How to Know the Demonic When You See It

Trump selling bibles with a flag on them

https://www.reddit.com/r/TrumpMemes/comments/1bomn1h/trump_bibles_for_sale_regular_or_upsidedown/ (Reddit version of upside-down bible)

(Reddit meme is a humorous version of Trump bibles—I couldn’t bring myself to post the real thing.)

The demonic is temptation. It appeals to the desire to be and do the worst in human life and deceive yourself that you are doing holy work.

Temptation always includes self-deception. After all, as scripture says, Satan is “a liar and the father of lies.” (John 8:44)

Holy Week is an excellent time to examine the worst human beings can do. After all, on Holy Saturday, Jesus descends into hell.

These days, Jesus could just go online and order some Trump bibles if he wanted to visit hell. The huckster par excellence is playing his followers and tempting them toward self-deception.

When I began work on my fourth mystery novel that centers on racist attacks on a college campus coordinated through the chat rooms of violent video games, I noticed that the online “names” these white supremacists gave themselves were often those of Satan and his minions. It was very fitting.

I named the novel When Demons Float after the scene in the first book of Paradise Lost.

Satan and Beelzebub get kicked out heaven. They land in a lake of fire. They float there, “prone on the flood,” and contemplate their next move. They decide to go to earth and wreak havoc on human life through temptation.

All through the “Church fathers,” the demonic is very minutely examined. Thomas Aquinas, in the Summa, argues that demons “assail” human beings and “instigate them to sin.” They do this by appealing to humanity’s weaknesses, especially pride.

Well, that certainly fits with our politics today.

The development of ‘White Pride” as overt racism is being repackaged as ‘hate-free’ racism, attempting to align whites with oppressed minorities and promoting ideas of ‘heritage-preservation’ as a cloak for virulent racial prejudice.

“White Pride” is the mirror opposite of what has come to be known as “Pride” and the development of “Pride” months to celebrate LGBTQI identity. These efforts do not belong in this category of self-deceptive pride. Instead, “Pride” for LGBTQI persons affirms a healthy identity in the face of demeaning prejudice.

Pride in its demonic sense is inflating your own self-worth by denigrating whole groups of other human beings as unworthy of respect and certainly unworthy of equal participation in our democracy.

This bible stunt by Trump has a whiff of brimstone to me. It looks and smells like the demonic.

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