Spin off from Devin

I just read a recent post from Devin (http://mysterycycles.blogspot.com/2008/08/what-do-you-say.html) and it has me thinking...

One, oddly enough I have very recently asked Devin is HE was secretly worshiping the Devil (all in jest of course...or was it?) >;)
Two, Devin’s name is in fact only one letter from actually BEING Devil...Hmmm...

Ok, all joking aside, one of the things that precious few people know about me is that I, like a lot of stupid kids, had an ‘occult phase’ in my mid teens. It was before I had made friends with the numerous Jesus people who read this blog and also at that phase in a boy’s development where he seeks to understand and gain power over his environment. Some kids take that urge into football or something physical – as a dweeb, I took it to HP Lovecraft and in time things like Tarot cards and Ouija boards. All of that is only to say that I actually have one no small amount of reading on occult topics and met some strange people.

One thing that many Christians really misunderstand about the psychology of witches and Satanists is that in their own minds they are following a ‘good’ principle or entity. The Lucifurians, as an example, are a group of typically very intelligent, very well educated folks who think that Satan is in fact the good guy who has been unfairly and maliciously slandered by the ignorant followers of that ‘other god’ who is in fact the bad guy.

I think there are vanishingly few people who will knowingly seek evil, but it is a feature of our universal fall to avoid conviction. From this, we all will tend to lazily think of good and evil in terms of what makes us feel good or bad.

Hmmm...I’m not sure where I was going with this. Perhaps only a quick thought as I read Devin’s blog about my own past and how my childish, and fundamental assumption that good and evil were essentially matters of individual opinion allowed me the same kind of mental latitude as Devin’s spiritual Satanist.

I also remember the chilling line in The Screwtape Letters where it’s noted that a wizard and a materialist are of equal value to hell since the goal is to distance humans from God. And in that context – every compass point gets the job done equally well.