The Devil

Sometimes it is hard to know what to make of the Devil, whether the concept means an entity or some sort of metaphor.

I am usually brief, if nothing else, so I will give a brief answer. The Devil is ourselves.

There is no being that is more knowledgeable and intimate with what's going on in our minds than we ourselves. There is nothing capable of more harm to those we love than ourselves. The notion of Devil comes from our incessant attempts to deceive ourselves as to our intentions, motives, and actions.
We project our evil "somewhere out there" as Captain Kirk would say. So we end up searching for the Devil "out there" so we may defeat him.
Since he's not "out there", we never really discover his hide-out.

We have a similar, yet different problem with God. We do not try to conceal our so-called "godly" acts from ourselves, much less from others. We try to emphasize what we take to be our good acts. We create an entire stage-play of how tight we are with God and let it run for everyone to see. We hide from the Devil, who is us. We conceal God with posters and billboards proclaiming how great we are.

No wonder...

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