The Screwtape Letters - chapters 28-30:
I chose chapter 29 because I have seen Screwtape's scenario so many times, especially in the area of pride with men. The devil (Screwtape) is incapable of producing anything good, much less virtue of anything or any kind. The only thing he can do is imitate or use anything that God creates. He has no originality! He imitates any virtue that a person has as a facade to deceive others. This is why Screwtape states that a wicked man needs a little virtue to be greatly effective. The virtuous facade allows the wickedness to fully operate under the scenes in that person, rendering him solely to Satan as well as accomplishing his job--to deceive him and others to do his will. And, why do you think that Screwtape states that their research department (Screwtape's and his father) has not discovered how to produce any virtue and can only rely on God's? I believe that if the devil had this ability in his hands that he could and would do more damage to people. How? I also believe that the results would render Christians a copious amount of warfare as if they do not have enough. This way, with the need to only be able to use virtues from God, the devil has to fight to gain access from the believer because he cannot create it. And, he's defeated especially when there are two or more Christians together. He does not stand a chance!
It does not matter who is bombarding the patient's town, the fact is that the town is being bombarded. The devil (Screwtape) is just looking for any opportunity to get the patient to fall to his prey with to sin, especially large sins because only in extremes can he cause a person to react dangerously and do the most harm. The devil's favorite area is emotions. God gave us emotions but to use them properly and to keep them in balance. Any deviation of any one of them places the believer into the devil's territory where they can then be distorted or twisted, exaggerated, and way out of control in extreme. He will play on your last nerve to cause you to react outwardly in a negative fashion such as, violence. Hatred is a very strong force and fear feeds it because the more you fear what you hate, the more you hate the fact that you are cowarding as well as the fact that you are fearing what you hate. For example, the devil chooses a person who is righteous and has not mastered their anger management by allowing it to be solely the wrath of God through His Spirit channeling down from Heaven. This is a "fleshly anger" of resentment or dislike (loathing) and, therefore, an emotion out of control and the devil's playground. Even righteous anger which is totally justified by God, can be misused by the devil in Christians if it is not buffered to where the person brings it to God's attention ASAP in order for Him to dispense the judgment. The devil knows that if he can steal your courage, a virtue, then he can cause you to waiver in cowardice and fear. Shame comes as a result of "you going there" and is very detrimental to a person's emotional state. The devil wants the patient to be broken where confusion sets in because that is when he will look for something to target his hatred toward. God allows calamity to come because He gets people's attention and He wiping out concentrated evil on earth. God will allow the devil to do his tactics to allow Christians to see what they are made of in order for repentance and humility to occur. The devil uses this as an opportunity for his purpose. However, to those Christians who are obedient, God will use it to warn them ahead of time of what is coming so that they can prepare themselves and overcome it. The devil (Screwtape) wants to keep the patient from learning about himself and aggravating the shame to produce despair, to be numb to the awareness of the sin and accepting God's forgiveness blindly and not giving the mercy credit. Why? Because he is then insulting God by not acknowledging His sovereignty and he continues in the sin of unbelief and falling back on his "sense of duty" as the driving force which becomes obscured by an imaginary cloud laced with precautions based on fear and superstitions to keep matters from getting worse. The emotion does not cause the sin, but the act resulting from it does because the devil "got you to go there."