I discovered this piece to ponder by TLS at Summa Mommas (via Video meliora…). It reminds me of a chapter in Thomas Merton’s book New Seeds for Contemplation called “The Moral Theology of the Devil.”
And isn’t it just what Satan wants us to think? That in giving ourselves to Christ we would somehow be becoming some mindless, one note, crazy, Stepford Wife, robotic, unthinking goofballs?
The myriad of saints speak against this. They are a varied as creation—not a one of them like the other. They are not robots or Stepford saints. But that sly voice still whispers—if you abandon yourself, you’ll be nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Choose YOU. Choose yourself and YOUR will.
That’s the dangerous choice. Faced with Jesus and the Devil, most, if not all, folks would easily choose Jesus. But faced with the false choice—Jesus vs. self? Well, then that’s a more difficult decision.
Isn’t this the same choice the apple represented to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden?