Empathy for the Devil

by J R Forasteros

  For Amanda

  (AKA Mother Terrorista).

  The world is helpless

  before your love’s great power.

  Here’s what you’ve taught me:

  CONTENTS

  Introduction

  1 Cain

  2 You Wouldn’t Like Me When I’m Angry:

  How Anger Might Be an Invitation to Life

  3 Delilah and Samson

  4 I’m Not Like Everybody Else:

  When the Light of the World Goes Dark

  5 Jezebel

  6 House of Cards:

  Power, Fear, and the New American Gods

  7 Herod the Great

  8 Between Rome and a Hard Place:

  Living in a World of Impossible Choices

  9 Herodias

  10 The Cat’s in the Cradle:

  The Fingerprints Our Families Leave on Us

  11 Judas

  12 What Death Smells Like:

  The Betrayal of Faithfulness

  INTERLUDE: The Monster at the End of This Book

  13 Satan

  14 Running with the Devil:

  On Devils, Older Brothers, and Pharisees:

  Then and Now

  EPILOGUE: Empathy for the Devil:

  What to Do When It Turns Out You’re the Villain

  Acknowledgments

  Notes

  Contact the author

  Praise for Empathy for the Devil

  About the Author

  More Titles from InterVarsity Press

  Copyright

  Introduction

  When I was a sophomore in high school, I wanted to challenge myself on a world history research paper. I decided to examine the worst event in the twentieth century, the Holocaust, and ask if anything good came out of it. Fortunately my history teacher, Mrs. Morgason, was wise enough to discern that I wasn’t a burgeoning neo-Nazi. I was just a clueless, suburban Christian kid who didn’t see the Holocaust as anything more than an event in a history book. Rather than report me to the principal or a guidance counselor, she gave my paper the poor grade it deserved and let it slip into obscurity, where it belongs.

  When I graduated from high school, I went to Germany. During the trip, I visited Dachau, the site of the first Nazi concentration camp. I stood in the reconstructed bunks, where hundreds of prisoners had been crammed like sardines. I walked through the doors where the boxcars were unloaded of their human cargo and then into the shower rooms, designed to execute hundreds of people at a time.1 I saw the furnaces where bodies of those labeled “inhuman” by the Nazis were burned, and I wept over the mass graves. Beautiful landscaping offering an insufficient memorial to what lay beneath the ground. I met a survivor of Dachau, the tattooed numbers on his arm faded but still visible.

  In the course of a morning, the Holocaust became real to me. No longer was it a distant, dusty event in a history book. No longer could I fathom approaching it as an intellectual challenge. I could respond only with horror. I was captivated by this question: How could the Nazis do this? Not Hitler and his advisers, but the soldiers on the ground and the people of the city of Dachau. How could they all become monsters who industrialized murder? How could they actively or passively endorse the genocide machine?

  The best answer we have is as horrifying as it is dissatisfying: they became monsters slowly, one day after the next. The camp at Dachau was opened in 1933, about three months after Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany. Its original purpose was to serve as a prison for political agitators.2 At first, no one died at Dachau. But since the prisoners were deemed enemies of the state, they were systematically dehumanized: stripped naked from the moment they arrived and then subjected to daily acts of humiliation.

  Several “accidental deaths” occurred, officially inexplicable. By October 1933, execution was authorized for sabotage, escape attempts, and “political agitation.” Kristallnacht, the infamous pogrom against Jews throughout Nazi Germany, didn’t happen until November 1938, when the camp had been operating for almost six years. Eleven thousand Jews were incarcerated there. The crematoriums weren’t constructed until March 1942, nearly a decade after the camp opened. By the time the camp was liberated in 1945, SS soldiers had killed more than forty thousand people.3

  My visit to Dachau made the Holocaust real to me. It also made the German soldiers real. I saw that they didn’t wake up monsters. They weren’t born evil. They became evil one day at a time—one decision to go along, one decision not to speak up, one decision to look the other way. They were everyday people like you and me who became villains one step at a time.

  A GOOD DAY TO BE BAD

  There’s no question we’re obsessed with villains right now. Antiheroes, reformed kingslayers, and outright bad guys rule the multiplex, the small screen, and the bookshelves. From Gone Girl to Loki, our villains insist that heroes aren’t really good, and antiheroes are worth rooting for. Broadway’s Wicked and Disney’s Maleficent invite us to revisit the old fairy tales to see if the wicked witches are as wicked as we thought. Even Superman has normalized killing, because dark, edgy, and gritty are the watchwords of the day.

  Maybe it’s this generation of political corruption and religious sex scandals. Maybe it’s the information age, giving us access to more sides of more stories than we’ve ever had. Maybe it’s just good storytelling. But when the Joker is more interesting than the Dark Knight, it’s worth asking why. Why are we so obsessed with bad guys?

  Because we want to understand. And to understand, we need to hear the other side of the story. We need to see the world from the bad guy’s point of view.

  The technical term for the ability to understand another person’s position is empathy. Empathy is an essential human practice, particularly in a culture that is increasingly divided. Once upon a time, the person across the party line was a friend and fellow citizen with whom I disagreed. Now he is the enemy, a threat to my very livelihood; compromise with him seems impossible. Once upon a time, a person who disagreed with me theologically was still a sibling in Christ. Today we write a blog post or fire off a tweet dismissing her as a heretic who has no place in the wide stream of Christianity.

  Empathy takes practice, so what better resource than the Scriptures? The Bible is filled with villains—people who have been depicted throughout history as irredeemably evil. They are the murderous brother, the evil queen, the femme fatale, the ultimate betrayer, the devil. We give these villains about as much thought as the number of verses they get—that is, not much. We don’t read them as real people but as monsters who exist only to threaten the heroes of our stories.

  But the villains of the Bible were real people. They were born into sin as we all are; they were not more evil than the rest of us. I’m interested in the paths they walked. When Cain stood in that field, why did killing his brother seem like the best option he had? How could Delilah betray Samson? Why did Jezebel hate God’s prophets so much? How could Herod order the deaths of the infants? Why did Herodias want John the Baptist dead? What did Judas really hope to gain by turning Jesus over to the authorities? And how could any being who has stood in the presence of the heavenly throne want to rebel?

  These villains deserve more than a cursory reading. Certainly history has done violence to their legacies far beyond what they may deserve. We owe it to ourselves to practice some empathy for these devils.

  So this book is an experiment in empathy. Each section begins with a fictionalized reimagining of biblical villain-making moments. The villains are the protagonists. The stories are not meant to be strictly historical—though I did the best I could. For several of these characters, the Bible is the only source we have, and some are no more than a footnote in history. We will explore these stor
ies as acts of creative empathy. The goal is to cultivate some understanding of these individuals and to ask how anyone could do what they did.

  After we revisit each villain’s defining moment, we’ll investigate the biblical text in more detail, tracing themes in the stories throughout the rest of Scripture. We’ll also reflect on where these themes emerge in our own spirituality and how we might pursue a more faithful walk with God.

  The goal of this project is to understand, not to exonerate. Empathy does not insist we condone the beliefs or behaviors of other people, but only that we see the world from their perspective.

  Yet we don’t want to do this. We want to assume that wicked monarchs and murdering brothers and betraying disciples and Nazi soldiers are fundamentally different from us. We want to declare with confidence, “I would never do that!”

  And for the most part, we’re right. The vast majority of us won’t participate in genocide and won’t murder even one person. But that doesn’t mean the same seed of evil doesn’t live in our hearts. Ultimately, this is why we want to understand the villains. We want to see how we might be walking the path they’ve already trod. Why? Because now is the time to turn away, while sin is still just a seed.

  Bad guys fascinate us because we have a sneaking suspicion they’re not that different from us. Perhaps, if we can learn some empathy, we might discover we’re walking their path—just a few steps behind. We might be able to repent before sin blooms and we become villains in our own right.

  1

  Cain

  The LORD had regard for Abel and his offering, but for Cain and his offering he had no regard.

  GENESIS 4:4-5

  NOW

  Cain knelt in the dirt, his hand coming to rest on the stone. The smell of char filled his nostrils; what burned on the altar was not True Fire. He stood and watched in confusion as the carefully laid rows of wheat blackened under the crackling red dance. Neat stacks of peas on the slab smoldered, and then the pods were consumed, revealing green kernels now blackening. As panic mingled with incomprehension, Cain eyed the potatoes and pomegranates, always the last to catch fire. Will these at least burn with the True Fire? he wondered.

  Perhaps. But never before had the wheat or peas of his offering failed to burn true. No sooner had the thought crossed his mind than the precise circle of potatoes and pomegranates surrendered to flame. As they too began to blacken, Cain could no longer deny this was mere fire burning on the altar.

  He stepped back, took in the old stone of the altar, the joints of stone weathered with age. Though the altar was older than Cain himself, it stood tall and strong. Each stone fit tightly with the others, so he could feel no cracks or spaces. The family altar was as strong as ever. Surely it was not at fault.

  Cain could not recall an offering ever simply burning. How many had he witnessed his father offer? How many days had he lived? Each time, the True Fire had taken the fruits of the earth. Of course Cain had seen food burn; he didn’t take to cooking food as readily as he did to growing it. Charred grains were a sight, an aroma he knew well. But never before, in all the thousands of daily sacrifices his father had made before Cain became a man, had he seen charred grains on the family altar. Never—even after his father allowed him to offer the sacrifice to The Name for the family—had he seen the fruits blacken and crackle in tongues of flame.

  His chest still swelled with pride when he remembered the first time he had called the True Fire from the altar. The carefully arranged fruits and grains had been consumed, and the presence of The Name had fallen on the family. Tears of joy had wet his cheeks, and his father had whispered to him, “You have done well, Cain. Today you have pleased The Name and made your father proud.” His mother had embraced him, her cheeks wet. Since that day, Cain had summoned the True Fire countless times.

  But what is wrong today? he thought as he cast about, a call to his father rising in his throat. As he turned, his eyes found the True Fire—and the call died on his lips.

  The True Fire burned, but not on his altar.

  The scent of roasting meat pierced the odor of charred grain as Cain began to make sense of what his eyes told him. A few paces below the crest of the hill, a lamb lay on a small pile of rock, ill-fit and loosely assembled. The rock pile—Cain could never bring himself to think of it as an altar—rose barely higher than the grass. And yet the lamb was consumed, burning true. Tongues of fire licked at the carefully butchered carcass, leaping and dancing impossibly high, exploding into a flurry of colors no ordinary fire could match.

  For a moment, his confusion turned to ash, and Cain stood transfixed before the True Fire, as always. It was as though the flames burned through the fabric of the world, consuming the thing without burning it. Though he had witnessed True Fire countless times, the impossibility of it never ceased to captivate him. The lamb did not blacken, yet it was cooked. As the True Fire transformed the offering into smoke that rose into the heavens, so the presence of The Name descended on Cain and—he knew from long experience—on all who bore witness to the True Fire.

  For those moments the True Fire burned, Cain imagined he could see the Garden his mother sometimes spoke of. The True Fire did not destroy but revealed. So it was with the lamb being consumed: though its flesh never burned, the flames ate it away, layer by layer until there was nothing left but the assurance that The Name was well pleased with this offering.

  As the final flickers of True Fire faded from his vision, taking with it the presence of The Name, the figure prostrate on the ground before the makeshift altar drew Cain’s gaze downward. His brother, Abel, was weeping silently in a private ecstasy so intense, Cain felt like an intruder. He staggered away from the rock pile in shock, turned, and stumbled toward Home.

  Down the gently sloping hill, Adam was already sharpening the tools, preparing for the day’s planting, though the family had not yet broken their fast. The square of his shoulders and the hard lines of his back shouted to Cain that his father had seen. Eve watched from the doorway, tears streaking her cheeks. Cain had seen pity often on his mother’s face, but never for him.

  With every step toward Home, Cain’s confusion turned toward rage. He spared no glance backward to see if his brother had followed. The soft, joyful weeping told him that Abel still lay on the hilltop.

  He remembered when Abel had built his makeshift altar several plantings ago.

  BEFORE

  Cain had been making the offering regularly for several seasons. Adam still led most of them, but at least once every seven, he let Cain offer to The Name and let him be the first to sense The Name drawing close, the presence revealed by the True Fire.

  Cain had been working alongside his father in the field, tilling new dirt, removing stones. Adam always remarked that if the earth grew crops as easily as it produced stones, weeds, and thorns, they would be living in paradise. The words had the form of a joke, but his father’s eyes showed no mirth when he spoke them. After his own exile, Cain would realize this was as close as his father ever came to speaking of the Garden.

  As usual, Abel was nowhere to be found. He didn’t have the mind or the constitution for working the earth. If anyone had asked Cain where his brother was, he’d have shrugged and said, “Probably off counting sheep.” Abel was the shepherd of the family.

  But there was no one to ask after Abel, and Cain wasn’t thinking about his brother. He was immersed in planting the seeds in the carefully tilled rows, perfectly spaced. Every season was important, and Cain gave careful attention to the growing and the harvest, but it all began here. The coarse, rocky soil did not easily yield crops, so over the seasons, he and Adam had learned how to wrest as much food from the earth as they could. Adam often praised Cain’s work and followed him more and more to learn what came naturally to his son.

  That day, Cain had caught Adam staring back toward Home and the pastures beyond. Adam often gazed toward the pastures, a resigned longing in his eyes.

  When Cain followed his father’s gaze, h
e saw Abel struggling under the weight of a stone. He watched as Abel staggered up the hillside toward the family altar, watched as he stopped near the top of the hill, watched him set it atop a small pile of others. The rock carrying had continued throughout the morning, followed by short periods of building.

  They had gone back to planting, and eventually Eve brought the midday meal. She broke bread with Adam and Cain, and as Abel approached, she called out to him, “Abel, what are you playing at?”

  Abel looked shyly at the ground as he lowered himself and grabbed a piece of bread. Unable to disguise the pride in his voice, he said, “It’s an altar, Mother.”

  “We have an altar, Abel,” Adam grumbled. “And you are not the eldest.”

  “I know, Father. It’s not—I—I know. I cannot offer for the family. I only want to show my devotion to The Name.”

  Adam only grunted in response, and after the short meal, he and Cain returned to the earth, and Abel returned to building. Only a few days later, Abel made his first offering.

  NOW

  As Cain drew near to Home, Eve reached out to comfort him. He shrugged off her touch and stalked inside to break his fast. As always, the fruit of his labor was bountiful and lay across the table. A loaf of bread crowned the center, surrounded by chickpea cakes. Several fruits and fruit pastes, sliced and arranged, radiated out toward each place setting. A bit of cheese rested in a small dish toward the foot of the table. Cain lowered himself to the table and tore off a piece of bread. He dipped it in apple paste and shoved it into his mouth without waiting for his parents to join him.

  Then Adam and Eve did join him, breaking their fast in silence for several minutes. The pall of Cain’s humiliation hung over the table, souring the fruit. His mother spoke up, offering the blessing, though they were nearly finished. “Adam, you are my husband. You are strong, as constant as the earth from which you came.”