We’ve had 1,600 years of “moral” panics. It’s time we get honest.

Theology has consequences. Let’s stop pretending it doesn’t.

Nex Benedict, non-binary high school sophomore forced by Oklahoma law to use the girl’s bathroom at Owasso High School — where they were beaten by three fellow students on Feb 24, 2024. They died in hospital the following day.

CONTENT WARNING: HATE SPEECH

FRED: God’s on our side, you f***ing freak!

ME: Why do you need to say that? What do you want me to feel?

FRED: [Looking confused, then shaking his head in exaggerated exasperation] God is on our side!

Fred Phelps, founder of the Westboro Baptist Church

ME: What will I do if you get me to feel how you want me to? What will I do to myself?

FRED: [Looking even more confused, seeming not to know what to say]

ME: How does me feeling hopeless make your life better?

FRED: Well you’re the Devil!

ME: Even if I was, wouldn’t me feeling loved and supported make your life better? Safer? Freer? Richer? Wouldn’t it make everyone’s life better?

FRED: You’re the f***ing Devil! Get away from me, Devil!

ME: If the Devil felt safe, if he had compassion for himself, if he were joyous, would he still care to war against God?…*

Image created with ChatGPT 4.

Let me ask that again…

If the Devil felt safe, if he had compassion for himself, if he were joyous, would he still care to war against God? And wouldn’t everyone’s life be better then?

Let’s ponder these questions, for in them we can see through to what the Devil really is.

Yes, I am aiming these questions deliberately. Picture me as Katniss Everdeen with her arrows in the Hunger Games. I didn’t put the cracks in the belief systems we still cling to despite centuries and centuries of revelation, but damned right, I’m gonna make them impossible to ignore.

The galaxy NGC-4414, 62 million light-years away in the constellation Coma Berenices, as photographed by the Hubble Telescope. One of literally trillions of galaxies in the known universe, each with billions of suns.

Here’s what certain.. um… storytellers have been preaching out loud for thousands of years:

All that matters in this whole glorious universe is a s***-fight between two entities who exhibit the psychologies of men.

As far as we should be concerned, said s***-fight is what the universe is!

Image created with Chat GPT 4.

Let’s take this a little deeper, shall we?

All s***-fights are between power-over:

“I get to do ____ to you because ____.”

And power-under:

The reaction to being power-overed (or believing you’re being power-overed, or fearing you’re about to be power-overed). The reaction tends to be a desperate and unanswerable “Why?!” followed by “What do I do?”

If we don’t get conscious while our heightened nervous system does what it does, the power-under reaction generally leads to:

“I get to do ____ to you because ____.”

Rinse and repeat.

People pick through the rubble in Gaza after Israeli airstrikes — Photo: Agence France-Presse (AFP)

So what our certain… um… storytellers have been unwittingly telling us these thousands of years is that all that matters or ever will matter in the entire universe is a s***-fight between two entities so blinded by the mindset of power-over/under that they can’t see past their own noses.

But listen closely and you also will hear our storytellers plainly admitting the limits of their own vision.

I can have compassion for those limits. After all, the power-over/under/over/under s***-fight among humans on this blue marble is very real, and it certainly does sometimes feel total, eternal and very personal.

But woe unto us when we let our storytellers carry on. Woe unto us when we (gasp) grant them and their projections upon all-that-is authority over our lives — rather than make it impossible for them to ignore the cracks in the belief systems they insist we carry on.

Any s***-fight between power-over and power-under is trauma-fueled by definition. It naturally follows that the players are half-witted and blind to the possible by definition. This isn’t judgment. It’s psychology.

If our certain storytellers went on to help us see this, it would be liberation.

When the traumas behind the s***-fight are truly healed, we, the participants, transform. We cease to be half-witted characters. We become open to love, to connection, to the new, to the possible. Our circle of inclusion expands.

If our storytellers went on to help us see that, that would be something.

Image created with ChatGPT 4.

But that’s not what they do.

They tell us that the s***-fight is so valid that it is holy.

They tell us to take a side and then to pray(!) that we might become even half as trauma-fueled, trauma-blinded and half-witted as the Original S***-Fighters themselves.

After all, this is war, they tell us.

In war, all cruelty is justified.

Left: Hypatia of Alexandria, beloved teacher, counselor, philosopher, mathemetician and astronomer who looked beyond sectarian divides between pagans, Christians and Jews in 4th-5th century Alexandria. Amid rumors accusing her of preventing Roman Prelate Orestes from reconciling with Bishop Cyril, rumors also spread that she practiced Satanism. In March 415 AD, she was murdered by a “moral panic” fueled mob. (Synopsis from Wikipedia) Right: Nex Benedict was an animal lover, had a cat named Zeus, loved cooking, made up their own recipes, and was a straight-A student, Benedict’s mother said. Benedict also liked creative arts, drawing, and loved video games like Ark and Minecraft, according to PGH Lesbian Correspondents. Benedict also loved rock music, was “unfailingly kind,” “always searched for the best in people,” and was a Cherokee Nation citizen, the state LGBTQ+ organization Freedom Oklahoma wrote in a post memorializing the teen. (Synopsis by Alok Menon on Instagram) Not Shown: All the millions in between.

Let me raise the question again:

If the Devil felt safe, if he had compassion for himself, if he were joyous, would he still care to war against God?

Pondering the question, something becomes clear rather quickly.

Our Devil isn’t a real being.

A being experiences. A being feels.

A being as powerful as our Devil is supposed to be (far beyond a human being) would certainly think, and would certainly have an inner life. A being has needs, and when its unmet needs get met, its experience, perspective, and demeanor change. How it treats other beings changes too.

Image created with ChatGPT 4.

Even for beings horrifically warped over very long lifetimes by a planet full of beings committed to an endless s***-fight, change is possible.

From what our storytellers say and do, it’s clear our Devil is but a tool exquisitely made for a very specific purpose:

Othering real beings on the way to the slaughterhouse, of course.

Michael and Satan, by Guido Reni, c. 1636 AD.

Remember to keep breathing, my friends.

*AUTHOR’S NOTE: Though the engagement scripted at the beginning of this essay is fictional, it is a reflection of a number of real engagements I’ve had the “pleasure” of participating in. And that makes me sad beyond measure.