowd, shouting…" [Acts 14:14‑15]
Tore their robes. That is not a calm, measured pastoral response. That is grief. That is horror. They are watching people worship the wrong god right in front of them. And they cannot hold it in.
"People, why are you doing these things? We are people also, just like you, and we are proclaiming good news to you, that you turn from these worthless things to the living God." [Acts 14:14‑15]
Worthless things.
Not harmless. Not neutral. Not "things that might be nice but are not quite right." Worthless. As in… they cannot save you. They cannot hold you. They will take everything you pour into them and give you nothing back but exhaustion.
And then Paul does the one thing Screwtape cannot stand.
He names the living God.
"The living God who made the heaven, the earth, the sea, and everything in them… He did not leave Himself without a witness, since He did what is good by giving you rain from heaven and fruitful seasons and filling you with food and your hearts with joy." [Acts 14:15‑17]
Do you hear the difference?
Zeus waits for you to feed him. The living God has been feeding you.
Rain on ground that never earned it. [Matthew 5:45]
Food on tables you were not sure how you were going to cover. Those little moments of joy that show up unannounced… the ones you know you did not manufacture. Could not have. They just… arrived. Like a gift left on the porch by someone who did not knock. [James 1:16‑17]
And then… at a table, on the night He was betrayed… Jesus takes bread. Gives thanks. Breaks it. And says, "This is My body." [Matthew 26:26]
He does not just give things. He gives Himself.
That is not Zeus. That is not any god you can build with stone or career or romance or reputation. That is a God who bleeds for you and then sets a table and says sit down, eat, this is for you.
Idolatry lies about where your life came from. It whispers that you built this. That you earned this. That it all depends on you.
Repentance… and by that I mean turning, reorienting, facing the right direction again… repentance starts by telling the truth.
"This was You."
"And this."
"And this too." [Isaiah 55:1‑3; Ephesians 2:8‑9]
My dear Wormwood,
When they start saying "This was You"… we are in real danger.
The more a human connects rain to the Enemy, meals to the Enemy, small joys and even breath itself to the Enemy… the harder it becomes to sell him our worthless things.
Do not let your man linger over gratitude. Push him somewhere else. Comparison. Worry. His phone. The news. Anything. Anything at all.
Just not quiet thanks.
That is the turn. From worthless things to a living God who was already in the room. Who was already feeding you. Already sending rain. Already filling your heart with joy you did not earn and could not explain.
And in Acts 14 that living God finally has a face and a name.
Jesus.
The One who bleeds for idol-makers… and then walks back into their cities with resurrection life. Not to punish. Not to demand sacrifice.
To sit at the table with them. And to say… this is My body. Broken for you.
Idols… they rob us of joy, peace, and most of all Jesus.
We have been sitting with that in Acts 14. The man in Lystra. The crowd. The bulls at the gate. The idols that make us bleed.
I want to come at the same thing from a different angle for a minute. If you have been around here long, you already know this about me. I quote C. S. Lewis too much. I have probably quoted him more than any other writer who has ever lived. There is a reason for that. He has a way of peeling the paint off our religious words and showing the bare wood underneath.
One of my favorite books of his is The Screwtape Letters. If you have never read it, here is the setup. It is a series of fictional letters from a senior demon named Screwtape to Wormwood, his nephew. Wormwood has been assigned to “the patient,” a young man on earth. Screwtape is coaching him on how to keep this man from actually following Jesus.
So you get temptation, but from the other side of the radio… the enemy’s frequency, not ours. No pitchforks or horror movie stuff. Just a seasoned tempter explaining how to nudge a Christian a few degrees at a time until he is off course.
It is satire, but it is sharp. Lewis does not invent new sins. He just shows how ordinary, respectable things—habits, opinions, even church—can become tools that slowly bend a heart away from God.
That is why it has stayed a favorite for me. It puts language around things most of us feel but do not know how to name.
So here is what I want to do in this article.
We are going to stay in Acts 14. Same text. But I want you to imagine, as we walk through it, what it would sound like if Screwtape were advising Wormwood on that town in Lystra… and about our hearts.
Not to be cute or clever. Just to let the mask slip for a moment and hear how the other side might talk about things like panic, control, “worthless things,” and the God who actually bleeds for us instead of making us bleed for Him.
If Lewis is right, idolatry is not just bad theology. It is a strategy. In fact, it might be Hell’s favorite strategy for cooperating with a willing heart. And someone is very interested in keeping you paying at the wrong altars.
That is what Paul describes in Romans 1—people “exchanging the glory of the immortal God for images,” while dark powers are only too happy to ride that exchange all the way down.
Panic In Zeus Country
Acts 14 drops us into a town that would have felt very familiar to Screwtape. No synagogue or background in Moses. Just a small place where Zeus stories hang in the air and fear has had a long time to harden into reflex.
There is a man there who has never walked. Luke is blunt about his story.
“Lame from birth.” “Had never walked.” [Acts 14:8]
No rehab plan. No “if he just tries harder.” Imagine… his entire life has been lived close to the ground.
He cannot walk. But… he can listen. So he does.
Paul is preaching Jesus. Cross. Resurrection. Forgiveness. A King who actually rose. While he speaks, the man is “listening as Paul spoke.” Paul “saw that he had faith to be healed.” [Acts 14:9]
Paul raises his voice. “Stand up on your feet!”
The man does not ease into this. He does not test his ankle or leg first... he jumps. [Acts 14:10]
In fact, this is straight out of Isaiah —
Isaiah prophesied that “the lame will leap like a deer” when God came to save. [Isaiah 35:3‑6]
That promise comes true on a dirt street in Zeus country.
Faith In The Ear, Idolatry In The Eye
Notice the split. The man hears the Word. Believes. Leaps. [Acts 14:8‑10]
The crowd sees power and reaches for the only categories they know. “The gods have come down to us in human form!” they shout. [Acts 14:11]
Barnabas gets labeled “Zeus.” Paul does the talking, so he becomes “Hermes,” the messenger god. [Acts 14:12]
Now there really are two sermons running side by side in Lystra.
- One is faith, growing in the man who heard the word and leapt.
- The other is idolatry, growing in the crowd that saw the power and folded it back into their Zeus story.
A heart captured by the Word. A town captured by what it sees.
Then it escalates.
“The priest of Zeus, whose temple was just outside the town, brought bulls and wreaths to the gates, because he intended, with the crowds, to offer sacrifice.” [Acts 14:13]
Now the fear is running the show. They are scrambling not to offend the “gods” they think have shown up.
What Screwtape Loves About Panic
If Screwtape were writing Wormwood about this scene, it might sound something like this:
My dear Wormwood,
You are far too focused on temples and statues. Do not misunderstand me—shrines have their uses—but most of the real work happens long before a human ever lights a candle or slaughters a bull.
The real altar is the knot in his stomach. That little sentence he whispers to himself when no one can hear: “If this falls apart, I am done.”
Once you have that, my boy, you can build your worship service anywhere. Hospital corridors. Living rooms. Church parking lots. No idol requires a building permit. Only panic.
Lewis’s entire book works like that. It takes what you and I feel as ordinary fear and shows how Hell hears it as opportunity.
That is Lystra.
Under the miracle, under the shouting, there is a town full of people who already know what it feels like to be vulnerable in front of powers they cannot see. They have grown up on stories about gods who show up, get offended, and wipe places out.
So when the true God finally keeps His promise and makes a lame man leap, the reflex is not, “The Lord, He is God.” It is, “We are in trouble. Do not blow it this time. Get the bull.”
A Screwtape Note On What We See
If Screwtape were coaching Wormwood about this moment, it might sound like this:
My dear Wormwood,
You must try to understand how little we care what the human sees, as long as we can control what he does with it.
Let him see a healing. Let him see an answered prayer. Let him see a hundred small kindnesses from the Enemy’s hand. We are not threatened by sight itself.
Our danger begins when his eyes drive him to the Enemy’s words. When he starts to ask, “Who is this Person who keeps showing up in my life?”
Your task is simple. When he sees power, make him think of the stories he already loves. In Lystra, that meant Zeus and Hermes. In your patient, it may mean money, safety, romance, reputation—it hardly matters.
Just make sure he files the Enemy’s work under a familiar label. “I just caught a break.” “I finally got my act together.” “The timing just worked out.” Anything but Him.
If you do your job well, he will see miracles and never meet the Miracle‑Worker.
That is the move in Lystra.
The town does not deny what happened. They have a healed man hopping around in front of them. The evidence is loud. [Acts 14:10‑11]
They do something dangerous. They baptize it into their old story.
“The gods (plural) have come down to us in human form.” [Acts 14:11]Same facts. Wrong frame.
Remember… They have grown up on legends about gods who visit, get offended, and wipe places out—not Scripture, but stories everyone knew in that region.
They do what Screwtape loves.They rename grace.
Survival Logic Now
Today most believers are not tempted to bow to stone statues. The old logic just runs under church clothes instead.
We still work. We should. We are called to. [Colossians 3:23‑24]We still keep relationships. We should. Love is not optional. [Colossians 3:18‑21]
Idolatry is not having those things. It is what you ask them to be. Idolatry is the claim you attach to the gifts God gives.
You know you are crossing the line when sentences like these start forming way down deep:
- “If this person walks away, God has nothing left for me.”
- “If this job is gone, my identity is gone.”
- “If I lose this ______, I am nobody.” (fill in the blank)
That is worship language.
The job itself is not the idol. The hidden claim is. Same with family. Same with ministry.
Good gifts... Bad gods.
Jonah calls them “worthless idols” and says those who cling to them “abandon their faithful love.” [Jonah 2:8] You cannot cling to an idol and cling to grace at the same time. One grip loosens.
A Screwtape Memo On “Good Things”
You can almost hear Screwtape licking his lips here:
My dear Wormwood,
You continue to ask whether work, family, and church are ‘dangerous’ to us. You still think in terms of objects. How very human of you.
The Enemy invented work. He invented marriage. He even, I am ashamed to admit, invented the Church. We cannot destroy those things outright without attracting too much attention.
Our method is simpler. We do not remove the good things. We lean on them, until a job or a relationship quietly slides from gift into god and starts carrying weight that only the Enemy is meant to hold.
Take your patient’s job. We do not need him to quit. We only need him to believe that his name lives or dies with that company.
Take his relationships. We do not need him to hate anyone. We only need him to quietly decide that if a certain person ever leaves, the Enemy will have nothing else to offer.
Do you see? We are not after his schedule. We are after his sentence:‘If this falls apart, I am done.’
Once we have that, we can leave everything else in place. He will be a very busy idolater. Respectable. Tired. And quite useful to us.
That is the trap.
“Worthless Things” And The Living God
Eventually Barnabas & Paul have seen enough at the gate.
“The apostles Barnabas and Paul tore their robes when they heard this and rushed into the crowd, shouting…” [Acts 14:14‑15]
“People, why are you doing these things? We are people also, just like you, and we are proclaiming good news to you, that you turn from these worthless things to the living God.” [Acts 14:14‑15]
Worthless things. Not harmless. Not neutral. Just no good at saving you.
Then Paul does the one thing Screwtape cannot stand. He actually names the living God.
“The living God who made the heaven, the earth, the sea, and everything in them… He did not leave Himself without a witness, since He did what is good by giving you rain from heaven and fruitful seasons and filling you with food and your hearts with joy.” [Acts 14:15‑17]
Different script entirely.
Zeus waits for you to feed him. The living God has been feeding you.
Rain on ground that did not earn it. [Matthew 5:45]Food on tables you did not really know how you would afford. Little moments of joy you know you could not have cooked up on your own. [James 1:16‑17]
And then, at a table on the night He was betrayed, Jesus takes bread, gives thanks, breaks it and says, “This is My body.” He does not just give things. He gives Himself. [Matthew 26:26]
Idolatry lies about where your life has come from. Repentance starts by telling the truth. “This was You. And this. And this.” [Isaiah 55:1‑3; Ephesians 2:8‑9]
Screwtape might say something like this:
My dear Wormwood,
When they start saying, “This was You,” we are in real danger. The more they connect rain, meals, small joys, and even their breath to the Enemy, the harder it is to sell them our ‘worthless things’.
Do not let your man linger over gratitude. Push him back to comparison. Back to worry. Back to scrolling. Anything but quiet thanks.
That is the turn (repentance). From “worthless things” to a living God who has already been in the room the whole time.
And in Acts 14 that living God finally has a face and a name—Jesus, the One who bleeds for idol‑makers and then walks back into their cities with resurrection life.