A Soulful Journey

As Machiavelli lay dying, his face drawn, his limbs loose, his wife sent for the Catholic priest for a lats confession.  No great believer, Machiavelli had no control over his wife's actions. The priest arrived and said: "Your time has come to meet your Maker.  Confess and renounce the devil." There was no response. Thinking Machiavelli could not hear him, he bent down and yelled into Machiavelli's ear, "Your time to meet your Maker is near.  Confess and renounce the devil." Machiavelli stirred and then opened hi mouth.  "I heard you the first time.  You know this is no time to be making enemies."   -General Al Haig

Thomas Merton once characterized the moral theology of the devil like this: “Another characteristic of the devil’s moral theology is the exaggeration of all distinctiveness between this and that, good and evil, wrong and right.   These distinctions become irreducible division.   No longer is there any sense that we might perhaps all be more or less at fault, and that we all might be expected to take upon our own shoulders the wrongs of others by forgiveness, acceptance, patient understanding and love, and thus help one another to find the truth.   On the contrary, in the devil’s theology, the important thing is to be absolutely right and to prove that everybody else is absolutely wrong.   This does not exactly make for peace and unity….because it means that everyone wants to are absolutely right….    And in order to prove their rightness they have to punish and eliminate those who are wrong.” -From New Seeds of Contemplation, 1962 It’s all about persona...

The devil is not a force outside of us that beckons us with nocturnal whispers to do evil.   That is displacement.     The devil is within.   We call it the yetser ha-ra .   Yes, it is an urge to follow an uncaring path but it is not “other,” it is us.       “…the belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness.”  – Joseph Conrad The good aspect of this belief system is that we can always choose to rule over it and not vice versa.