One of my favorite superheroes of all time is Daredevil. I love everything about the character. His gift was also his curse. He lost his sight but gained superhuman abilities. He constantly overcomes great pain, loss, and insurmountable odds to try and make his home a better place to live. One thing that may strike some as odd about the character and his world is all the religious imagery, especially when the “hero” dresses up like a devil. How can the devil be a hero? And why would someone who cosplays as satan still go to confession? I think the answer lies in a wonderful quote from Father Paul Lantam in the Netflix series ‘Daredevil’. When Matt Murdock asks the Priest why god would “put the devil” inside of him, he responds: “nothing drives people to the church faster than the thought of the Devil snapping at their heels. Maybe that was God's plan all along. Why he created him, allowed him to fall from grace... to become a symbol to be feared... warning to us all, to tread the path of the righteous.” As theological doctrine, that response leaves a little to be desired. I like to think of god as something much different from the common perception, a living source of energy and knowledge and empathy, a web of interconnectivity. So, let’s strip away the meaning from all of this “god” talk and look at it as a metaphor. I love metaphors, and I also employ an eclectic spirituality that involves pagan, Buddhist, and Wiccan principles, as well as a fair share of ideas from Jesus; albeit in a very gnostic sense. I think every religion to ever exist adds some little piece to cosmic puzzle while creating a lot of strife and hardship along the way. The problem with religions is that they’re all exclusive clubs. Buddhism taught me that you can take part in a lot of different religious acts and ceremonies if necessary that feel right to you, and you don’t have to feel like you’re cherry picking when you take out the exclusivity. Jesus, Buddha, and the Alchemists had a lot more in common than most people realize.So, if we’re speaking metaphorically, assigning the word “god” to this metaphysical force of one-ness and empathy, we can think of “the devil” as sort of the opposite: a force that calls us to do that which gives us pleasure and holds our respective egos in the highest regard. When we do something we feel is “bad” or were taught to believe is bad, we can experience feelings of guilt or regret when we plug back into the “god” source. And sometimes rightfully so, like if we were to commit a crime, or hurt someone. But I would argue that both forces, “god” and “the devil” are neither good nor evil in the way we understand that fictional dichotomy to be. Ultimate good and evil is stuff for galaxies far, far away, boy wizards, and pulpits. Sometimes, those who are “plugged into god” don’t act when they need too. They can descend into existential nothingness by abandoning every pleasure, desire, or vice known to man. Similarly, those “plugged into the devil” can be vain, self absorbed, or spiteful. The forces are neutral, and much like the Taijitu symbol which you may know colloquially as the “yin and yang”, or the light within darkness and the darkness within light. Both are necessary for balance. I like to occasionally use tarot cards for Jungian exercises, stripping away the idea that the cards will “tell my future” by way of some spooky force and instead embrace the mysticism of the mundane and the mystery that is constantly all around us. In tarot, The Devil isn’t necessarily a bad card. In some cases, it can be quite good depending on predetermined factors, but most usually represents indulgence of some kind, pleasures of the flesh or even the fire within us to stand up for ourselves. We need the devil. We need him there to remind us to think for ourselves, to take care of ourselves, and to give ourselves a break every once in while and to save the consequences for later. But, you can see how living like that constantly could make you question everyone’s intent towards you, doubt others, be cynical, and even lazy. Sometimes it’s not so bad to be cynical and lazy, but eventually that leads to depression. When we think in modern religious terms, words like “war” or “battle” come up, conjuring images of angels and demons with swords and maces duking it out in the heavens for our souls. But think instead of the yin and yang, the darkness within the light. Does that symbol conjure up an image of struggle or strife? No. It looks like harmony. It looks like peace. If people think that god and satan are actual beings with personalities that fight over their eternal fate, then no wonder there’s so much hypocrisy in the world, especially amongst religious crowds! Guilt becomes the driving force in such systems of values, telling us to be as “righteous” as possible as often as we can until we can stand it no longer and sin, and when we do that, we must beg forgiveness from a perfect god, whose standard we can never meet, so he had to send his son to be murdered because our mistakes are so bad. And that’s supposed to be good news? What if we saw it as a dance instead? I’ll give an example that’s a common trope in fiction. An abused kid stands up to a bully and gets cheered on by their classmates. We don’t want to see an innocent child get picked on for no reason, and if we see it happen, we want to see redemption. We want to see the kid stand up for themselves and put a stop to it. Who wants to see the kid give into the bully and let themselves be abused because it’s the more compassionate choice? No one. If we’re talking movies, nobody’s buying a ticket to that because we inherently know that standing up for ourselves in the face of senseless adversity is the right thing to do. On the other side of the same coin, we don’t want to see the good kid become the very bully he learned to defend himself from. We don’t want him to keep punching his oppressor into a bloody pulp and then go around beating up other kids who don’t deserve it either just because it happened to him. We as an audience just sort of inherently know how much is enough, how far is too far. We may not be able to put it into words or even think about it on a conscious level, but subconsciously we know what constitutes an archetypal good guy, bad guy, or antihero. Life is a lot like this too. One of the questions I used to struggle with as a former product of American Judeo-Christianity was the existence of the Devil. If god knows the future, exists outside of time, and also makes everything happen, the fall of Lucifer and of mankind seems like a cruel joke. But I don’t think we’re supposed to take these biblical stories literally. If both god and satan are used as metaphors to represent light and dark energy, we can see both as neutral forces working together in balance, and the Genesis story as a warning not to let one side overtake the other. Assigning god a personality really destroys the deeper meaning that can be found in the parable, causing guilt and shame for the actions of our forebears. Original sin is a rather unfair concept all around. It’s as if we must answer for crimes we did not commit and pay penance for the wrongdoings of our ancestors. We should be aware of where folks went wrong in past and strive to make the world a better place, but not suffer for things we aren’t responsible for. Realizing this brought freedom for me, and the ability to take the biblical story at face value and learn from the parable, much like we can learn things from superheroes or hobbits. The devil gives us a gift, a gift of intelligence and knowledge. What we do with the knowledge is our decision. Fear of the dark is natural for us as humans, it speaks to our primal roots. We can’t see our surroundings, anything could be out there waiting for us, thus we have a natural tendency to distrust it. Allowing ourselves to step forward into the dark can be scary, but sometimes very necessary. Without the cool of the night, the sun would dry us all up and the earth would wither away. Choosing to leap forward into the unknown is like stepping into the darkness. We can’t always see where our decisions will take us, but we know it’s necessary. We just have to remember to embrace the light of day when the sun rises.
