I WAS going to write as soon as I got home from youth group - I was all excited - but my brother Ryan wanted to tell me *cough* every detail *cough* about the new iPhone, and he IS helping me get mine set up, for which I am unimaginably grateful, but now I'm writing at 12:09 exactly. AM.
Wonderful.
You know - whatever - the morning is for sleeping and all that. Plus, I'm a self-employed work-at-home small business owner (ballet studio) who can get away with it. So!
It was such a coincidence I wrote that Let Us Name Him post last night, because I'd totally forgotten that tonight youth group was on "Satan and Demons - For Real?" because of Halloween tomorrow.
Someone mentioned Harry Potter in small group and gave me a chance to give my Harry Potter is not witchcraft speech to a whole dozen captive audience members! Made my night.
Anyway. This is what I'm thinking about.
In the fifth Harry Potter book (Order of the Phoenix), Voldemort has returned from his half-alive state and the Minister of Magic, Cornelious Fudge, just won't believe that Harry's eyewitness account is accurate. He prefers his comfortable saftey to admitting that it might be a possibility that the darkest lord the wizarding world has ever seen MAY BE AT LARGE. But of course the reason Harry and Dumbledore are trying so hard to get him to believe them is not because they care what he thinks of them but that they CARE FOR HIS SAFETY and that of the entire wizarding world!
Just because you pretend something's not there doesn't mean it goes away.
In regard to demons, so many of us are Fudges.
And you know what? About Fudge ignoring him - Voldemort loved it.
He stayed completely quiet and concentrated his efforts on pulling together his Death Eaters and putting imperious curses on people in the Ministry (to control them without anyone knowing, like a puppeteer pulling strings).
The devil is happy when we ignore him.
Pretend he doesn't exist - where are those thoughts coming from? Your own heart. Believe your heart is sending you all this junk, and it won't take two days for you to get flat-out discouraged. Get too down on yourself and you might start believing you have nothing to offer. So you might stop showing up for life, since it doesn't matter anyway. I don't mean that you stop going through the motions, I mean that you stop showing up. The YOU that is REALLY YOU stops showing up for living. And you become a walking corpse, confused by the mixed messages you're receiving like a robot short-circuiting.
Ineffective. Paralyzed. And according to the devil, Perfect.
When Fudge finally SEES Voldemort for himself, at the end of the book, much damage has already been done. He's given Voldemort time to build strongholds.
The devil is smarter than you think he is. He's not a shouting, raving lunatic. He's a sharp man in a business suit who will talk his way right into your very heart and convince you that the mold that begins to grow on the walls is just a figment of your overactive conscience, or just what you deserve, or much better decor than your photos.
Anything to make it stay.
And for that reason I like the scene in the fifth HP movie where, as the fans say, "Voldy wears Prada." He shows up on the train platform in a sharp three-piece suit. In one sense, the scene makes no sense. Voldemort hates Muggles (non magic folk). To study them enough to know how to dress like them? And who exactly took him shopping? Bella? Voldy and Bellatrix in a high-end suit store? I mean, don't you think the clerk would notice that he didn't have a NOSE???
But on the other hand, I really like the image of Satan in a suit, unnoticed among us. C. S. Lewis said,
Wonderful.
You know - whatever - the morning is for sleeping and all that. Plus, I'm a self-employed work-at-home small business owner (ballet studio) who can get away with it. So!
It was such a coincidence I wrote that Let Us Name Him post last night, because I'd totally forgotten that tonight youth group was on "Satan and Demons - For Real?" because of Halloween tomorrow.
Someone mentioned Harry Potter in small group and gave me a chance to give my Harry Potter is not witchcraft speech to a whole dozen captive audience members! Made my night.
Anyway. This is what I'm thinking about.
In the fifth Harry Potter book (Order of the Phoenix), Voldemort has returned from his half-alive state and the Minister of Magic, Cornelious Fudge, just won't believe that Harry's eyewitness account is accurate. He prefers his comfortable saftey to admitting that it might be a possibility that the darkest lord the wizarding world has ever seen MAY BE AT LARGE. But of course the reason Harry and Dumbledore are trying so hard to get him to believe them is not because they care what he thinks of them but that they CARE FOR HIS SAFETY and that of the entire wizarding world!
Just because you pretend something's not there doesn't mean it goes away.
In regard to demons, so many of us are Fudges.
And you know what? About Fudge ignoring him - Voldemort loved it.
He stayed completely quiet and concentrated his efforts on pulling together his Death Eaters and putting imperious curses on people in the Ministry (to control them without anyone knowing, like a puppeteer pulling strings).
The devil is happy when we ignore him.
Pretend he doesn't exist - where are those thoughts coming from? Your own heart. Believe your heart is sending you all this junk, and it won't take two days for you to get flat-out discouraged. Get too down on yourself and you might start believing you have nothing to offer. So you might stop showing up for life, since it doesn't matter anyway. I don't mean that you stop going through the motions, I mean that you stop showing up. The YOU that is REALLY YOU stops showing up for living. And you become a walking corpse, confused by the mixed messages you're receiving like a robot short-circuiting.
Ineffective. Paralyzed. And according to the devil, Perfect.
When Fudge finally SEES Voldemort for himself, at the end of the book, much damage has already been done. He's given Voldemort time to build strongholds.
The devil is smarter than you think he is. He's not a shouting, raving lunatic. He's a sharp man in a business suit who will talk his way right into your very heart and convince you that the mold that begins to grow on the walls is just a figment of your overactive conscience, or just what you deserve, or much better decor than your photos.
Anything to make it stay.
And for that reason I like the scene in the fifth HP movie where, as the fans say, "Voldy wears Prada." He shows up on the train platform in a sharp three-piece suit. In one sense, the scene makes no sense. Voldemort hates Muggles (non magic folk). To study them enough to know how to dress like them? And who exactly took him shopping? Bella? Voldy and Bellatrix in a high-end suit store? I mean, don't you think the clerk would notice that he didn't have a NOSE???
But on the other hand, I really like the image of Satan in a suit, unnoticed among us. C. S. Lewis said,
“I live in the Managerial Age, in a world of "Admin." The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid "dens of crime" that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps.
In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voices.
Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the office of a thoroughly nasty business concern." - C. S. Lewis in the preface to The Screwtape Letters
This is the way it is. We "Fudge" our way through life, trying to believe-away the idea of Satan because it disrupts our "comfort for me" style of life. It puts us on a battlefield.
"And that's not vewy nice, is it, Precious?"
I do NOT know why Gollum popped into my head.
Anyway.
I, for one, don't like war. However necessary it may sometimes be. And, I, too, sometimes wish I could plunk my head in the sand like an ostrich.
(I just spelled ostrich so wrong it wanted to correct it to "partridge.")
But. I would pay for it later.
I am needed on this dark planet. There are people who need me fully alive. And even though I don't know fully what that looks like for me yet, I'm going to walk in that direction, head firmly OUT of the sand, facing the man in the suit with the clean fingernails and saying,
I know what you are. And I'm comin' at you, no matter how much Prada you wear!
Oh, and I put a C. S. Lewis quote in here, so I can count it for one of my 31 days. Oh yeah, baby!
Anyway.
I, for one, don't like war. However necessary it may sometimes be. And, I, too, sometimes wish I could plunk my head in the sand like an ostrich.
(I just spelled ostrich so wrong it wanted to correct it to "partridge.")
But. I would pay for it later.
I am needed on this dark planet. There are people who need me fully alive. And even though I don't know fully what that looks like for me yet, I'm going to walk in that direction, head firmly OUT of the sand, facing the man in the suit with the clean fingernails and saying,
I know what you are. And I'm comin' at you, no matter how much Prada you wear!
Oh, and I put a C. S. Lewis quote in here, so I can count it for one of my 31 days. Oh yeah, baby!