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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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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The late Steve Jobs was at the center of our culture’s transition from analog to digital. He co-founded Apple Computer. He led the team that revolutionized personal computing with the first Macintosh. As CEO of Apple, he led the development of the iPhone and later the iPad. You would think the children of such a man would be surrounded by technology. But Jobs and his wife Laureen didn’t let their children use iPads. Their home had few screens of any kind. Even though Jobs spent most of his time developing and selling Macs and iPhones and iPads, he was home with his wife and children for dinner when he was in town. The family ate together at a simple wooden table in their kitchen — and there were no digital devices or focus on popular culture. Instead, he’s said to have guided his family toward deep discussions of art, philosophy and education — with no iPads to be found. If the man who guided the development of such products chose a different path for his own children, does that suggest that his digital experience taught him that children need human connection, not screens? And does it suggest the possibility that we might be better off if we made the same choice for our families?

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