Do You Hate The Devil?

I went for it.

This private pitch.

To be the head writer of a multi-million dollar international series for a global streaming platform.??

It was an engaging story I had created and shared with the head of programming.

He looked at me for a while.

The quietness was disconcerting.

Finally he sighed.

And then said in a tone that was barely above a whisper.

"I am amazed about your mind. How did you think up a story like that?"

I smiled and responded.

"If I told you that it was informed by a true story, would you believe it?"

"Honestly, I won't."

"You won't because you do not know that if you interrogate things you see play out around you, you would actually find the things that inform them, which would actually blow your mind. Everything you see has a back story. Something brought it about. If you investigate and find out what that is, you will find out things that are stranger than fiction."

"Hmmmm."

I fell silent as I waited for him to say something else.

Finally he did.

"What intrigues me is how in this your story, you have made it possible for me to actually love a character that is so evil and despicable."

I smiled before I engaged.

"When I create or research stories, I always try to find the condemning information about the protagonist and the redeeming information about the antagonist, because I know that nothing is completely good or evil. The audience connects better with characters when they are multi-dimensional. They find them more interesting and relatable when they are intrinsically human. That is they have weaknesses and strengths and through their struggles and aspirations, victories and failures, the audience can see themselves in the characters."

"You are very correct."

"For example, I have a Facebook friend who I chat with from time to time. She is married, with four children, but she only has extramarital affairs with Catholic Priests."

"What?"

"Yes."

"Catholic Priests?"

"Yes. Catholic Priests."

"That is shocking."

"She has been sleeping with them since her secondary school days."

"She was underage?"

"Exactly."

"That is child abuse."

"Correct. You see before I gave you that information, you had condemned her, right?"

He nodded.

I continued.

"It was hard for you to connect with her story because what she does is not everybody's cup of tea. You looked at it as profane and sacrilegious."

He sighed and nodded again.

"It was a Catholic priest who disvirgined her when she was 12 and since then she has been sleeping with the different priests."

"That is sad."

'Yes. She finds herself drawn to them and for some reason feels she has to help them relieve their urges, so that priesthood wil not be tough on them. She acts out what the first Catholic Priest she slept with told her she needed to do for him that first time she slept with him."

"Poor girl."

"You see. You can now relate with her and connect with her humanity because you are now aware of her back story. You can feel and empathize with her, because you see her humanity and can see yourself in it. She has transformed from a villain to a victim, from an antagonist to a protagonist."

He nodded.

I continued.

"It is happening all around us. We are condemning people, because we do not know their back stories. If only we have the patience and the interest to probe further, to ask the right questions, to see behind the veil, we will see that the ones we call oppressors are victims, and the one we call the victims are in fact oppressors."

"I can see that."

"I am glad you do."

"But what about her husband, does he know what she is doing with the priests?"

"He has no idea."

"My God!"

"In fact, he is always encouraging her to keep cooking for them and going to their residence to help them do one thing or the other. Her service to them is to him, her service to God. He is happy that the more she does it, the more it shows to everyone that she is pious and god fearing. It is a testament that he married well."

"The poor man."

"What do you now feel about the woman?"

'I detest her."

"But you empathized with her just moments ago."

"That is before you made me see that she is playing her husband for a fool."

"Is that more grievous than the fact that she is a victim of child abuse and sexual grooming?"

"That was in her past. She is a grown woman now. It is not an excuse for her to treat her loving husband like that."

"How do you know that he is loving?"

He fell silent.

His eyes bored into me.

"Can you see how our minds begin to make excuses and pass judgements the moment we engage fully with multi-dimensional characters?"

He slowly nodded.

"This is why I write the kinds of films and books I write. I want to add value to mankind. I want to add light to the darkness. I want to sow seeds in their minds that will sprout into trees of wisdom."

"But are you sure that the audience is ready for stories like yours that force them to think deeply and probe further?"?

"It is wrong for us to dumb down the audience. We have to give them what nourishes and develops. We must feed them with entertainment that builds them and enriches society. Films that opens their minds and frees them to engage the world in its truest form. We must help them think, see, question, understand and discover."

"But are they ready?"

"You never know until you give them. Just like a mother who is weaning her child from breastfeeding, has to one day give the baby solid food to find out if they are ready to set the nipple free."

"Life is so deep."

"Yes, it is."

"I truly like your story."

"Thank you."

"But I am afraid of it."

"Why?"

"As I said earlier, you have made me love someone that I find despicably evil."

"It is all because I made you see them for who they really are. I made you understand how they came to be. No one is all together good or all together bad. We are all just products of the experiences we have been through and the circumstances we have found ourselves in."

He sighed again.

"Do you like the Devil?"

"What kind of question is that?"

"Do you like the Devil?"

"I hate the Devil."

"Why?"

"Why?"

"Yes, why?"

"Because he rose up against God and put us in the mess we all find ourselves."

"What if he rose up against God because God broke his heart?"

"What?"

"I want you to think about the possibility. What if the Devil rose up against God because, God who he loved so much, broke his heart?"

"I don't understand."

"Imagine him, Lucifer. Who was referred to in Isaiah 14:12 as - O star of the morning, son of the dawn! - He was the Morning Star. Beautiful. Radiant. He walked on burning rocks so that he glowed. He was the Prince of the heavens. The one God created perfectly and was loved completely by God. And then one day, God told him he was going to create man, who God would love just as He loves Lucifer or as some books say, even more than He loved Lucifer. And like a woman who married a man, believing in monogamous bliss, has her heart broken, when the man announces to her that he is going to marry a second wife, Lucifer's heart broke. And through the broken walls of his heart, envy, jealousy, anger and hatred crept in. He saw himself being forced to share the attention and love of God with man who he saw as beneath him. He who was the chief chorister in the heavenly choir, who sang to the glory and pleasure of God. He who was an Archangel. He was the closest to the God. How could another who was not worthy be put on the same pedestal as him. He saw himself as a victim. He saw himself as being used and dumped. He raged at the injustice. This was not how it was supposed to be! I am supposed to be the only one! The only one you love so deeply and so perfectly! What did I do wrong? Why have you changed your mind? Why are you no longer satisfied with me being your most treasured creation? What can I do to make you change your mind? What can I do to bring things back to the way they were before? And with that, the rebellion in the heavens begun."

"Oh my God."

It came out as a heated whisper.

His chest was rising and falling rapidly.

His eyes open wide.

His face pale.

I continued.

My voice well measured.

"Do you hate the Devil?"

Lagos?

Jude Idada?

July 16, 2023

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