Interview With the Devil

KAREN: Should I call you Satan?

SATAN: King Satan or Prime Demonizer are my preference. I’ll also answer to Lord of Darkness or Our Unholy Earth Father.

KAREN: Okay, Satan it is. It’s so easy for our viewers to see the horrid acts you are responsible for in today’s world…

SATAN: Oh, thank you for the compliment. I’m so glad people are noticing my work today. Even someone in my position sometimes wonders if he’s truly making a difference.

KAREN: You consider what you do making a difference?

SATAN: Oh, yes! What would this world be without me? All harps and fluffy clouds and happy people and good apples. No! No! No! How boring would that be? A world without sin and chaos is no world at all. Sin! I hate that word! He (pointing up) came up with that word, you know. It just sounds bad – sssssin! Most people know it’s really just the fun the self-proclaimed Big Guy doesn’t want them to have.

KAREN: Let’s move on. Since your work today is so… vivid, let’s go back. What do you consider to be one of your most successful acts in Biblical times?

SATAN: Not counting the obvious?

KAREN: The obvious?

SATAN: Adam and Eve. My pride and joy. But everyone knows about them.

KAREN: Adam and Eve? But wasn’t God ultimately in control of…

SATAN: Wait! Wait! Yes! There is so much to choose from. But I am going to have to say Legion.

KAREN: The demoniac?

SATAN: Yes. Oh, wasn’t he just divine? Oh, bad word choice. Wasn’t he perfectly wretched? I didn’t just send one of my demons to possess him, you know. He had many weak spots, that man. I sent an entire legion of demons, and he let them right in. (laughing) People thought he was mad!

KAREN: Wasn’t he?

SATAN: It was the demons, really. Ah, they were just having some fun with him.

KAREN: Fun? He was living like an animal, Satan. He lived in the tombs, bound and shackled by the locals who were afraid of him. He’d break free and run naked out of the desert and into the town streets and attack people.

SATAN: (laughing) Oh, you should have seen it - the things they made him eat and do to himself. Funny stuff. Those demons were some of my best soldiers, but they knew how to have a good time.

KAREN: Even with all of Legion’s weaknesses, Jesus came along and saved and healed him, Satan.

SATAN: Yes. But my demons had a good time of it, and many of my demons today consider them heroes and are inspired by them. We may have lost Legion, but I'm sure my demons since then have gained so many more because of the accomplishments of Legion's demons.

KAREN: But didn’t Jesus destroy Legion's demons?

SATAN (fidgeting and nervous): You mean the pigs? That wasn’t Jesus, and it couldn’t have been foreseen. The demons decided to have some fun with the pigs. How could they have known the pigs were all going to drown themselves? But look at the havoc they wreaked with Legion before they perished. They were very worthy soldiers.

KAREN: Jesus sent them into the pigs, Satan.

SATAN (growing angry): At the demons’ request!

KAREN: And you consider it coincidence that the entire herd of pigs rushed into the river and drowned?

SATAN: What else could it be?

KAREN: So Jesus saved Legion, showing the world His love and destroyed your demons, showing the world His power, and you consider this your success? Do you have any real success stories, Satan?

SATAN: (yanks off his lapel microphone) This interview is over! You dare to mock me! I am Satan! Do you know what I can do to you? (walking out)

KAREN: Absolutely nothing without God’s permission. Jesus has already saved me.

*You can read about the demoniac in Luke 8:26-39.

Did Jeffrey Meet Jesus?

The man slumped to the floor, his glasses crushed, his head bleeding profusely. He looked up at his attacker, the man wielding the blood-soiled, solid-metal weight bar and said, "I don't care if I live or die. Go ahead and kill me."

The man with the metal bar gladly met the bleeding man's demand and administered a vicious adrenalin-infused blow to the man's head. The bleeding man was rendered unconscious as his attacker countinued bludgeoning until he had pulverized the man's head. The man's body survived long enough to make it into the ambulance where he was pronounced dead from severe head trauma.

What do you feel for this bleeding man as he is experiencing this attack? Pain? Sympathy? Anger at his attacker?

What if I tell you both men were prisoners and the bleeding man was serving a life sentence for murder? Do you still feel pain? sympathy? anger? Do you feel less of it because this man was a murderer?

Witnesses say that guards walked away from the attack, closing the doors behind them, allowing the attack to happen. Some say it was planned and that even the guards allowed the plans to play out. Witnesses also say that despite the bloody, gruesome scene, some time passed before the guards called for medical help.

What do you feel now? Anger? Apathy?

What if I tell you the bleeding man with the pulverized head was Jeffrey Dahmer? In 1991 Dahmer confessed to raping, torturing, killing, and dismembering 15 men and boys and murdering 2 other men. He also confessed to committing post mortem rapes and cannibalism on his victims.

What do you feel about this vicious attack now? Anything?

In the early 90's I was in my early 20's. I remember I couldn't turn on the news for months it seemed without being inundated with Dahmer details. We learned more than we needed to know about what this guy did, and the details were so disgusting and shocking that as time went on and more details emerged, the schock drifted into a complacency. Not because we didn't care but because the recent week's horrid revelation just didn't seem to out-disgust the one they shared the week before.

I probably should have been a psychiatrist because I've always been interested in what makes the darkest of the dark in humanity tick. And I truly thought I could never hear a another detail that would surprise me about Jeffrey Dahmer.

But this past Saturday, I did.

I wandered across an old prime time news program that consisted of a 1994 interview with Dahmer shortly before his death. The interview shocked me - not because of any of the horrid things I already knew about him but because of one shocking thing I'd never heard.

Dahmer who had believed in the theory of evolution and felt that it made him his own god - Dahmer who also believed he was the devil - had prayed for the salvation that only Jesus Christ offers and was baptized - both while incarcerated. Dahmer's father had shared creationism and Jesus with Dahmer after he went to prison, and according to Dahmer, his heart accepted it.

If his heart truly was right with God and if there are no unforgivable sins, this means Dahmer slipped out of his flesh and into the arms of Jesus.

Now, what do you feel?

I leave you with these questions:

1. Are there any unforgivable sins?

2. Do you think when Dahmer slipped out of his flesh that he landed in the arms of Jesus?