Can Demons Read Your Mind?
The Screwtape Error
The Screwtape Letters is a classic of Christian literature—and for good reason.
Within its pages, C.S. Lewis presents a mesmerizing exchange between Wormwood, a junior demon, and his uncle Screwtape, a seasoned veteran. The book consists of a series of letters in which Screwtape offers Wormwood “best practices” for ensuring that his “patient” (i.e., the human to whom he has been assigned) ultimately rejects “the Enemy” (i.e., God) and ends up in the custody of “Our Father Below” (i.e., Satan).
The letters demonstrate Screwtape’s penetrating insight into the human condition, highlighting the many ways in which we are tempted, distracted, self-deceived, puffed up, and so on. Wormwood is encouraged to exploit these tendencies as he works to influence his patient unto damnation to the best of his ability.
So, what’s the problem?
Having just preached on Ephesians 6:10–20, I was struck afresh by just how many popular-level misunderstandings exist about Satan and demons. Many Christians, for example, believe that Satan is omnipresent (i.e., present everywhere, like God), when in fact, he is not (cf. Job 1:6–7). He prowls about like a lion looking to devour because he isn’t omnipresent and has to “move around” in some manner or another (1 Pet. 5:8).
Many Christians also believe that Satan is omniscient (i.e., all-knowing, also like God), or at the very least, that he can read our minds. This is also not true. In the case of Job, Satan not only fails to “see” what is in Job’s heart but also makes an inaccurate prediction about Job’s behavior as a result (cf. Job 1:8–22).
Yes, Satan clearly understands human weakness and how circumstances can lead someone to sin or despair—but so do we! If asked to construct a scenario that would lead someone into despair and cursing God, we could all arrange something awful, even if we lacked the power to pull it off.
Ephesians 6 suggests that our struggle is not primarily against Satan as an individual agent, but rather against a formidable host of dark, demonic, spiritual entities that work according to the devil’s schemes (Eph. 6:11–12). And here is where my concern with The Screwtape Letters can be stated succinctly: I’m afraid it leads readers—even careful ones—to believe that demons can know and manipulate our thoughts, and perhaps even our wills, in accordance with the devil’s schemes.
The Screwtape Letters is great anthropology, but poor demonology. It insightfully observes the manifold frailty of the human condition, but it fancifully constructs the mechanics of demonic temptation. It could just as well have been titled Letters to the Flesh, in which a personified sinful nature is advised on how to wreck a person’s life and soul.
We should take Lewis’s insights into our sinful tendencies seriously. But beyond reminding us of the reality of an unseen demonic world at work (no small reminder), the book doesn’t provide helpful insight into how demons actually operate.
My aim here is not to be sensationalistic in critiquing a classic. But if demons operate by implanting or removing thoughts from our minds and interfering with our wills, then Christians are genuinely victims of something indistinguishable from either a mild form of possession or Manchurian Candidate-like manipulation. Either way, our understanding of moral responsibility would change dramatically. Was it my sinful desires—my flesh—that led to those lustful musings, or was I the hapless victim of demonic interference? Perhaps the Devil really did “make me do it” after all.
A handful of quotes from the first eight chapters will suffice to demonstrate the concern:
“I once had a patient, a sound atheist, who used to read in the British Museum. One day, as he sat reading, I saw a train of thought in his mind beginning to go the wrong way.” —Chapter 1
“Make his mind flit to and fro between an expression like ‘the body of Christ’ and the actual faces in the next pew.” —Chapter 2
“It is, no doubt, impossible to prevent his praying for his mother, but we have means of rendering the prayers innocuous. Make sure that they are always very ‘spiritual,’ that he is always concerned with the state of her soul and never with her rheumatism.” —Chapter 3
“Whenever they are attending to the Enemy Himself we are defeated, but there are ways of preventing them from doing so. The simplest is to turn their gaze away from Him towards themselves.” —Chapter 4 (cf. Prov. 4:25)
“If any faint suspicion of your existence begins to arise in his mind, suggest to him a picture of something in red tights, and persuade him that since he cannot believe in that (it is an old textbook method of confusing them), he therefore cannot believe in you.” —Chapter 7
“We can drag our patients along by continual tempting, because we design them only for the table, and the more their will is interfered with the better. He cannot ‘tempt’ to virtue as we do to vice.” —Chapter 8
To be candid: if someone in my congregation approached me and asked, “Pastor, how do I stop the demons from making me go back and forth between concepts and people here at church?” I would be concerned. If someone told me they were putting on the “helmet of salvation” so that demons couldn’t read their thoughts, I would be concerned. If someone believed demons were interfering with their prayer life by making them pray for the wrong things, I would be concerned. If someone claimed they were fighting demonic persuasion and mental images about how to conceive of biblical characters, I would be concerned. And if someone said they were striving for holiness, but demons kept interfering with their will, I would be very concerned. Most importantly for our purposes, these are tensions that are very reasonable for someone who has imbibed the demonology of The Screwtape Letters—alternate interpretations of the passages in question do not alleviate the pastoral concern.
Scripture does not lay out precisely how demons influence individuals, but it gives us enough material to make some very strong inferences about how they do not.
For example, Satan is the father of lies (John 8:44) and often works through deception (Rev. 12:9). But his greatest deception in Eden didn’t involve internal interference in the minds or will of Adam and Eve. Instead, through speech, he attacked God’s word and questioned His goodness (Gen. 3:4–5).
In the case of Job, Satan’s job would have been much easier if he could have simply read Job’s mind, implanted falsehoods, and interfered with his will to curse God. All of this would have fit comfortably within the initial parameters of not touching Job's flesh (Job 1:12). Of course, that isn't what Satan does. As it turns out, Job is explicitly pressured to curse God—but that pressure comes from his wife (Job 2:9). It is plausible that Satan understood Job’s wife well enough to know that her husband's suffering would elicit the kind of counsel that would advance his agenda (1:11).
The temptation of Christ shows more of the same. Satan recognizes that Jesus is hungry, humiliated, and facing a path of suffering—and offers “solutions” to each plight (Matt. 4:1–11).
We see demonic possession throughout the Gospels and a few times in Acts, but The Screwtape Letters is not dealing with possession or the occult. Noteworthy, however, is Jesus’ announcement to Peter that Satan has asked to sift the disciples like wheat (Luke 22:31). Jesus doesn’t say He denied Satan’s request. Instead, He prays for Peter’s faith—that after his denial, he would turn and strengthen his brothers (v. 32).
In the epistles, demonic influence appears through “the teaching of demons” (1 Tim. 4:1), “wisdom” that is “earthly, unspiritual, and demonic” (Jas. 3:15), and pagan religion (1 Cor. 10:20). As we stand against the devil’s schemes, we are told to put on the “full armor of God,” which begins and ends with truth—truth about ourselves, God and the world (Eph. 6:14, 17).
Satanic influence works in a particular way in the lives of unbelievers (Eph. 2:1–2), especially in keeping them from seeing the truth of the Gospel (2 Cor. 4:4). Yet even here, it seems that the “course of this world” (Eph. 2:2) and the spirit of the age (Rom. 12:2; Gr. aióni) provide the primary means of influence. Even the satanically energized “man of lawlessness” influences people through signs, wonders, and deception—not mind invasion (2 Thess. 2:9–10).
Believers, by contrast, are given a far better hope than the demonic equivalent of a guardian angel: “Resist the devil, and he will flee from you” (Jas. 4:7).
In light of all this, it seems very plausible to reason as follows: Possession aside, if Satan and the man of lawlessness do not rely on mind invasion or will-tampering at the most critical moments of their agenda, it is unlikely that “regular” demons do so in the course of tempting Todd Jones and Susan Smith. To suggest otherwise is to ascribe more power to lesser beings in less momentous circumstances.
The practical takeaway is significant: While demons may externally affect us (including, in some cases, our bodies), we are completely responsible for our sinful musings, desires, and actions (Jas. 1:14–15).
Not only is it unbiblical to blame our sinful patterns of thought and behavior on demonic mind-infiltration, it’s also unworkable in the process of sanctification. For how is one to distinguish between sin from the flesh and sin from demonic interference? Outside of strange occurrences—or perhaps vague feelings—it’s difficult to say.
And perhaps that’s why preparing ourselves to struggle against the forces of darkness looks so much like the meat and potatoes of the Christian life (Eph. 6:10–18): truth, righteous living, the hope of salvation, faith, Gospel readiness, the Word of God and prayer. We might otherwise expect to be arming ourselves with holy water, crucifixes, and prayers resembling incantations.
If The Screwtape Letters were an obscure work, this critique would be little more than sensationalism. But in reality, there are people who have “learned” more about how demons work from Lewis than from the Bible. I know them. You probably do, too. That's because the book genuinely is must-read material.
But regardless of whether Lewis himself believed demons operated this way—perhaps he simply enjoyed the literary framework—the book purports to provide insight into the mechanics of demonic temptation, not merely human nature. It isn’t Letters to the Flesh.1 Accordingly, it is open to precise criticism in this area in a way that does not throw the baby out with the bathwater.
In a world that seeks to disenchant everything, we should appreciate that Lewis draws our attention to the realities of spiritual warfare and offers wise observations about our sinful nature, that we might “guard our hearts with all vigilance” (Prov. 4:23).
But we should read The Screwtape Letters primarily to learn more about ourselves—not about the nature of demonic influence.
In his preface to the 1960 edition, Lewis may hint in this direction: “That is why the question of my own opinion about devils, though proper to be answered once it was raised, is really of very minor importance for a reader of Screwtape. To those who share that opinion, my devils will be symbols of a concrete reality: to others, they will be personifications of abstractions, and the book will be an allegory. But it makes little difference which way you read it. For of course its purpose was not to speculate about diabolical life but to throw light from a new angle on the life of men.”