The other day, an Instagram ad caught my eye. I clicked for “More Information” and was taken to the following testimonial.
“My name is Heinrich Faust. I spent fifty years in academia searching for truth only to realize I had wasted my life. I was decidedly single, and for all my work, I could hardly pay rent. My desperation to redeem lost time drove me to the brink of the dark arts, but even there, my powers failed.
Then everything changed. When Mephistopheles Consulting LLC came into my life, they helped me to see what I was missing and provided me with the resources to live my best life. At first, I didn’t dare ask for what I wanted–youth, wealth, influence. But Mephisto told me not to dream small, and as you can see (not to boast), his advice paid off.
Best of all, there’s a lifetime warranty on his services, and the terms favor the customer astronomically. You don’t pay a dime until you’re genuinely satisfied. This is a loophole to exploit (take it from me; I’m a J.D. and taught law for 20 years). Simply resolve never to be satisfied, and you’ll never need to pay. I don’t know how long Mephisto will stay in business with this model, but no matter who you are, you need to hire him. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain.”
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Now, in case you were taken in, Faust isn’t being entirely honest with himself, or with us. Mephisto is a demon, and if Faust doesn’t slice that loophole perfectly, he’ll pay with his immortal soul. A J.D. might be smart, but Mephisto has a few millennia of experience in devilry, and I’m willing to bet he has some slimy tricks up his sleeve. With this in mind, I strongly advise you not to book one session with Mephistopheles Consulting LLC.
But the situation does inspire an interesting thought experiment. If a demon appeared to you and offered you his service, what would you ask for?
I know what I’d want.
“Mephisto, friend,” I’d say. “Remake me into a slightly androgynous, wisp-thin female with jutting collarbones and a trace of white cigarette ash on her pointy patent flats. This creature grows her black hair straight down to her waist, never thought of dying it, wears no makeup but black eyeliner, and mumbles beat poetry in her sleep–a luxury she doesn’t much engage in, busy as she is hosting alcoholic tea parties and sampling a variety of drugs (but never getting hooked). She’s ruthless and charming as a black cat with an uncanny gift for haunting the most interesting spots to be, knocking knees with geniuses and soforth.”
“Make me her.”
And we’d shake on it.
Then I would become one of whom it is said:
“clouds they are without water, carried about of winds; trees whose fruit withereth, without fruit, twice dead, plucked up by the roots; Raging waves of the sea, foaming out their own shame; wandering stars, to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness for ever.”
Jude 1:12-13 KJV
Because really, underneath the black beret, my ideal me (and your ideal too) is Milton’s Satan–charming, empty, doomed to hell. Lucifer was an angel of light, a son of dawn. Like Narcissus, he fell in love with his own reflection and sought to seize the throne. Every time we long for a #livingmybestlife avatar, we do the same.
Now, most of us aren’t able to follow Satan’s example precisely. You see his story echoed most closely by powerful men: the deified Roman emperors, Napoleon, Vladmir Putin, perhaps Elon Musk. Like Satan, they have legions, can prowl to and fro on the earth, seeking whom they may devour. But most of us aren’t grand enough to take the heavens by storm. So, we fix up an ideal version of ourselves (a best life; best self; #goals), prop it up on the throne, and bow down to that instead. I created that wispy elitist. Faust chose a lusty, young nobleman. Tell me. Who’s yours?
At this point, you might object that you struggle more with idolizing things and other people than yourself (even an idealized version). “I idolize politics,” you might say, “I idolize my children.” But in every one of those cases, there is an “I” front and center. You idolize politics because you preen at the image of yourself as an urbane, up-to-date citizen. You idolize your children because, oh, Jennifer will turn green and seething when she sees your goddess genetics and child-rearing skills at work. There is an avatar with your face on God’s throne, and you’re always trying to become it.
Now, I ran into several problems manifesting my particular avatar–this chic artíst. For one thing, I can’t be pretentious. It’s too lonely. Also, I’m Christian, and I haven’t been able to find any way to deceive myself into thinking that sampling hallucinogens or hosting alcoholic tea parties is permissible under my professed creed. I’m not wisp-thin. And I would need translucent fair skin for this to work properly. Plus (woe is me) most of my friends are loyal, wonderful people, not nasty, self-absorbed geniuses.
So, I’m not my idol. I’ve failed to become Satan.
Faust will fail too, but only barely. After a lifetime of conquests, he is actually in the process of being dragged down to Hell when a 14-year-old girl he impregnated and abandoned appears with an army of angels to save him. Inflamed with lust for the angels, Mephisto allows Faust to slip through his fingers. Through no merit of his own, Faust is suddenly a saint.
Faust’s story is unusual in the finer details (angels have never shot roses at demons on my behalf) but universal in its broad outline. God rescued Faust from the consequences of his idolatry. He rescued me. Perhaps he’s rescuing you too.
The idols dance like puppets before our eyes, appealing and beautiful. But the demons pulling the strings will take and take. They govern by fear. Their ultimate goal is to devour. Like crooked salesmen, they flatter you into thinking you’re pulling a fast one on them, when all the while they’re quietly adding damning clauses into the fine print.
But in God’s world, just when the sharks are closing in on you, a miracle happens. You’re saved. Grateful, you offer your life in service to your Savior, and in contrast to the ever-hungry demons, Christ gives and gives and governs with grace. As you worship him, you become that which you were created to be, through the administration of his Holy Spirit through the Church. You eventually receive what you wanted all along, the thing the idols seemed to promise but never had the power to give.
It sounds simple doesn’t it, attractive yet somehow saccharine. Well, it takes time for the poison to leech. It’s hard for me not to wist after that sleek, cat-eyed beatnik of my adolescent dreams. She’s the low-hanging fruit. She can’t exist in heaven, but she can exist here. And I am here right now.
So, ultimately, the question is, do I prefer this here-now earth, with all of its hate and betrayal and pain? Or do I choose a there-then heaven that I can’t even imagine? This choice is difficult because there are many who have said one must be content to eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die, and after that lies nothing more. Who am I to believe?
Long ago, there came a man, a man like nobody the world had ever seen. He and his followers willingly died for their faith in a future they could not see. One was boiled, another crucified upside down, another beheaded. Most of them were beaten multiple times within an inch of their lives. Were they insane? Were they unstable, extreme types? Well, considering that they varied from Greek physician to illiterate fisherman, I don’t think we can cash up their lifestyles to personal eccentricity. I’m inclined to think their lives were transformed by the One they followed. Unlike the idols, he did not demand that they do the saving work to redeem themselves at the execution block. Instead, knowing they could never accomplish it, he did it for them.
As long as the here-now exists, there are idols everywhere clamoring for worship, screaming at us to abandon hope and drown in hedonism. I’ve grown tough-minded lately, and whenever one appears, I fix my eyes on the cross instead to remind myself that the man who spoke of heaven died to save the men who killed him. I look at the bloody holes in his hands, the knotted scars on his back, and I clap my hands over my ears. As I run away from the world, you will hear me shouting “Life! Life! Life!” Christ’s arms are open. Soon, I will be in them, and tears shall be never, joy–forever.
But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties.
II Cor. 12:9
p.s. I see ads for life coaches on Instagram ALL THE TIME and most of them follow Mephisto’s tactics to a tee. They point out weaknesses, promise strength, and hide any costs in the fine print. I believe that demons often lure people with wealth–because so often, we are so delighted at worldly success that we don’t consider what we’ve promised in return. The demon holds a piece of cheese over a ravine and tells us we can have it. We scurry onto the suspension bridge and are so busy gloating over the fact that we got the cheese that we don’t notice the ropes are being severed. Even if a life-coach guru person on social media has a track record of making people millionaires–always consider the hidden costs. One interpretation of Faust is that Mephisto will have Faust’s soul either way because power and wealth are guarantees of corruption.