Wednesday, February 08, 2006

Hope you guessed my name

Real Live Preacher has a great post on the devil. Yeah, Satan hisownevilself.

One of the topics Christians have to face and decide is the concept and possible reality of evil dude. Is he/it real? Or just a concept meant to keep you honest when it's just you and the cookie jar?

In my embryonic Christian years, I had relegated him and his 'hood to a non-reality used as an empty threat (like, "I'll turn this car around right now if you don't stop that!" when you're 300 miles into the trip). But I met a guy who convinced me of the reality of Stan - as we usta call him on a Christian irc chatroom - and h-e-double-hockey-sticks.

I won't belabor it here, since it's covered better in the post I've linked to, but the fact that Jesus treats him as real - even has a conversation with him - is one of the things that did it for me.

(Btw, in reference to the title of this post: One of the better Rolling Stones songs in recent years was "Saint of Me," which I choose to view as kind of an answer to "Sympathy for the Devil." It doth rock. And, yea verily, it rolls.)

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Tony Campolo has told the following story:

A lonely and mildly depressed woman was dragged by one of her friends to a charity event in her town. She spent the day helping to clean a battered-women's shelter, serving meals, and watching the kids of women who were getting counseling. She loved it. She said that she enjoyed that day more than anything else she had done for years. And she decided, without hesitation, that she would never come back.

That's why Mr. Campolo believes in the devil. This woman's choice is impossible to explain under any other premise.