PREACHER SWAG
TOO SCARED OF THE DEVIL
----------------- Original Message -----------------
From:
Date: 09 Jul 2007, 01:05
Brother Al Barger has posted a new comment about you on MySpace!
According to your privacy settings, all comments must be approved by you
before they appear on your profile.
Brother Al Barger's Comment:
"Sister Mary- I like having you for a top friend because seeing your icon
gives me a special little warm friendly feeling every time I go to my
MySpace page. Thank you.
Knowing you to be a spiritually serious person, perhaps in your meditations you'd be interested in this photo essay on Satan, comparing historical images and ideas about the devil."
----------------- Original Message -----------------
Sister this comment came in from Al Barger I don't feel that I can except
it could you click on the site here where there is pictures of the devil
do not no why he sent this to me but please advise me on this .I don'y
think its just a debate about the devil which I want no part of dear
sister love you lots and always needed to share tis Al I've talked to
quite a bit and He does no about Jesus now just do not no why he has added
the people that do not believe in God back but my profile on His top
friends tell them about Jesus there is hope for Al sister thank you in
helping me with Him but this comment I do not no I do not like anything
about the devil it seems to make fun of everything about the devil but
click on the site on this comment and see what its purpose is because I
don't understand why he would want me to display this .Sister Al worries
mre sometimes I just no inside He can be a great help to others if he just
sets it in his heart and mind but my gutt feeling is not to except this
comment even through most of it makes fun of the devil I just would prefur
to have nothing to do with these images .Maybe by reading them You can
help through prayer on figureing out how to help Al he has sent nice
comments before about the Lord and Bible verses to I excepted theem but
dearest sister this comment I need to find out from you why he would sent
it and exactly what its suppose to mean love you lots sister and yes we
should stay cheered up as much as possiable for the Lords return I just
Pray the Rapture is before all the tribulation and I 'am pretty sure that
it is because the Bible states that it is more then not Love always my
sister and here are some xxxxxx's oooooo's till later .
-------------------- -------------------
Mary my sister, you needn't be afraid of the devil, at least not in the
way and to the extent as you display here. If you really believe in Jesus
Christ as your savior, and you are approaching such study in good faith to
understand your enemy, then why would you be afraid? Yeah, though I walk
through the valley of the shadow of darkness, I will fear no evil. Also, I
might here invoke Titus 1:15, "To the pure all things are pure: but to
them that are defiled and unbelieving nothing is pure; but both their mind
and their conscience are defiled."
I don't have images of Satan just to try to be funny or post modern or
ironic or whatever. I have some seriousness of intent. Granted, I'm not a
believer in a literal Lucifer walking around - but I certainly do believe
in the evil that the character symbolizes.
If you study on the images and my text with them, you'll see that there
are several different ways of thinking about this character. There are the
comedic representations of Satan in South Park and SNL. But breaking those
down a little, consider how Lovitz portrayed the devil as the all time
loser. That seems like a healthy way to think of him.
Then again, as a believer you might consider that to not be taking him
seriously enough. In this much less religious era, people often don't take
the idea of evil seriously enough - whether or not you believe in a
literal devil with cloven hooves. People are often very anxious to
psychologize and blather on 100 different ways about childhood traumas or
whatever rather than say that some people are wicked and evil, knowing the
good but freely choosing the very bad.
This point has been very clear to me in this post 9/11 era, for example. I
can very well sympathize with why people were straining to find images of
Satan in smoke from the WTC, as per one of the pictures in my essay. Those
people had the devil in them, whether you take that figuratively as I do
or more literally as you might.
Even beyond not being much of believer in ghosts and things that I can't
see - being a Doubting Thomas - I would be dissatisfied with a lot of
carrying on about the devil even as a believer. I might would tend to take
some of this as a dereliction of personal responsibility. When you say
that the devil made you do it, you're trying to pass the buck. Why, some
outside force came along and made you do something you really didn't want
to do.
But most of those images of the devil in my essay are not at all humorous
or jokes, but serious representations of different ways of thinking about
what evil is and where it comes from. When Mick Jagger sings about the
devil as a sophisticated "man of wealth and taste," that's perhaps one
good way of thinking about him. There's a seductive appeal to the wit and
sophistication of Hannibal Lecter.
But does the devil do his work (again, literally or metaphorically)
primarily by trickery and wit? I suspect not. Consider some of those
older, medieval images that present Satan as an animal, and generally a
nasty and not at all attractive one.
This seems to me to be the truest and most useful way of considering the
devil. Mostly people aren't doing really bad things because they've been
tricked, and don't really understand what they're doing. No, most real
wickedness comes from people knowing better but consciously choosing to
indulge their lower animal instincts. A man damn well knows that it's not
right to go shoot his ex and her new guy - but he's full of animal rage,
and it viscerally feels really good and empowering to unload - if only for
a minute. That's animal rage, not some clever seduction.
Hopefully this gives you a clearer understanding of my intent with the
Satanic photo essay, and why I would recommend it to you in particular. It
seems like this would be of more specific interest to a believing
Christian than to a secularist.
Beyond the devil pictures though, I understand your confusion about me as
a non-believer. Again, my lack of belief is not a defiance of God and
definitely not a mark of presumed superiority. Please take it as a sign of
humility, in that I would not presume to know The Answers to how we got
here. That's WAY above my pay grade.
But if there is a God - and there might be - then He gave me a brain, and
it's my top duty (in which I am admittedly sometimes derelict) to use it
as best I can. It is our special gift as humans, the 99% main thing that
separates and elevates us from other animals. I would consider it a grave
sin to abuse this power by, for example, talking myself into believing in
stuff that doesn't really make sense to me.
If there really IS a God, moreover, He doesn't seem to want us to really
know that for sure. It would be easy enough for Him to physically manifest
himself in an unambiguous manner and lay down clear and detailed rules for
how we should behave. I haven't seen anything like that. As I've said
before though, if He's up there and wants something specific from me
different than what I'm doing, I'm all ears. I'm not trying to be defiant.
But that doesn't mean that there isn't a God. It might be - and this would
make more sense to me, for what that's worth - that He wants us to figure
some things out for ourselves using these powerful brains He gave us.
Perhaps He isn't particularly concerned with a petty egotistical human
need for praise and worship, but is more interested in us doing right
amongst ourselves. That certainly seems to be the message of Jesus in the
New Testament.
We don't need to just blindly know that "thou shalt not..." or He's going
to blast you, but to understand and freely choose the good. That free
choice depends, however, on understanding. That is the underlying point of
why I would be interested in studying images of Satan, not because it's
funny or hip or ironic somehow.
You're confused and unsettled about my simultaneous interest in both you
and the non-believers. You needn't be. For starters, consider that Jesus
made a big point of associating with the sinners and even the *#($ tax
collectors. Take my social interests in that perspective.
Beyond your issues of believers vs atheists, if you look through my
friends listings you'll see very many people espousing beliefs I most
emphatically do not share. For example, I am pretty much of a hardcore
Goldwater Republican - but I make a big point to make friends with all
kinds of left wingers and socialists and such. There are a lot of reasons
for that, but to summarize it in your language, I think that's what Jesus
would do.
Beyond that, though, I don't try to pick my pals based on shared ideology.
I'm not primarily judging people based on whether they share the right
political or religious beliefs, but on more specifically personal things,
such as how they treat other people - especially me and mine. I've known
plenty of people who share common interests with me that I think are
nonetheless big jerks or not serious people whom I'd want to be close to
personally.
In that vein lie a lot of the atheist types with whom I make MySpace
friends. I might theoretically agree more with some of them than with you,
but I will tend to find some of them to be arrogant and mean spirited. It
takes a little bit of chosen tolerance on my part to accept them, and that
part definitely represents a conscious reaching out past my personal
distaste in some cases.
You, on the other hand, are easy to love and cherish. The light of Godly
love shines out of you, as does your spiritual seriousness. Why wouldn't
someone want you as a best friend, whether or not they agree with
everything you believe? I might choose to make friends with some
know-it-all atheist, but it's an obvious point to me that you're the
SunShine that I'd want to see first thing on the front page when I go to
MySpace.
I hope that this explains my interest in these images of Satan, and why I
would present them specifically to you. I apologize if I have caused you
spiritual consternation, but do please understand that I'm not doing so
just to be funny.
With agape love,
Al
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