Lot of theo talk on daKos these days. Understandable, with the GOP nomination now a tossup between an LDS bigwig and a radical Catholic theocrat.
(Funny aside: my spell checker's never heard of a "theocrat." Live and learn, little spell checker).
This being the eve of Shrove Tuesday, with the prospect of public penitence just ahead, I thought I might talk a bit about my own beliefs.
("Shrove?" Really, spell checker?).
Though intellectual honesty requires I call myself agnostic ("How the heck should I know?"), I am, in the privacy of my soul, an atheist. I believe in a universe created, if the word applies, by its own potential and ruled solely by its possibilities. The stars and spaces between, the lilies of the field and our own sorry selves, are participants in a great random party, a bal masqué marked chiefly by gluttony, intoxication, sex and the dance.
While I give no credit to a Man Upstairs, I will confess to a belief in the anthropomorphic equivalent of Sartre's declaration regards other-worldly real estate. I believe in the Devil.
The Father of Lies. The Ruler of this World. The Most Beautiful Angel. King of Tyre. Roaring Lion.
The dude on the little cans of ham.
I believe in a nearly omnipotent Power whose sole job is to lead us into temptation for his name's sake, to lead us to cruelty and lies. He is not found in an ice chest at the bottom of nine circles, or punting on a lake of fire, but rather "going to and fro on the earth." Often in stylish clothes.
The precise GPS coordinates of the Devil's den can be found by starting at one's ears and moving inward. He lives in us, plotting his misdeeds from the head office, so to speak.
We are all the Devil's golf carts, motoring him about and carrying the drivers and putters of his mischief and grief. We are his eyes and hands, the grunt workers of his foul designs.
If we so choose.
All of us, each of us, is given a choice nearly every second of our lives, to indulge our basest selfishness, to blind ourselves to the needs of others, to make ourselves kings and all others subjects, delighting in strife and thirsting for tears. We are all, idle or not, the Devil's playthings.
To follow the dictates of the most beautiful angel or heed the whispers of the better ones, as Mr. Lincoln put it, is the premise of the exercise in the improv class that is our lives.
If, as so many of my countrymen seem to wish, we must have a government based on theological principles, that is the one I would choose: that we are all driven by the primal author of falsehood and selfishness, but that we, as individuals, can take the wheel.
I do not want leaders who ask, "What does God want me to do?" but rather, "What does the Devil want me not to?"
PS: I've been informed by reliable sources that the son of a bitch can quote scripture, too.