If I Were the Devil

I don't know much about Paul Harvey, but I heard this clip played awhile back on FOX news.  At the time, I thought about how true this warning was.  I thought Mr. Harvey must be reflecting upon our times.  What I did not know, however, was that this was something he actually preached on many decades ago before a lot of these things became true.

Isn't it funny (and sad) how people are warned over and over again, and how if they would have just heeded those warnings, they'd have been better off?  I'll admit, I fear for our nation.  I think we have a president right now who is so ideologically driven, so nearsighted, and so partisan that we are in for some real trouble.  Obamacare alone should be proof enough of that.  But we have leaders all throughout our country that do not have our best interests at heart.  We have ourselves to blame, too.  We do not pay attention to what is going on.  We take the quick, most convenient, most pleasurable, and least expensive ways out of everything we do.  We choose our leaders out of popularity rather than content or substance, or ability.  We try so hard to be politically correct that we end up running from the truth and embracing lies and injustice just to save face.  We ignore God.  We allow minorities to dictate what religious freedoms we should and should not have.  We...

You know what... WE have allowed the devil to enter our lives, to enter our country and rape his way through it like the wild beast he is.  WE have allowed our education to get worse.  WE have allowed the media to lie to us, fill our minds full of garbage, and get away with it, with trillions in their pockets.  WE have allowed our young to grow up parentless, on their own, and without discipline or care.  WE have allowed our leaders to be as corrupt as they are.  WE have allowed all of it.

WE have turned our backs on what is right.  And if I were the devil, it's people like us I would target first.

It's sad that our nation hasn't embraced and learned from Mr. Harvey's warnings.  We've already gone so far down that road he predicted we'd wind up on.  But my hope is that it's not too late for us to turn back.  I hope we will.

Unfair: When Life Gives Us Lemons

A lot of things in life aren’t fair. It isn’t fair for a kind person to be belittled. It isn’t fair for a helpless child to be abused or neglected. It isn’t fair for a mentally challenged individual to be fooled, or deceived, into wrongdoing, or to be taken advantage of. It isn’t fair for a woman to lose her job because she wouldn’t put out to the boss at work. It isn’t fair for a gay high school student to be bullied into desperation. It isn’t fair for the athlete to be called dumb just because they are an athlete. It isn’t fair for the hard working individual to see their job go overseas just so the share holders of their company can save another couple millions on top of the billions they already get. It isn’t fair whenever a person buys a car and a few months later it becomes a complete lemon. It isn’t fair whenever two parents save money for years in order to help afford buying or building a new home and then they get screwed over by the banks and lose everything. It isn’t fair whenever a person gets lung cancer because they’ve been around secondhand smoke all their life. It isn’t fair whenever someone loses their spouse in a car wreck. It isn’t fair whenever your child develops leukemia and dies from it before the age of two. It isn’t fair whenever the best person for the job doesn’t get the job. It isn’t fair whenever a person exposes their own sin and is then shunned and belittled by the very Christians they sought out help from. It isn’t fair to be tempted by something so strongly that at times there doesn’t seem to be any relief from the temptations. It isn’t fair for a person who’s worked their whole life to see their pension be taken away. It isn’t fair for a woman who loves children to not be able to have children of her own. It isn’t fair for the father of a conceived child to have no right to stop the mother from having an abortion. It isn’t fair for a family to witness their home burn to the ground because of some electrician’s shoddy electrical work. And nor is it fair when you’re picked last for the team because you’re apparently “too smart”.

So much in life isn’t fair. We all get raw deals in life. Bad things happen to good people. Good things happen to bad people. None of it is fair. But that is just life. Life isn’t fair, or easy. There are always battles and struggles to have to go through. In all of it, we can make the decision to keep trudging forward to always try to do what is right, or we can decide to give in, give up, and fall to the wayside. How we act when life throws us lemons impacts each of us and those around us in so many profound ways.

Our resolve to keep trudging forward is what makes all the difference in the world. Our hope in good eventually outweighing evil, and God fulfilling the promises He has made to us, keeps us on a path that, even though it may seem harder at times to stay on, truly does lead us to a better place. When we keep our hope and keep our faith and keep moving forward no matter what life throws our way, we become the light of the world and victorious in Christ. Our lives will always be better, even if it seems harder at times and perhaps even less fulfilling at times, when we stay on course. And even though the journey may seem long and difficult, God will always be with us through whatever struggles we have. The devil would love for us to believe that God has abandoned us, forsaken us, deceived us, and/or left us for dead, but that will always ever only be the devil’s own doing—his way of trying to make us stumble, blame God, and to turn away from what we know is right and true. But if we resist him, and hold true to God and to what is right, in the end will we always be better off.

When life is unfair, it is hard not to complain, get angry, depressed, or fall off course. It seems so contradictory to try and do what is right only to get bad things in return. But we have to keep in mind, it is not God sending those lemons our way; it is the devil. We cannot ever forget that, or we will truly become lost. It is when those lemons are being hurled at us that we should hold on the strongest to what we know in our hearts is right; when we should turn to God and cling onto Him with every ounce of our being. And, if we do that, even though we may have some length of time struggling, He will always see us through to a better end than what we’d have with the alternative.

Harry Potter and a Way to Resist the Devil

Sometimes I feel as though this life of mine just isn’t worth living. I feel sad, lonely, hopeless, angry, bitter, confused, and practically every other negative emotion a person could ever feel. I feel these ways more often than not, and I struggle terribly at times to stop these feelings. But every once in a while something comes along that makes me forget about everything bad in the world. It lifts my spirit, reminds me of something good that sometime happened, or gives me hope for something better.

I love watching the Harry Potter movies. I’ve never known a series that advocated love, friendship, and hope more than it. There’s a scene from the latest movie, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, toward the end, which moved me so much when I saw it the other day. I’d seen this movie a couple of times before, but I hadn’t really stopped to pay attention to this particular scene as closely as I should have. In it, Harry’s nemesis, Voldemort, takes control of his mind and body, incapacitating Harry, filling his mind with all sorts of horrible thoughts—the death of his parents and loved ones, times of loneliness, insecurities. Harry lies on the ground fighting to resist these feelings. Seeing him struggle, his teacher and mentor, Dumbledore, leans down beside him and says to him, “Harry, it isn’t how you are alike. It’s how you are not.” Harry then sees his two closest friends, Ron and Hermione, standing in the distance. He’s suddenly able to fill his mind with thoughts of their friendship, and of all the good times they have had together. And he thinks about the people he has known and loved. With these thoughts, he is eventually able to break free of Voldemort’s hold on him just enough to respond to him. “You’re the one who’s weak,” Harry says to him. “And you’ll never know love, or friendship. And I feel sorry for you.” At this, Voldemort tries harder to attack him, but Harry is able to fight him off. Voldemort leaves Harry’s body and then just stands over him and says, “You’re a fool Harry Potter. And you will lose everything.” A few minutes later, as everything has settled down and the movie is about to end, Harry tells his friends that they all have something Voldemort doesn’t have. “What’s that?” asks Ron. “Something worth fighting for,” Harry replies.

Can anyone else see the connection here between what happened in this movie and real life? I didn’t see it the first couple of times I watched this movie, but the way Voldemort attacks Harry is exactly how the devil attacks each of us. The devil fills our minds, runs us down, makes us to dwell upon all the bad in our lives and in the world, and in the hope that in doing so it will eventually destroy us.

I tend to think that God sends me those little moments of goodness to help me resist. Like Harry, sometimes I need someone to tell me I’m not bad. Sometimes I need something to remind me of better times. Sometimes I need to know my friends are still my friends. I am loved. I have known friendship. I have friends. I may sometimes be very much like the devil, but in so many ways, I know I am so very different from him. Dumbledore’s advice to Harry is good advice to accept. It’s not how we are alike, but how we are not alike that should make all the difference. I have known and experienced so many wonderful things the enemy never has and never will. These are things he can’t understand, but damns others because they do. Rather than hating and tearing down others and myself, and giving up, as he’d like me to do, and as he does, I have something better to hope for. I have something so much more worth fighting for. Why would I ever want to give that up?

I wrote in one of my comments to another post recently that if people would just look more for the good in themselves and the good in others, this world would be a far better place to live in. I believe in that with all of my heart. It’s that good that separates us from the devil. I believe there is good in everyone, and that no one is beyond saving. I believe that’s a big part of what the Christian message should be to the world. We can either join up with the one who has only ever had our destruction and misery in mind, or we can join the one who has brought about all the good we have ever known and could ever hope to know. Which one is more worth fighting for?

Like Harry Potter, I think I’d rather fight for what’s good in the world. And like him, I too feel sorry for the enemy. He will never know love. He will never know friendship. He will never know anything but hate and destruction. And I will never understand why he fights for that so much. Maybe it’s simply because he has already lost everything, and he wants all of us to lose as well. Whatever the reason, I’m not like him. And I’m not as he suggests I am. Despite whatever flaws I may have, I am so much better than that. And the next time he tries to take over my mind and my body, I think that’s just what I’ll tell him.