One day, as I drove the stretch of Nebraska road that leads to my acreage, I found myself wondering what it would be like to be angelic and fallen. Would I go around tempting people to lust, covet, envy . . . just for kicks? It seemed too shallow a motivation for any complex, spiritual creature. There had to be more to it.
Suddenly, I realized that being angelic and fallen was similar to being human and fallen—except for one major difference: the provision of a Messiah.
I immediately wondered what it must feel like to be unquestionably damned—and, worse, to watch humans luxuriate in and take for granted the grace made available to them from a doting God. And I thought: Why wouldn’t an angelic creation resent a human recipient of God’s grace? And why wouldn’t a demon want to prove that creature unworthy again and again as a result? Now I knew what it must feel like to be an angelic outsider looking in with jealous eyes and razored heart.
And so let me ask you: What if you made one mistake?
One.
What if one moment you were worshipping the Mighty God and Creator that brought you into existence . . . and the next you were damned for eternity?
You had never seen sin, you had no experience with death, you had never felt separation from your God. But you had turned your worship to the greatest being under God in an impulsive moment that seemed to make sense at the time. You only belatedly realized that something had changed. You just weren’t sure what.
What if you watched as that same God replaced you in His affections with a baser, uglier, mortal breed—creatures made of clay. And what if you watched in horror as He breathed into their mud bodies the essence of his own spirit—a gift you had never received?
And what if they took every God-given thing considered precious by you for granted as they failed again and again . . . and then turned away from God altogether?
Would you feel some satisfaction when God, unable to allow them to continue, decided to destroy their world and all of the clay people along with it? And would that satisfaction be lost when you learned He couldn’t bear to kill them all but had decided to spare a family—a seed group of those mud people to repopulate the earth?
What if you watched as God patiently taught them laws so they could stay in relationship with Him . . . and they continued to do the same things that had ruined their relationship with Him in the first place—over and over again?
Remember: You did only one thing.
And what would you think if that same God decided, in a radical move, to become one of them, to take on that mud flesh forever, and to let them kill Him, to die for them, so they could be reconciled with Him and with Him again . . . forever?
You were supposed to be with Him forever. You did only one thing.
And how would you feel upon knowing that not every mud person jumped at the chance to have that great gift you feel so much more deserving of—only one thing—that the majority of the mud people decided they didn’t want or need?
Would you be jealous? Would you hate the mud people?
Would you want them to die?
Of course you would.
And so I reread the story of God’s love affair with humans through this new lens, and Demon: A Memoir was born.