Christian Tardiness

My Dearest Bilchly,

I will begin by stating the obvious: you have not begun well. The fact that your patient has already joined a “bible study” (or “life group,” or whatever sad branding is now fashionable) is potentially calamitous. Particularly in that the other members of the group are, I shudder to report, sincerely pursuing the Enemy Above.

As pathetic as these groups appear to us—the sniveling humans eating gluten-free snacks and half-confessing their most uninteresting sins—these circles do much damage to our cause. They transform patients from passive consumers to active conspirators.

There is a silver lining, however. From one of your recent letters, I recall that your patient feels pressed for time. Good. The leader of the Bible study, I see from our records, suffers from an acute case of Christian tardiness.

Christian tardiness: a useful phenomenon in which well-meaning leaders quietly abandon the concept of time, permitting sermons or discussions to extend indefinitely. A competent tempter can usually seduce pastors, and especially worship leaders, into letting their events overrun by, say, fifteen minutes. These leaders think they’re serving the Enemy Above. In reality they are most often drunk on their own eloquence.

Back when I was a lowly tempter like you, one of my patients was a pastor. He had, as usual, exceeded his allotted time and was on the verge of concluding his sermon when I nudged him to expand on one of his less-inspired points. To my delight, he thought, “The Spirit is moving me to continue.” Delightful! A spirit was moving him. It happened to be me.

The Sermon on the Mount (I shudder to remember it) lasted a bare fifteen minutes and then broke for snacks. But today, pastors heedlessly blabber on, believing themselves exempted from the most common-sense courtesies.

How should you leverage Christian tardiness in your situation? I recommend the straightforward approach: make sure your patient is annoyed every week when the Bible study runs long. Remind him how reasonable his frustration is. A bit of watch-checking and a half-read email just before the start of the meeting will do wonders. Slowly make him dread meetings because he “knows” they’ll run late. Then, when he is quite tired, whisper to him that he could skip, just this once, so he can get to sleep. After all, they always run long. Eventually, a bit of Christian tardiness from his leader and a few lies from you might safely sweep him away from the group altogether.

Expectantly Yours,

Mulcifer