We very seldom go unrewarded for doing the right thing. And more often than not, we’re punished when we go wrong. But the whole time we’re weighing the good against the bad we’re bent by something on our shoulders to go towards the latter. What the heck is that about?

In that past I think I might’ve laughed at this, but these days I find the language of demonic forces to actually be very useful. I know people that feel demonic, I know businesses and communities and pieces of media that feel that way, too. They, in our desire to consume them or be with them or be a part of them, guide our lives astray. 

There’s someone I know who’s in the process of slowly abandoning his wife and child. They got pregnant young, when they barely knew one another. Their life is tough, it’s not easy to be them for a slew of reasons. But I am absolutely in awe of the scale of the mistake being made. 

My current position as a new father gives me fresh and red-hot insight into just how magnificent and Good what he’s walking away from is. I mean, my God. The fact that he could convince himself that it is the right path inspires awe. It implies forces of darkness and self-deception so vast as to be almost unbelievable. Cyclopean, Lovecraftian, Demonic. 

He’s staying with someone I know but I’m not friends with. My limited experience with this person has been of consistent affirmation and excitement of the distinctly personal.

 You do you! You’ve gotta put yourself first! Yeah!

My friends privy to this situation laughed when I described this person as demonic. I don’t think it’s funny at all. I’d be very curious to hear the conversations going on in their house right now.

It’s almost impossible for friends to admonish one another, even when we know they’ve gone badly wrong. When a friend does that, we should be very grateful to them, it takes a level of love that is frankly, incredible. I’m looking at you, Jack. I love you.

What I’m getting at is that I highly doubt the conversations in that house are deep-dives into the moral horror of what he’s doing and efforts to convince him to change his ways. Almost certainly he’s being supported and gased-up. And if that’s the case, it’s fucking demonic, it’s evil, it’s everything that horrifies me about our socities own proclivities and attitudes.

Pray for them.
I should finish reading The Screwtape Letters.