According to C. S. Lewis, the Devil loves it when we give him attention … or disbelieve in him. Some folks in Detroit recently did both. Not a good idea.<\/p>\n
In the classic X-Files episode \u201cDie Hand Die Verletzt,\u201d German for \u201cThe Harmful Hand,\u201d a group of kids in a small town in New Hampshire mess around with Satanic rituals, and pardon the expression, all hell breaks loose: one by one the members of the cult are brutally murdered.<\/p>\n
The kids\u2019 arrogance and stupidity prompts FBI agent Mulder to upbraid them by saying, \u201cDid you really think you could call up the Devil and ask him to behave?\u201d<\/p>\n
The episode came to mind when Rod Dreher alerted us to the story of what was described as the \u201clargest public satanic ceremony in history.\u201d The \u201cceremony,\u201d which took place in Detroit, consisted of the unveiling of a nine-foot tall \u201ccolossal bronze statue of Baphomet, the goat-headed wraith who, after centuries of various appropriations, is now the totem of contemporary Satanism.\u201d<\/p>\n
Time magazine called the ceremony, which involved 700 people, \u201charmlessly festive\u201d and compared it to \u201ca cross between an underground rave and a meticulously planned Halloween party.\u201d<\/p>\n
Father James Martin begged to differ. Writing in the Jesuit magazine \u201cAmerica,\u201d he said that the people in Detroit \u201chave no clue what kind of forces they are dealing with.\u201d He told readers that \u201cIn my life as a Jesuit priest, and especially as a spiritual director, I have seen people struggling with real-life evil.\u201d<\/p>\n
He quoted St. Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits, who called this evil the \u201cevil spirit\u201d and \u201cthe enemy of human nature.\u201d<\/p>\n
Martin is aware that talk of the Devil and the personification of evil is hard for modern westerners to take seriously. As he put it, \u201csome people may laugh or roll their eyes.\u201d But, like his fellow Jesuit Pope Francis, Martin takes evil and Satan quite seriously.<\/p>\n
As he put it, \u201cEvil is real. How Satan fits into this, I\u2019m not exactly sure, but I believe that a personified force is somehow behind this. There is a certain \u2018intelligence,\u2019 if you will\u201d at work when it comes to evil. He ended by quoting C.S. Lewis, who when asked whether he believed in the Devil, replied, \u201cI\u2019m not particular about the horns and hooves, but yes I believe,\u201d to which Martin added, \u201cMe too.\u201d<\/p>\n
Speaking of C.S. Lewis, in \u201cThe Screwtape Letters\u201d Lewis wrote that \u201cThere are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them.\u201d He added that devils \u201care equally pleased by both errors and hail a materialist or a magician with the same delight.\u201d<\/p>\n
The people in Detroit managed to commit both errors at the same time. They denied believing in a personal devil, instead regarding Satan as a symbol of the \u201creconciliation of opposites, emblematic of the willingness to embrace, and even celebrate differences.\u201d Yet at the same time they built a half-ton statue \u2014 \u201didol\u201d is not too strong a word \u2014 of what they claim not to believe in and behaved in a ways that bring to mind the children of Israel before the golden calf.<\/p>\n
This is the cultural moment we\u2019re living in: people either embracing evil and calling it good, or pretending that evil doesn\u2019t exist at all. Oh, but evil does exist, and there is no lack of evidence for that proposition: from the slaughter houses of Planned Parenthood and ISIS, to the erection of a satanic statue in Detroit.<\/p>\n
All of this should drive us to pray all the more: for our families, for each other, for our neighbors, and for our country.<\/p>\n
Because, as Jesus made clear, there is nothing harmless about the force behind all of this.<\/p>\n
________<\/p>\n
Copyright (c) 2015 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. “BreakPoint” is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
According to C. S. Lewis, the Devil loves it when we give him attention … or disbelieve in him. Some folks in Detroit recently did both. Not a good idea. In the classic X-Files episode \u201cDie Hand Die Verletzt,\u201d German for \u201cThe Harmful Hand,\u201d a group of kids in a small town in New Hampshire […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[214,649,251,2512],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6164"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6164"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6164\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}