Charles Baudelaire famously wrote, “The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.” (The Generous Gambler)

If that’s true, then the second greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world that other people are demonized.

Which is a good strategy, to be honest. If, as the devil, you encounter someone who insists on believing that you exist, you might as well convince them that you exist within someone else. Evil is always within the other, never within ourselves. This is quite on brand with the devil, satan in Hebrew: “the Accuser.”

Might be the most important thing about you.

Our individualistic Western mindset balks at this idea. But we have been lied to. We have been told that in order to find our true selves that we must go inward, that who we are is self-identified from the inside out, independent of anyone else. We resist being defined by anyone else—by any other individual, by any group, by any system. But our resistance to others in our process of self-understanding means that we also resist the clarity that comes in community.

There is a degree to this idea of the inner-self that I whole-heartedly agree with. In the end, only I can know and see and understand my true self. The thing is, my self-perception is skewed; it is impossible to see myself in any truly objective way. My self-perception will always be blurred, so I need to see myself through others eyes as well.

The native language of God is Truth. The native language of the devil is Lies.

The difficulty for us as humans is that while we were created in the image of God, ultimately destined to live with him forever, we are growing up in a foreign land ruled by a different father. We have all been raised in a world where even the truth is often spoken with a lying accent.

Over and against all other gods who are therefore wrong. Although, in the early days I certainly claimed such things. I’m not saying that I don’t think there’s some validity to that idea, only that Jesus’ rightness wasn’t the initial draw for me. The honest truth is that my young and quite-unaware self was actually more excited about me being right rather than about Jesus being right.

And I don’t believe in Jesus because he is clear. God knows he isn’t much of the time. Although, again, in my early days of following him I was thrilled by certain aspects of Jesus that had become suddenly clear to me. But after reading the Gospels countless times, and after nearly 30 years of following him, it seems that ambiguity is something of a hallmark of Jesus. I don’t mean that as a bash against his teaching or leadership style. It just is what it is. I’ve learned to be OK with the non-clarity. Even to accept it and lean into it.

Family traits are hard to deny. It’s uncanny sometimes how family members, with all their individuality and diversity, still end up with a similar laugh. Or a similar gait. Or a similar taste in food or music or art. Or a similar lens through which they see the world. Or a similar way of dealing with difficulties. Part of what makes a family a family is this web of shared nuances of being human that are unique compared to any other family.

Family traits are hard to escape. For everyone on earth, there are likely family traits that they enjoy, or are at least just fine with, but there are also those traits we spend our entire lives trying to break free from. Addictions. Unhealthy patterns of communication. Hurtful non-communication. Manipulation or control. Bad habits when it comes to finances. An inability to talk about things that really matter. Families impart to us blessings, and they also impart curses. And maybe that’s just part of the deal.

All of our computing devices—laptops, phones, tablets, tv’s, cars, even sometimes our refrigerators and microwaves—have two types of memory.

The first kind of memory is ROM: Read-Only Memory. This is what most people usually mean when they talk about memory on a device. It’s the more static storage that holds all of our files like text documents, spreadsheets, photos, videos, operating systems, apps, etc. This kind of memory is usually rather large. The amount of used / free memory here depends on how many files the user is storing. So, if you need more room, you simply need to delete some files.

The second is RAM: Random Access Memory. This memory is responsible for handling whatever it is you’re working with at the moment—open apps or programs, specific files, and whatever other processes must run in the background to keep the operating system going. This kind of memory is usually dramatically smaller than ROM. We can usually get away with a smaller amount because the amount of memory being used is constantly shifting. Fewer programs or files open means less memory being used. Which means that much of the time if your device seems to be slowing down, it may be because your RAM is running out of room. Closing some apps or processes will speed up the things you really need to be working with.

Is being lulled into a false sense of freedom. The Pharisees (and others in gospels) are prototypes of this. Their problem was not that they were Jews unable to recognize the real Messiah when he showed up, but that there were human beings who were so comfortable in their religious achievements and activities that they couldn’t even understand the need for a Savior.

We are all quite safe and free already, thank you very much.

Only captives can be set free. All of us are in various stages, degrees, and forms of captivity. So we are all desperately in need of various stages, degrees, and forms of liberation.

Just by default. As if by magic. There is an important sequence of cause and effect within a series of decisions you have to make.

Let’s reverse-engineer this.

The truth will set you free, but only once you know the truth. You have to perceive it or understand it in some way. You must choose to be teachable.

God has not left me alone. The trouble is, I am not always aware of it. God’s presence often feels more like an idea than an experience; more theory than reality.

As a point of doctrine, I take his eternal and pervasive presence as the central existential reality of the universe. And if there is something out of alignment with that, it is much less likely to be a shortcoming on his part than on mine.

But as a point of doctrine, that does nothing for me. Left there, it has not yet become “real” to me in any meaningful way.

Is the place to begin with Jesus. It takes the question out of the more detached, observational realm—”Who is Jesus?”—and makes it personal. This is not a question about Jesus, but rather a question to Jesus. This is not an intellectual question but a relational question.

You’re likely to get a different answer if you ask someone a question about themselves directly as opposed to asking someone else about them.