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A Parable of Noise and Silence
C.S. Lewis once wrote a short book about a senior demon in Hell exchanging letters with his nephew, offering him guidance in his role as a junior tempter here on earth. One of the letters to his nephew went something like this: "Music and silence—I can't stand either of them! Thankfully, ever since our Father arrived in Hell—so long ago that humans couldn't measure it, even in light-years—not a single inch of this place or moment of its time has been surrendered to those awful forces. Instead, it's been filled with Noise—glorious Noise, the sound of everything bold, ruthless, and strong—Noise that keeps us safe from pesky doubts, moral scruples, and hopeless dreams. One day, the entire universe will roar. We've already made great headway on Earth, and the songs and silences of Heaven will be drowned out. Still, I have to admit, we're not quite loud enough yet. "
This got me thinking about a famous pop/folk song of the'60s—Simon and Garfunkel's "The Sound of Silence." The following story is the result.
Screwtape stood at the edge of the city, grinning as neon lights pulsed, and speakers shook the streets. Gangster rap blared from passing cars; heavy metal screamed from basements, and every device hummed with endless playlists. "Noise, the grand dynamism," he whispered. "We will make the whole universe a noise in the end."
But in one small house, an old woman sat by her Bible, listening to her radio playing the gentle, heartbreaking lyrics of "The Old Rugged Cross." Her grandson swaggered in, his words dripping with bravado, echoing the rhythms of the street. She fixed him with a stern gaze and snapped: "Where have you been?"
"I be rapping with my Niggas down at the crib!"
She jumped up, her hand slapping his cheek—in a stinging correction. "Don't you talk that hippity‑hop nonsense to me!"
The slap was a punctuation mark, a refusal to let chaos reign in her home. In the stunned silence that followed, something else broke through. A melody, fragile yet piercing, like a whisper in the dark, broadcasting from her old radio: "Hello darkness, my old friend…" It was Simon & Garfunkel's voice of the 1960s, lamenting a world where silence had been forgotten, where people "talked without speaking" and "heard without listening." Their song was a prophecy: that noise would drown meaning, and silence would become a stranger.
The boy had heard the song before, of course. Everyone had. But always as background—mall speakers, waiting-room playlists, ironic TikTok clips. Never like this: naked, deliberate, filling the small living room until the walls themselves seemed to lean in and listen. Static flickered for an instant—not the usual hiss, but something colder—and then, impossibly, the heavy metal group Disturbed blasted from the speakers—the same words but now clothed in fire—a heavy metal version of anguish, a cry against the overwhelming roar of modern distraction. The gentle lament had become a battle hymn, demanding that the world hear the warning. And in that moment, the boy heard both voices: the whisper of the original and the roar of the remake. He realized that silence was not emptiness but presence—the place where truth could be heard.
In that same moment, Screwtape recoiled. For even in a world of gangster beats and metal riffs, silence had found a way to speak again.
The boy's grandmother sat back down, Bible closed on her lap, eyes on him but not pressing. She had simply let the song do its work. And as the final chord faded, the house felt larger, as though the silence had pushed the furniture farther apart.
The boy swallowed incredulously. "Gran… what was that?"
She smiled, small and tired— "Sometimes the truth needs quiet to get through all the shouting. That song knew it even back then. And when the world got louder, someone had to shout the quiet back at it."
He thought of the Disturbed version—heavy guitars, David Draiman's voice like gravel and lightning. Same words, different armor. He'd loved the fury of it, how it matched the anger he carried around like pocket money. But now he understood the silent warning beneath the lyrics. As the boy sat down across from her, for the first time in months, he didn't reach for his phone. Outside, a car thumped past, subwoofers rattling windows. Inside, nothing answered it.
In the city beyond the curtains, Screwtape paced the rooftops, ears twitching at every siren and ringtone. Yet from one unremarkable house a stubborn pocket of stillness spread, thin as spider silk but unbreakable. Silence, it turned out, was not the absence of sound. It was the refusal to add to the noise until something worth hearing arrived. And sometimes, if you waited long enough, it did.
