In Defense of the Devil

The devil is not the problem—our belief in a benevolent God is.

I’m Alexander Cheves, and this is LOVE, BEASTLY—a blog about sex, feelings, and manhood. It’s written mostly for men—gay, straight, bi, MSM, or just curious—but some readers are women, and some don’t fit into categories. Everyone’s welcome here.

This is one of my more personal essays. Heads up: these can sometimes include explicit content or emotionally triggering subjects.

This post includes a free preview. Subscribe to read more and unlock the full archive.

---

Facebook is being rather holy today. This morning, a friend posted this:

I love it when distractions that Satan would want to use to hinder our worship are overcome by the Spirit of God! I am thankful for people willing to be obedient and lead us in worship despite their fears, sadness, grief, or any of the other emotions that I know were at work this morning!

Fear, sadness, and grief aren't terrible emotions, and there are appropriate times for all three. I'm not a psychologist, but I don't think it's healthy to view the normal human feelings of fear, sadness, and grief as tools of Satan.

I'm scared half the time. I have grief. Is this evil at work in me? I have nothing against the person who posted this—in fact, I consider her a dear friend—but these ideas are troubling. I scrolled a little more and saw another post on my feed, this one from a gay man with completely a opposite political, religious, and social perspective from the first friend, who shared his thoughts with the world:

The biggest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing bigots, misogynists, and homophobes that they were patriotic Christians.

Oh, please. Are we really doing this? Are we really dragging devils and goblins—evil forces and bad spirits—from the detritus of history to meddle again in human affairs? Haven’t we found a new scapegoat? Haven’t we just moved on from this?

The people who wrote these posts are in opposite camps, politically and culturally. The first is a minister's wife and the second is a middle-aged homosexual who lived through the worst of the plague years and lost a lot of friends and lovers. While I value them both deeply as meaningful connections in my life, I'm bugged that both used the old trick of devil-blaming to reduce and oversimplify human nature.