If we’re seduced by our desires, we often follow devil in disguise

By David McElroy · January 25, 2022

The devil doesn’t have horns and a pointed red tail. He doesn’t wear a red suit. The devil looks exactly like whatever it is you want the most.

The devil is a shapeshifter, changing himself in every moment to become some thing which is too good to be true. He appears to me as the object of my deepest desires — and he appears to you as whatever it is you need most as well. But when we allow ourselves to follow where this shapeshifting demon leads us, the heaven on earth which we expect turns out to be a living hell.

The devil is one of the most enduring archetypes of human history. For some people, he’s been a literal creature roaming the earth. In Christian theology, he’s seen as a spirit who’s the chief of the fallen angels. But however the devil has been conceived in theology or mythology or psychology, the real demon is in your head. It’s the lying trickster promising whatever it is you want and need the most.

The things that destroy us are typically the things we eagerly accept and even pursue. When evil and heartbreak arrive in our lives, these things don’t typically force their way in. They come in disguise — and we eagerly welcome them in.

The things which will destroy us make themselves seem to be the things we need the most. Even if others warn us against them, we resent their intrusion and we eagerly welcome the seeds of our unhappiness and destruction.

We don’t realize what we’ve asked into our lives until it’s too late. We almost always choose the path to our own destruction. That devil in disguise has a roadmap which promises to lead us to heaven — but when we get there, we find we’ve arrived in hell instead.

Even when we see along the way that something isn’t right, we are prone to continue following the devil we’ve trusted, right into the place that is most destructive for us. We refuse to turn away and follow a different path, because we believe we have invested too much time and energy and ego in the path we are on — and so we blindly push ahead to the place of our own damnation.

We blame others for the unhappiness in our lives. We say we couldn’t help what’s happened. We say there’s no way we could have foreseen what this person or that person has become. But most of us are fooling ourselves.

Yes, there are some people who have disasters and diseases befall them which they didn’t choose. We all have a bit of that, but some people have far too much of their share. That’s true. But most of us have control of our lives and choose the paths which take us where we don’t want to go.

I’ve been watching people for years and observing which things take them off course — which things make them miserable and even destroy their lives. This is the pattern I see over and over. And I’ve seen it in my own life, too.

The devil in disguise can beckon us to follow and we come running. We’re not on the path to destruction. No, we’re just about to reach what we’ve already wanted and needed most — the desires of our hearts. And then we find that the reality is almost never what we thought was being promised.

I know that this life can give us joy and happiness and beauty and love. I’ve seen those things at times. I’ve touched them. But too often, we mindlessly pursue substitutes which can never be what we hope they can be. Over and over, we waste out time on those empty promises — and as we look back at the wasted years, the shapeshifting devil chuckles at the demonic trick he’s played on us.

Maybe we sometimes can’t tell the difference between the path to heaven and the path to hell. Maybe we can’t avoid falling for the tricks of this shapeshifter from time to time. But some of us — including me — are prone to keep falling for the trick long after we should have known better. I definitely do this. Maybe you do, too.

I just know that the time comes in every pursuit when we know we’ve wasted our time on a failed dream or failed promise of something great. And I know it’s easy to stubbornly refuse to accept what we know is true.

When we reach that point, we can no longer blame the father of lies. There’s a point at which we know what we’re doing — and we’re continuing on the path to a metaphorical hell all of our own making.

I’ve wasted too much time looking back over my shoulder. I’ve wasted far too much time longing for empty dreams which were never coming true. Maybe this is true for you, too.

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Is it an attempt to blur the gender line between men and women? Or is it some weird tribute to the traditional Scottish kilt? It’s hard to say, but fashion designers keep pushing for men to wear skirts in the last few years. Both men and women in modern fashion seem oddly androgynous, as though it would be offensive for a man to look manly or for a woman to look feminine. A CNN article about the latest fashions from Paris caught my attention Monday and left me wondering about the ugly clothes the designers are hawking. If a man wants to wear a skirt — or a kilt — that’s OK with me, but I’ll stick with a traditional dark suit with a white shirt and tie. (Well, when I’m not wearing t-shirts and sweats, of course.) I always wonder who actually buys the outlandish garb from fashion designers anyway. I would be humiliated to be seen in any of this stuff, but I obviously have no sense of high fashion.

If you have problems with high blood pressure, I’d like to encourage you to consider making serious changes to your diet. There might be some people who don’t have any choice but to start taking prescription medications for high blood pressure, but I’d like to tell you that I have completely eliminated my issue by eliminating all sugar and almost all carbohydrates. (A couple of months ago, my blood pressure hit 185/144, which was dangerously high — considered stage 3 hypertension.) By completely changing my eating habits, I’m down 22 pounds and my blood pressure is now in the “ideal” range — without taking any medication. In addition, I sleep better and I have more energy. Getting away from the sugar-laden mess that we generally refer to as “highly processed food” has been a life-changer for me. Now my challenge is to avoid slipping back into old habits — by eating in the dangerous ways that almost everyone in our society has come to see as normal.

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A state legislator in Maine has been stripped of the ability to speak in the state Legislature — and her votes are not being counted on legislative issues — all because she made a truthful social media post. Rep. Laurel Libby (R-Auburn, Maine) opposes allowing boys to compete against girls’ teams in school athletics and she’s become known for making an issue of it. On Feb. 17, she posted on Facebook about a recent example that she found outrageous. She posted side-by-side photos of a boy named John who competed last year in a state track event and won fifth place against other boys two years ago — and a photo of the same boy (now called Katie) who won first place in the same event this year against girls. Whether you find this outrageous or not, Libby is clearly being honest and truthful about the objective facts of an issue of public importance. But the state Legislature censured her. Democrats decreed that she could not speak in the House and that her votes would not count on legislation — until she apologized for the outrage of telling the truth. She refused and her constituents have been unrepresented in the state House since then. The people who promote this ideology are out of touch with reality and won’t rest until they force the rest of us to join them in this delusion. But even if you agree with “trans” ideology, you should be appalled at this heavy-handed attack on political speech.

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