One book that helped me become aware of the nature of the devil (and to defend against him) was the Vatican Exorcist’s book
An Exorcist Tells His Story (by Gabrielle Amorth). He talks about his experiences of possession, hauntings, etc. It’s pretty crazy.
If you’re asking why people project their fears and internal conflicts onto a personification that they can blame instead of working on the actual issue, it’s because they’re human. Seriously, even if the devil exists I think people give him
far too much credit.
In case you’re interested, a documentary on the history of the devil:
wimp.com/thedevil/
I watched the documentary. It was terrible.
A lot of Catholic Church bashing. But it really didn’t say anything. I guess it was trying to imply some stuff. Its subtle arguments could be summed up as follows:
- Since the writers of the Old and New Testament used ideas about the devil similar to those in the culture of the time (which the Church has always acknowledged because the Bible is also a human work in addition to being a divine work), thus Christianity is false and the devil doesn’t exist (huh?)
- Since people are accused of and persecuted for being witches and worshipping the devil, thus witches don’t exist and the devil doesn’t exist either (huh?)
- Since the Catholic Church accused its enemies of being in league with the devil, the devil doesn’t exist and the Catholic Church is wrong (huh?)
- Because some people have used the idea of the devil to scare people into doing what you want them to do, the devil doesn’t exist (huh?)
- Because there are different versions of how the devil is understood or depicted, the devil doesn’t exist (huh?)
All very logically sound arguments, no?
I loved it when they were interviewing the Satanists in the end, and one of them nonchalantly said that none of this was a big deal and that “There is no good or evil” (which is one of Voldemort’s famous lines … classic … you can’t make that stuff up).
They also got some history just plain wrong, especially about Zoroaster introducing the idea of an evil god and a good god. That already existed in the Sumerian civilization. They also indicated that the Spanish Inquisitors were solely doing things for religious reasons, whereas it was primarily to find Muslim spies who were plotting against the government because the Muslims had wrongly invaded Spain for no reason, and the Christians were finally fighting back. A similar situation existed with the crusade against the Cathars. It made some creative exegetical assertions about the devil in the OT that kind of came out of nowhere. And I think there was some other stuff.
A good quote from Chesterton: “The cleverest thing the Devil did was to make us believe
that he doesn’t exist.”
Thank you, Liquidpele, though, for sharing.
