The one about the Devil

So, I missed my Friday publication deadline because some asshole decided to be an asshole and all that.

But I was thinking, who will punish such an asshole? We need a force for good, someone that doesn't let anything slide. In summary: we need the Devil.

He's a scary fellow: horns and filed teeth, red skin, a tail and a trident. Edgy people thank him when they achieve something they shouldn't and—wait, what? Let's go back a step and try to figure out what we know about the Devil.

To start this trip into the darkness, we must start with the Bible. What does the Bible say about the Devil?

Surprisingly little. No little character piece like:

Name: Satan
Occupation: Prince of Darkness
Residence: Hell
Physical description: Red, horned, unpleasant
Known associates: Demons, lawyers, people who reply-all

At the beginning I called the Devil a force for good. That argument kinda sorta got me into an exorcism when I was like 12. Imagine little me, with his shit-eating grin and his growing love for philosophy, telling people at church that dedicating whole services to praying against the Devil was useless because either God is almighty, in which case the Devil is irrelevant, or atheists kinda have a point.

I was 13 when I lost my belief in God, and I needed, like, 13 more years to get it back. I was 15 when I lost my belief in the Devil, and that one will never return.

If we ignore Ezekiel 28 and all the stuff about the King of Tyre, mighty ancestor of Charles Goodyear, king of the modern tyre and all vulcanized rubber products and, obviously, PM2.5, we get the image of a being subjected to the will of God, who acts sorta like an accuser of others' sins and who tempts people and exposes them for every little bit of hypocrisy and every piece of organic matter they have put into the recycling bin. Hell, he kinda reminds me of myself.

The most curious thing about the modern Devil is the unholy amalgamation that makes him.

A recipe for the Devil:

Take the body of Pan, the love for a good party of Bacchus, the love for knowledge from Prometheus and his penchant for giving away things he doesn't own, add a bit of Zoroastrian morality, and you get something that can't exist: a fucking God-level threat in a system that is God-centric, if you believe.

So, why, why do so many people believe in this weird character that exists in direct opposition to the whole idea of monotheism?

I have the answer. Let me be the lightbringer:

Fear, stupidity, and hypocrisy.

The Devil is the ultimate excuse.

You're not failing at life because you're less than constant and your efforts are directed towards the fighting of windmills, no. It's because God has a wonderful blessing planned for you, but the Devil, who hates you personally, is getting involved and not letting it come to pass. I've seen people go to the grave preaching this.

You did not eat all the donuts because the gym made you hungy and you wanted to carb-load, no, the Devil made you do it.

I've seen people defend fucking Hitler by saying that he was possessed, but I'm quite sure he was just a megalomaniac asshole.

I've seen people argue that Napoleon was the Devil incarnate, with all his woke ideas of equality and progress and throwing heavy objects at the English. Who can blame the man?

And we all know that Marilyn Manson removed two of his ribs so he could suck his own thingamagig. Talk about a meme before memes. And he did it, obviously, because of Satan.

If you play Hotel California in reverse? Satan.

You try to order something in French when visiting Paris? Satan.

Again, I ask you, why?

Because the Devil gives us peace. That's why so much of religion tends to focus on him of late.

We are creatures of instinct and impulse. If left to our own devices, all of us would do something that we shouldn't.

Sit naked on the good furniture, double-dip directly in the jar, come back from the gym at 10 a.m. and skip breakfast over some tasty Cuban rum, do 150 in a 30 because you were gonna be 30 seconds late to watch that show on Netflix. You know it.

I am getting too close to The Island of Doctor Moreau to be comfortable, but what if our idea of the Devil is just... an excuse?

Instead of dedicating time to a fable, I tend to preach something new: Accountability.

Gavrilo Princip didn't fire his pistol at Uncle Franz because the Devil made him. He did it because he wanted to. And Franz had that kind of face.

A couple of months ago, I was advocating for abolishing Hell in everyday life, and today I am kinda making the same argument about Satan himself. Like Napoleon, Hitler, Michael Jackson, and other evil archetypes, he should be retired, recycled, and repurposed if possible, because if we get rid of the idea of the Devil, we'll get our full agency back.

Agency being the whole deal about humanity, getting it back can be kind of a big deal. And hey, I know what you're gonna say: we're not old church ladies praying all day long. But it's surprising to me how persistent the concept of the Devil is, even among my most educated, non-religious friends from time to time.

So, yeah, what the Devil. There are no subliminal messages, the French were born that way and Machiavelli was just doing satire.

Heh, there it is, the old "Hey, it was sarcasm" defense. May the Devil take us all.

Now, stop reading my ramblings and go out, do something bad, but do it under your own responsibility.

Peace.