by Abbot Joseph
[I know I said I wasn’t going to deal with politics anymore—and this is only partly about politics, anyway—but I had this once in a lifetime (thank God!) opportunity. The devil himself agreed to grant me an interview. I had to insist that he appear in a form I would find tolerable, for I’ve heard it said that one of worst torments of Hell is to have to look at the horrifying and disgusting ugliness of the devil. He wanted this to be off the record, so as not to tip anybody off to his plans, but hey, I don’t have any loyalty to him, and immortal souls are at stake! His pride being what it is, he couldn’t help but gloat over his master plan for the damnation of the world. But let us be forewarned and forearmed!]
“So, uh, Mr., uh, how should I address you?”
“How about ‘Your Magnificent Grand Master of All Dark and Diabolical Power and Authority, and Supreme Lord of the Everlasting Underworld’?”
“Hmm. A little cumbersome, that. Let’s just leave it at ‘Mr. D.’”
“Hrmph.”
“Well, then, let’s get started. Now you, as a fallen angel—”
“Hold it right there! You’re already making me mad. What’s this ‘fallen’ stuff? I have willingly departed from the Enemy and have become the master of an enormous kingdom. No, I have not fallen but rather have risen to greatness.”
“All right, let’s just get right to the issues. I understand you’ve been quite busy trying to wrap things up in this world. We might both agree that this world is ‘going to Hell in a handbasket,’ but for you this is victory and for many of us this is disaster. Yet people have different interpretations of world events of the present time. Care to comment?”
“I have been busy for millennia, for I never sleep. Historically, I’ve had my ups and downs, but indeed, in recent centuries, nay, even decades, I’ve enjoyed my most smashing successes. In fact, things have been going better for me in recent times than they have since the times before the appearance of that Galilean magician who has done me so much harm and forced many of my works to go awry. But I still say I’m going to have the last laugh. Look around; wouldn’t you agree that my time has come at last?”
“Well, thing are looking pretty chaotic, and I understand that chaos is something you like to spread around. But let’s get specific. Can you say something about the USA? I have a sneaking suspicion you were pulling some strings at the last election.”
“You human rodents are such fools—but this is just how I’d have you. I have been priming your country for some years, and now the fullness of time has come. I have many servants in high places and they will easily overcome all opposition.”
“Do you mean that with the current political configuration things like euthanasia, abortion, embryonic stem cell harvesting, and sexual perversion are now, or soon will be, so entrenched in our society that we’re stuck with them forever?”
“It is so, and this pleases me very much. It’s also interesting that you would even mention stem cell research, as if your backward human science held any interest for me. But in this case it actually does, and this is one of my more clever smokescreens (if I do say so myself). My strategy is known to my servants yet the majority of human airheads miss it altogether, which advances my agenda, and so they raise a stink when anyone says it’s wrong. It is quite obvious that only adult cells have actually proven successful in healing diseases, and there’s not a single success story anywhere from the use of embryonic cells. But I still push them to insist on it.”
“Why?”
“Are you an airhead, too? It is because if I can blind them to the truth (an outdated concept, by the way) and make them insist on the necessity of using embryonic cells, then the destruction of these tiny humans will become so widely accepted that the disposability of human beings will be taken for granted, and thus the rationale for abortion will remain intact, and that very profitable business (one that is very pleasing to me) will go on unhindered. But if any moral outrage were permitted and the destruction of embryos banned, then any thinking person (so few of you left!) would realize that, a fortiori, abortion should be outlawed. And we can’t have that! Yet all those things you mentioned are still not the main goal. In terms of your own silly philosophers, these delicacies are ‘necessary but not sufficient.’”
“Can you elaborate?”
“I can do anything I damn well— oh, I forgot I’d promised to use a civil tone for this interview. Not easy for me, you know. And I’m not known for keeping my promises. But to answer your question: the moral corruption of your society is necessary for the full realization of my plans, but it’s only a means to an end. These things, however, do have to be in place for my other goals to be accomplished. There are three things that these evils (for you a pejorative term, for me a sweet one) will accomplish. The first is my favorite, at least on the individual level: it prepares souls for eternal damnation, and this is the bottom line of all my work. The second is that things like slaughtering innocent babies and helpless old people, and performing all sorts of perverse, idolatrous, and blasphemous (don’t you love those words? I do) things with the human body desensitize people to horror and degradation, and so their general morality can easily sink to a level that even I’m comfortable with and hence can work with. The third thing is that this moral desensitizing, with its subsequent downward spiraling into other behaviors once considered intolerable in a civilized society, will hollow out souls, as it were, and create such a spiritual lassitude and malaise that your gutless country will finally be ripe.”
“Ripe for what?”
“Boy, you are duller than I thought. (Couldn’t they have provided me with a more intelligent interviewer?) Ripe for domination, dimwit, ripe for subjugation! Power is everything. What do you think this is all about? What do you think wealth and sex and politics are all about? Power and control! And I will not cease lusting after it until the entire universe is under my dominion. Sure, I’m amused by all their sick and murderous antics, but that’s child’s play compared to the big prize. I’m going for the whole ball of wax. When you people are finally surfeited with self-indulgence and eviscerated through immorality, when your wills have become clay in my hands because I provide you with pleasures and amusements, my servants will go in for the kill and harvest you all for my eminent satisfaction. I’m arranging things now so that your people will soon be running to my servants to solve their economic woes and the other global horrors I’m putting into place. They’ll be willing to sacrifice their freedom; they will hand themselves over to my ruling elite if only they can have their ‘bread and circuses.’ The government will control the people, and international money-men will control the government, and I will control the money-men. It has already been that way for some time, but it will become more and more manifest and inescapable. I am gradually tightening the vise.”
“I have to admit, your plans seem to be progressing apace. But are you not taking into account the power of the Lord Je—”
“Don’t you dare say the ‘J-word’ in my presence! I granted this interview on my terms! Weren’t you properly briefed on the protocol? Weren’t you—”
“OK, OK, don’t be a sorehead. But you can’t banish his name from anyone’s heart. This is a brief truce, anyway, so let’s try to have a conversation. What then, about his disciples, his Church? Surely that would be a formidable obstacle.”
“Well, yes and no, and not so much as you might think. I have more servants in those hallowed halls than you would care to accept. This has been one of my subtler works. As I hollow out the souls of the masses through various forms of greed, sexual excess, and wanton disregard for everything sacred, I hollow out the pious (ha, ha!) souls of the hierarchy and the clergy as I lead them down a slippery slope of compromises with the secular society. I keep them preening themselves before the media, and others I lead hither and thither with the latest ideas in the sciences and even in theology, so that they regard the Bible (I hate that book!) and the ancient traditions as passé or something not to be taken seriously by intellects such as theirs, which, by the way, relegate me—me!—to the realms of myth and superstition. I take umbrage at this, but I keep my peace, for it is to my great advantage that they do not believe I exist. My work progresses freely that way. But wait until I come to retrieve them. I’ll give them a very long lesson on my existence! And last but in no way least are those whom I secretly seduce into performing the most exquisite and perverse sacrileges. They release legions of my fellow Hell-dwellers into this loathsome world of yours. As for the ‘faithful,’ they mostly blow with the winds of fashion and change. No sweat.”
“Surely, though, there must be at least some pockets of resistance to your works. I mean, the Church is flourishing in places isn’t it? There still is much divine power, for example, in the Holy Euch—”
“There you go again, speaking abhorrent words! If it wasn’t for that foolish piece of sorcery, I would have claimed the whole world for my own by now! It is, most unfortunately, a shield I cannot penetrate. My only strategy here is to get people to receive it in state of sin, and to inspire some of my bolder servants to steal and desecrate it in our own most felicitous rituals. Thus we take vengeance on the Enemy. But I’d just as soon not even think about it.”
“OK, but the faithful, I mean the true faithful. Do you make any headway with them?”
“Well, I have my ways, but to be honest (I really hate to be honest) they are a thorn in my side and they hinder my work. Thanks be to me there’s only a relatively few of them. Yet they disturb me and make me suspicious that the Enemy is up to something I haven’t quite figured out yet. But I’m planning to do here something I did in China to hamstring your silly church. I’m going to set up—it’s already mostly in place, just cleverly disguised—a sort of ‘patriotic church’ in America. It will look like the real thing externally, but it will follow the liberal trends of the secular society, honoring your new leader (I’ve taken a fancy to him) as some sort of prophet or savior, and it will not make any waves with the powers-that-be. Just what I like: a tame, sycophantic bunch of self-appointed do-gooders who toss around terms like ‘gospel’ without having the faintest idea what it really means, or the power of it. Those who really embrace it and stand against my servants will be driven to the caves and forests of this country, and I will neutralize their influence. But I’ve got to do something about their prayer and fasting. Always hindering me; what killjoys, what spoilsports they are!”
“I suppose, though, you are happy with the success of the ‘new atheists,’ like Hitchens and Dawkins and Harris, who are selling lots of books and likely leading others to disbelieve in God. They seem to be muddying the waters of the current religious environment.”
“Those clowns are useful idiots. They are a smokescreen. They don’t believe in me, either, though I’ll be happy to introduce myself to them at the end of their miserable lives. In a sense I use them as a decoy. They are relatively insignificant but only serve to preoccupy some of the Enemy’s servants into arguing with them on their own terms. And they do tell some people what they want to hear, so such people can convince themselves that it’s OK to lead their heedless and worldly lives. More souls for me. But those who are really the major players on the world stage know very well that I exist. They serve me; they follow my orders. Those atheists are as loathsome to me as they are to many Christians. I will use and then discard them. They are beneath my dignity.”
“The idea that the real powers in this world really do believe in the supernatural—and in fact serve you—reminds me of some things I read in Michael O’Brien’s Eclipse of the Sun.”
“That annoying ass! He blew my cover on some key points. But I’m trying to hide or destroy as many copies of that book as I can find.”
“Well, Mr. D, there’s really a whole lot more I’d like to learn, but we’re out of time now and will have to bring this to a close. You’ve confirmed some of my suspicions, and I have to grudgingly acknowledge that you have attained a large measure of success. But I still believe that the Lord Je—”
“Remember the protocol, you irritating little—”
“I guess it’s time for us to get back on the opposite sides of the spiritual war.”
“Just remember, I don’t want people to have any advance notice of what I’m doing. What I said is off the record.”
“Uh, yeah. Whatever.”
You can read this at Word Incarnate here.
Read Also Post-Election Reflection #2 by Abbot Joseph: Flotsam and Jetsam
Read Also Post-Election Reflection #1 by Abbot Joseph: Obamanation
