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Devil’s in the Details

When I served as a jail chaplain years ago, I often received requests for specific books from inmates. Mostly they were books on overcoming discouragement or self-improvement books you’d imagine an inmate would need in their position.

That’s why a request for scholarly level theological books caught my attention. I was even more surprised when the one requesting them was a mass murderer…of his own family.

Philippe (not his real name) had been in jail for several years now. Trial date after trial date had been postponed due to his various antics. He would go on hunger strikes for weeks on end, and then say something disruptive in his hearing. He’d give grief to his own counsel and they’d eventually resign in frustration.

To be specific, Philippe was in jail for taking a knife and slitting the throats of his wife and their five beautiful children. And now here I was, sitting at his cell door and answering his rather complex questions on Christ’s eventual return to earth.

The “end of days” is not an uncommon subject of interest for inmates. I would get endless requests for copies of the famous “Left Behind” book series. I concluded that the books offered inmates one possible option for eventual “escape”. In their minds, the Second Coming of Christ was in effect “Jesus breaking them out of prison”.

Well, He did say He’d come to “set the captives free”…

But Philippe had returned those books when I tried to send them. He said they were just fictional accounts (which was correct), and that he wanted strictly scholarly sources for Biblical study. So today, I walked down to the special area of the jail reserved for inmates who were emotionally or psychologically impaired to tell Philippe in person the jail really had no theology books on that level.

Then Philippe asked, “Would you have the time to talk with me and answer my questions, verse by verse?”

I answered “sure”, partly out of curiosity to see what kinds of theological questions are asked by a guy who murdered his family with his bare hands and a kitchen knife. As we talked, I leaned in toward the opening in the door where his food tray is inserted to listen.

“Hey, Chaplain, you need to move back right now!” An officer at a central desk in the large room called out to me.

“What’s wrong?” I answered as I pushed away from the thick plexiglass cell door.

“Chaplain, all that man has to do is reach through that opening and rip out your trachea! You can’t sit that close to the opening!”

The inmate I’d been speaking with seemed so reasonable. I’d forgotten for a moment there was such a thing as evil, and that the man within just arms reach of me was well-acquainted with it.

Which brings a question to mind I’d like to ask you…

Do you believe in evil? I mean, in a personal, intelligent force working against us and, in some cases, through us?

Sometimes in everyday life, it seems doubtful, doesn’t it? Nothing around us is quite as exciting as the evil manifested in your garden-variety exorcism movie. So it’s easy to dismiss the concept, to think its perpetrators in our world are just the emotionally or mentally disturbed.

But pure, unexplainable evil is something we’re skeptical of these days. It would be easier to believe in if it was more obvious, like in the movies. Why don’t we see those kinds of demon-possessed people like Jesus faced (as in Luke 8:26-39)?

“What is your name?” Jesus asked. “Legion, for we are many.”

Are those stories merely the superstitious products of a primitive culture lacking any better explanation?

Then again…

I have met evil in person. I’ve prayed for some pretty twisted people over the years. I’ve sat with some who’ve violently massacred loved ones, like Philippe. I’ve counseled child abusers who’ve done unspeakable things to the innocent. You’d have to be crazy to do those things, right? But more often than not, those people looked me straight in the eye and seemed quite lucent.

I often wondered, when looking in their eyes, if I might catch evil staring back at me…

Philippe sits calmly and talks with me about fairly complex theological issues. He asks intelligent questions, some for which I don’t have adequate answers off the top of my head. When I tell him I don’t have a particular book or don’t know something, he doesn’t lash out at me but responds like any rational person would.

…expect that this rational person murdered his family for no good reason, as if a good reason could exist.

Philippe claims that what he did was a case of demonic possession. Sure, you say, that’s his excuse to get off on six murder charges. However, it’s interesting that he’s never tried to get his attorneys to argue that in court. He knows no one will believe him. Instead, they’ll go for an insanity plea, even though there’s nothing in my visits to indicate any insanity at all.

He says he was into voodoo and spiritism in his home country before coming to the states. He claims that this exposure haunted him, and eventually led to the horrible acts he committed. He now claims to be a Christian, and in fact has held some Bible studies with other inmates when he wasn’t in the psych ward. As my conversation goes deeper and deeper with him, I find myself struggling to decide what I believe about Philippe and his claims.

I’m struggling because most of the evil I’ve seen is of a much tamer brand. I’ve watched bitterness and unforgiveness growing like a cancer in a friend’s soul, causing him to lash out illogically. I’ve witnessed substance and sexual abuse. I’ve known people with addictions that left them limping through life, the byproduct of their own sins or someone else’s against them.

When you think about it, it seems Satan may have tailor-made these tamer “designer demons” for our more enlightened age. The old-school demons Jesus dealt with would honestly give away too much about a spiritual world which contemporary skeptics no longer believe in.

Actually, “Legion” was the name of the demon Jesus confronted that day. It was instead the demons’ way of bragging about their numbers and strength. They wanted Jesus to know He was outnumbered. That’s how evil works – it manipulates with fear and intimidation.

In the 1st century, many people believed not only in a God but in many “gods”. So a demon showed its preeminence among their “gods” by demonstrating its control over a victim, like with this young man Jesus encountered. Outrageous behavior and supernatural manifestations intimidated the 1st-century mind into submission and servitude. Satan was boasting he was the most powerful of all their “gods”.

The demon’s tactics worked pretty well until confronted by a certain rabbi from Nazareth.

Today, the deception is different: Satan’s lie “de jour” is unbelief. “There is no God” is the reigning deception he uses in our day. So Satan knows that any flamboyant manifestations of spinning heads and spitting pea soup would spoil that grand illusion. We would then be faced with evidence of a supernatural world living between the layers of our limited logic.

So Evil dare not rear its head so obviously and theatrically, or else we’d have to believe there was also a great Good fighting against that evil as well.

Better to keep his work stealthy, subtle, undetected. So he camouflages his demons in the guise of social ills. It’s merely a coincidence we are so often struck strategically at our weakest point, right? We believe the self-destructive voices in our head are our own, never realizing our voice is being mimicked by the Great Impersonator himself.

Instead of turning to God to cast him out, we take an extra tranquilizer to sleep at night. As long as the demons look common enough to fly under the radar, the deception is a success and the destruction of the human soul may continue undeterred.

Therein lies our trap: we are too smart for our own good. Anyone as overconfident as the common skeptic is pretty easy to deceive, as long as the deception plays to their arrogance. It’s like a 21st-century version of the Emperor’s New Clothes. Instead of telling the king he’s naked, we just persuade him smart people don’t believe in demons.

Surely it’s only a paranoid fantasy to believe we’re really being watched, studied and stalked like prey on a daily basis.

Yes, Evil knows us well. While He still comes out of the closet in more superstitious cultures like Philippe’s, he’s content to brew beneath the surface in our own. He beckons fathers to destroy their families with sexual liaisons. He lies in wait for the innocent child and seduces the predator who would abuse them. He rips through our cities with a thousand selfish indifferences toward our fellow humans, building frustrations one upon another until the more violent among us break and lash out in a frenzy of hate.

No, we don’t believe. Yet the demons are all around us. And they are legion.

straight-talk-for-skepticsThis article is a chapter from YOUR BRAIN’S TOO SMALL FOR GOD, my book for skeptics and the Christians who love them. Order your copy today at Amazon!

3 Comments

  • Ann Rowan
    Posted August 5, 2017 at 9:58 am

    Your right on Dave ! I know evil and yet I really don’t understand it .The person that killed my only daughter and mother of three children under seven for medicine chest drugs doesn’t understand evil either. She has a hard time even admitting that she has done anything evil.I know because I
    often write to her.She tells me she talks to Jesus and I encourage her to be a good example to those
    around her in prison.Her life in prison has to have some meaning.It’s always difficult but judgements are always Gods job not mine.Somehow I have let go of that hot brick in my heart and found peace .

    • Ann Rowan
      Posted August 5, 2017 at 9:59 am

      You may use my comment as you wish

      • Post Author
        davegipson@hotmail.com
        Posted August 9, 2017 at 3:22 pm

        Just found your comment, Ann. Most definitely will use it, and thanks so much for sharing!

        God bless,

        Dave Gipson

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Our dream house was a 120-year old 3-story Victorian home. It was just a few blocks away from one of the loveliest parks in the city and the same distance from the church I pastored. I could literally walk to work, and did so on many mornings. How convenient!

Unlike the other brick houses that lined the streets nearby, this one was painted light yellow and stood apart from the rest. Plaster reliefs of baby angels wrapped around the base of the house. They represented the children of the original owners, making the structure even more unique. It also had a three-car garage at the back of it. Few houses in this older section of town had one as large, and many people resorted to parking on the street. But not us! On just an average salary, we had bought one of the nicest places to live in the area. 

I had always dreamed of owning a Victorian home. I had performed the role of Prof. Henry Higgins from the musical My Fair Lady right before we moved to our new city. So I was primed to live the life of the English gentleman, sipping tea in my beautiful old house. I loved the old wood, the stained glass windows, and our “penthouse suite” for my wife and me on the top floor. We’d be sequestered away from the noise of our little girls playing below us. It all seemed so ideal.

But it turned out to be anything but ideal. Our “Golden House”, as our little girls came to call it, was not so golden. In fact, our dream house almost killed us, quite literally. 

One afternoon I got a call at the church. It was Dawn, my wife, and she was sobbing hysterically. Finally I was able to make out enough of her words to understand what was happening.

“I fell…come home!”

Almost 20 years ago, my wife had been in a bad car accident that crushed her right leg. That ankle couldn’t turn at all. So as I ran the 5 blocks to my home, I knew what had happened.

When I got to the house, I found Dawn in the basement. She was headed to the washer and drier there, and had misjudged a step going down. She hit the concrete floor hard.

After getting her to the hospital, thankfully we learned nothing had been broken. However, that would be just the first of several falls for Dawn down those steps. We eventually moved the washer and drier up to the second floor, which helped a little. But the bottom line was a three-story house with narrow stairways were not meant for a woman who had challenges with mobility.

I also learned having your bedroom on the third-floor is not a good idea for a chubby guy in his mid-50s. There were a few days I wondered if I’d still be alive by the time I reached the top floor. Though I began on the stairway to the bedroom, I might end up on the stairway to heaven…

Then there was the city. Dawn and I always loved culture, restaurants, theater and all the things a great city has to offer. So living there, we felt like kids in a candy store. There was always some new restaurant to explore, always a show playing somewhere, and interesting people living all around us. It seemed ideal.

Except for crime. And taxes. Many cities are big on those, and ours was no exception. We had both in abundance.

One of our regular nightly diversions was watching the notifications on our community’s “Next Door App” alert us to all the recent shootings and hold-ups around us. One of us would hear gunshots, and I’d watch for the posts to pop up. I’d then calculate how close it was to our home. Many were within just a few blocks, some just down the street. 

We would occasionally get notices of some tax we hadn’t paid. Usually, we neglected to pay because the city had neglected to ever send a bill. Then one day, you get a notice you’re being sent to a collections agency, even though you still hadn’t received a bill yourself. 

Once we got a bill for trash pick-up. We were confused because we paid a refuse bill on time every month. But a lady on the phone informed us what we had paid was in fact only the garbage bill. There was completely different bill that was a tax for just having trash pick up available to us in the city. This bill was paying for the “possibility” our trash might be picked up. No kidding.

I’m sure they’re still probably working on a way to collect a tax on our taxes. 

All of this added together was a painful lesson on the difference between perception and reality. After we first moved to that city and were still living in an apartment, I walked down those very streets and fantasized about how wonderful living there would be. When we found the Golden House, we rejoiced and basically cried out, “Here, take our money” to the realtor. 

But the view from the outside of a situation is always much different from the inside. Nothing is ever quite what you expect…with houses, or with life.

The problem with so many of the things we want is it’s too often based on an illusion. We think a thing, a person, or a situation will bring happiness. But happiness is never found in those things outside of us.

Real happiness only happens from the inside out.

There’s an old fashioned Bible word for this foolishness: covetousness. The prohibition against coveting is actually the 10th and final commandment. It’s easily skimmed over in favor of the more R-rated commandments against murder or adultery. Simply wanting your neighbors stuff as opposed to stealing it or killing for it seems like no big deal in comparison.

But coveting is like a powerful drug. The addict never gets enough. Once he gets that one thing he’s obsessed over, he’s disappointed to realize it doesn’t fulfill his needs and he moves on to something more. The new car he’d wanted all his life now sits in the garage most days. She can’t even remember why she bought that purse now. That’s how coveting works: whatever you get, it’s never enough. You’re always left wanting something else, and even more addicted to your desires.

Whatever my eyes desired I did not keep from them. I did not withhold my heart from any pleasure, for my heart rejoiced in all my labor; And this was my reward from all my labor. Then I looked on all the works that my hands had done and on the labor in which I had toiled; And indeed all was vanity and grasping for the wind. There was no profit under the sun. - Ecclesiastes 2:10-11

Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions. - Luke 12:15

There was nothing wrong with us wanting a house. But it was very wrong of me to think that it would bring us so much happiness on its own. The ideal life and fulfillment I was expecting from a house was unreasonable. 

That kind of happiness only comes from God’s address, not mine.

Inevitably, we become like kids on the day after Christmas. We’ve opened every package, played with every toy, and we’re already bored with them. The newness wore off in a day, all because we were expecting too much from them to begin with.

Most homes stop being dream houses the minute we walk into them. Reality inevitably sets in, and the “house porn” on the realtor’s website is now just a bunch of plaster and dry wall. 

We finally made it out of our dream house before it killed us. No, we didn't run screaming from it in the middle of the night like in the Shining or the Amityville Horror. When we left, it did take quite a bite out of our finances, and we had to sell for quite a bit less than we'd paid. But the wound was worth it for the lesson we learned.

We’re in a new place now, in a much smaller city. We’re renting a little one-story house we’re hoping to buy soon. We're in a little neighborhood where we hardly ever lock our front door. It's pretty boring compared to city life, but that’s just fine with me.

I’ve discovered what really makes a “dream house”. The dream is not the house, it’s the people you put in it. Regardless of the size or location, those people are what makes life worthwhile. 

Everything else is just a dream. And all that glitters is not a golden house.

Our dream house was a 120-year old 3-story Victorian home. It was just a few blocks away from one of the loveliest parks in the city and the same distance from the church I pastored. I could literally walk to work, and did so on many mornings. How convenient!

Unlike the other brick houses that lined the streets nearby, this one was painted light yellow and stood apart from the rest. Plaster reliefs of baby angels wrapped around the base of the house. They represented the children of the original owners, making the structure even more unique. It also had a three-car garage at the back of it. Few houses in this older section of town had one as large, and many people resorted to parking on the street. But not us! On just an average salary, we had bought one of the nicest places to live in the area. 

I had always dreamed of owning a Victorian home. I had performed the role of Prof. Henry Higgins from the musical My Fair Lady right before we moved to our new city. So I was primed to live the life of the English gentleman, sipping tea in my beautiful old house. I loved the old wood, the stained glass windows, and our “penthouse suite” for my wife and me on the top floor. We’d be sequestered away from the noise of our little girls playing below us. It all seemed so ideal.

But it turned out to be anything but ideal. Our “Golden House”, as our little girls came to call it, was not so golden. In fact, our dream house almost killed us, quite literally. 

One afternoon I got a call at the church. It was Dawn, my wife, and she was sobbing hysterically. Finally I was able to make out enough of her words to understand what was happening.

“I fell…come home!”

Almost 20 years ago, my wife had been in a bad car accident that crushed her right leg. That ankle couldn’t turn at all. So as I ran the 5 blocks to my home, I knew what had happened.

When I got to the house, I found Dawn in the basement. She was headed to the washer and drier there, and had misjudged a step going down. She hit the concrete floor hard.

After getting her to the hospital, thankfully we learned nothing had been broken. However, that would be just the first of several falls for Dawn down those steps. We eventually moved the washer and drier up to the second floor, which helped a little. But the bottom line was a three-story house with narrow stairways were not meant for a woman who had challenges with mobility.

I also learned having your bedroom on the third-floor is not a good idea for a chubby guy in his mid-50s. There were a few days I wondered if I’d still be alive by the time I reached the top floor. Though I began on the stairway to the bedroom, I might end up on the stairway to heaven…

Then there was the city. Dawn and I always loved culture, restaurants, theater and all the things a great city has to offer. So living there, we felt like kids in a candy store. There was always some new restaurant to explore, always a show playing somewhere, and interesting people living all around us. It seemed ideal.

Except for crime. And taxes. Many cities are big on those, and ours was no exception. We had both in abundance.

One of our regular nightly diversions was watching the notifications on our community’s “Next Door App” alert us to all the recent shootings and hold-ups around us. One of us would hear gunshots, and I’d watch for the posts to pop up. I’d then calculate how close it was to our home. Many were within just a few blocks, some just down the street. 

We would occasionally get notices of some tax we hadn’t paid. Usually, we neglected to pay because the city had neglected to ever send a bill. Then one day, you get a notice you’re being sent to a collections agency, even though you still hadn’t received a bill yourself. 

Once we got a bill for trash pick-up. We were confused because we paid a refuse bill on time every month. But a lady on the phone informed us what we had paid was in fact only the garbage bill. There was completely different bill that was a tax for just having trash pick up available to us in the city. This bill was paying for the “possibility” our trash might be picked up. No kidding.

I’m sure they’re still probably working on a way to collect a tax on our taxes. 

All of this added together was a painful lesson on the difference between perception and reality. After we first moved to that city and were still living in an apartment, I walked down those very streets and fantasized about how wonderful living there would be. When we found the Golden House, we rejoiced and basically cried out, “Here, take our money” to the realtor. 

But the view from the outside of a situation is always much different from the inside. Nothing is ever quite what you expect…with houses, or with life.

The problem with so many of the things we want is it’s too often based on an illusion. We think a thing, a person, or a situation will bring happiness. But happiness is never found in those things outside of us.

Real happiness only happens from the inside out.

There’s an old fashioned Bible word for this foolishness: covetousness. The prohibition against coveting is actually the 10th and final commandment. It’s easily skimmed over in favor of the more R-rated commandments against murder or adultery. Simply wanting your neighbors stuff as opposed to stealing it or killing for it seems like no big deal in comparison.

But coveting is like a powerful drug. The addict never gets enough. Once he gets that one thing he’s obsessed over, he’s disappointed to realize it doesn’t fulfill his needs and he moves on to something more. The new car he’d wanted all his life now sits in the garage most days. She can’t even remember why she bought that purse now. That’s how coveting works: whatever you get, it’s never enough. You’re always left wanting something else, and even more addicted to your desires.

Whatever my eyes desired I did not keep from them. I did not withhold my heart from any pleasure, for my heart rejoiced in all my labor; And this was my reward from all my labor. Then I looked on all the works that my hands had done and on the labor in which I had toiled; And indeed all was vanity and grasping for the wind. There was no profit under the sun. - Ecclesiastes 2:10-11

Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions. - Luke 12:15

There was nothing wrong with us wanting a house. But it was very wrong of me to think that it would bring us so much happiness on its own. The ideal life and fulfillment I was expecting from a house was unreasonable. 

That kind of happiness only comes from God’s address, not mine.

Inevitably, we become like kids on the day after Christmas. We’ve opened every package, played with every toy, and we’re already bored with them. The newness wore off in a day, all because we were expecting too much from them to begin with.

Most homes stop being dream houses the minute we walk into them. Reality inevitably sets in, and the “house porn” on the realtor’s website is now just a bunch of plaster and dry wall. 

We finally made it out of our dream house before it killed us. No, we didn't run screaming from it in the middle of the night like in the Shining or the Amityville Horror. When we left, it did take quite a bite out of our finances, and we had to sell for quite a bit less than we'd paid. But the wound was worth it for the lesson we learned.

We’re in a new place now, in a much smaller city. We’re renting a little one-story house we’re hoping to buy soon. We're in a little neighborhood where we hardly ever lock our front door. It's pretty boring compared to city life, but that’s just fine with me.

I’ve discovered what really makes a “dream house”. The dream is not the house, it’s the people you put in it. Regardless of the size or location, those people are what makes life worthwhile. 

Everything else is just a dream. And all that glitters is not a golden house.