For those who haven’t read The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis, Wormwood is the demon the letters are addressed to. It’s Wormwood’s job to weaken faith and encourage sin in the human he’s assigned to, and the letters are from his uncle, a demon named Screwtape, who gives Wormwood advice on how to do this.
Yesterday while meandering through Spotify, I came across the song “Dear Wormwood” by the Oh Hellos. From what I can tell, the song is about a demon who weakened the singer’s faith since childhood and how the (now adult) singer is recognizing and trying to overcome the demon’s influence.
I’m a secularist, and by that I mean I don’t practice a religion and don’t have faith in anything supernatural. But I’m a reluctant secularist, and by that I mean I had good experiences with the religion of my childhood, I miss it and wish it were true, but I don’t actually believe it is. From that context, the song kind of hits a nerve.
You can listen to it here:
Here are the lyrics, though I recommend listening to it first or concurrently rather than reading them on their own:
When I was a child, I didn’t hear a single word you said
The things I was afraid of, they were all confined beneath my bed
But the years have been long, and you have taught me well to hide away
The things that I believed in, you’ve taught me to call them all escapesI know who you are now
There before the threshold, I saw a brighter world beyond myself
And in my hour of weakness, you were there to see my courage fail
For the years have been long, and you have taught me well to sit and wait
Planning without acting, steadily becoming what I hateI know who you are now
I have always known you, you have always been there in my mind
But now I understand you, and I will not be part of your designsI know who I am now
And all that you’ve made of me
I know who you are now
And I name you my enemyI know who I am now
I know who I want to be
I want to be more than this devil inside of me