But it's true. I see his dirty, destructive work in our society, in our marriages, in the temptations and corruptions of every day life, in our hideous rationalizations. In our apathy and our passions. Everywhere. We are a humanity under constant and ever-increasing attack, but most of us don't even know it.
And then I read this quote by Father Robert Barron, and it definitely provided an "Aha" moment.
"...then enters the serpent. Like us, the serpent is a creature of God. He is totally dependent on God for his life. He is not some sort of co-equal rival to God. The Church has always taught that evil is parasitic on the good, not a substantive opponent. Nevertheless, he is a wily opponent."
Evil is a parasite on the good.
I have always understood sin as separation from God, and that is death. But what of evil and temptation? Those entities that strive to cause our separation from God? Evil is from the devil. And evil cannot be a substance in and of itself, because the devil was created by God. It can only twist and pervert that which is good, in an effort to throw good off track. Darkness is not a substance - it is an absence of light. Evil is not a substance, it is an absence of good.
The devil made Islam a parasite on the truth. He took what is good and holy, and twisted it. In the Black Mass, he takes what is good and holy and twists it. In lust/fornication he takes what is good and holy and twists it. Every sin is a perversion of some good thing. It isn't, and CAN'T be it's "own thing", because the devil is not his "own thing" - and he hates it. He is a creation from a creator, and he resents the hell out of that (literally).
So sin is truly a cancer - an invaded good cell, reprogrammed to go out of control and lead to death instead of life. I certainly didn't make that analogy up, but it's suddenly become a whole lot more clear this morning. We can't blame the devil for all our choices, because we make plenty of those bad choices for ourselves, but the idea of evil like cancer instead of a gunshot wound to cause our death- that suddenly made sense this morning. Satan needs a host organism. He's not killing us outright, like he wants to. You don't hear of the devil coming down and destroying humanity in a bolt of lightning, even though his ultimate goal is our demise. And the reason he hasn't done that is because he can't. He's not capable of that. He can't destroy life outright, because life is from God, and the devil is no god. But he's wily and sneaky, so instead, he tempts us to make the choices that lead to our own physical and spiritual death. He creates situations and temptations that present us with choices that lead to our life with Christ, or our death with him.
We're on to you, Satan.
