Satanists Who Don't Believe in Satan

About a month ago, I did a really long interview with one of those late-night syndicated radio shows that deals with the paranormal (i.e. UFOs, sasquatch, Bermuda Triangle, etc.) It was a blast, although I don’t think the hosts and I were necessarily on the same page from the very beginning. For instance, he told me I was the “second exorcist” they’d had on the show (aside: I’m actually an author and clergyman by trade, not “an exorcist”) and he told me just as matter-of-fact as can be that the Vatican has a secret asylum somewhere (I think he said Denmark?) for all the demoniacs that were beyond the ability of the papal exorcists to deliver.

At any rate, after like thirty radio interviews about Playing Saint (many of them feeling like déjà vu all over again), this very different kind of conversation was welcome. And, as Christmas was then a recent memory, we naturally got on the topic of satanic Christmas displays. I told him about the "Satanic Temple" display, which was about two miles down the street from my house, on the State Capitol lawn. It was a "snaketivity" put up by a group, who (according to the Lansing State Journal) "does not worship Satan, but promotes individuality, compassion and views outside Christian and many conservative beliefs." And...apparently...feels the need to publicly desecrate the holy days and symbols of other religions. Sounds...umm... compassionate? The funny thing is, they expected all sorts of strife and unrest around it, but nobody cared about their ugly little display.

Anyway, the host scoffed a bit at all of this and told me there were some “real Satanists” near his home, who had actually done a black mass right near a public nativity. Those, he said, were the serious, hardcore Satanists, not to be confused with our more moderate types.

I tried to explain to him that the Church of Satan (and, with it, the “Satanic Bible” and the whole “Satanism as a philosophy” movement that’s been bumbling around the ether for the past fifty years) is not made up of people who believe in the Satan of the Bible and choose to worship him. Rather, it’s largely made up of people whose worldview is not too far off from a Christopher Hitchens or Richard Dawkins. Anton LaVey seems to have largely embraced Crowley's Law of Thelema ("Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law...")

 Sure, they might do a black mass, just for the drawwwwma of it all (not unlike public clown PZ Meyers desecrating the sacrament on his blog), but they’re being no less Satanic when they erect an idol to Knowledge and tie that in to the serpent of Genesis 3.

I believe it was Keyzer Soze (and, like, eight other ‘90s movie characters) who said “The Devil’s greatest trick was convincing the world he doesn’t exist” and, ironically, he’s even convinced the members of his own “church.” But that shouldn't surprise us. Throughout Scripture, Satan is portrayed as having two main strategies: the lion, roaring and stalking about, looking for someone to devour (1 Peter 5:8) and the serpent (Gen 3:1, Matt 24:24) . Both can be seen in the Dragon (Rev 12:7). And while we are often on guard against the frontal attack of the Lion, that’s often a diversion so that the serpent can slip in unseen.

Just look at Peter, who was ready to chop off some ears when the mob came for Jesus, but was easily manipulated into denying his Lord, just hours later. Or look at the Christian pop culture of my youth, sounding the alarm with full vigor against slasher flicks, heavy metal (especially heavy metal played backwards) and Dungeons & Dragons, while a worship of wealth and pleasure permeated the culture as a whole (including the Church).

This is a main theme in my book Playing Saint. We’ve got to be watchful (Phil 3:2), ready to meet Satan in the obvious evils and the more subtle twisting of Truth (Matt 7:15). Pray for strength and endurance, yes, but also for discernment.

New FAQ Video

Thanks to WAC Productions for putting this together.

Supernatural Movie Reviews: The Devil Wears Prada

So, this week's movie review was a little perplexing for me. There wasn't nearly as much supernatural content as the title would suggest. I expected spiritual warfare, possession, curses, etc...which is weird, since this was like my third time watching this movie.  Whatever; let's try and salvage this thing anyway, shall we?

The Devil Wears Prada

Year: 2006
Director:  David Frankel (Hope Springs, Marley & Me, Chainsaw Slaughterhouse XII)
Starring: Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway, Stanley Tucci, Emily Blunt, The Mentalist

I submit that, despite its lack of CGI demons or Aramaic curses, this film gets closer to identifying the character of the devil than most of the others I’ve reviewed. Why? Because she’s easy on the eyes, soft-spoken, and very persuasive.  If only she came across as having your best interests, not hers, in mind, she’d be a perfect representation of the Old Serpent.

The devil in question is Miranda Priestly, the head of a major fashion magazine called Runway (which is totally not Vogue). I absentmindedly asked my wife if she thought Miranda Priestly was related to Jason Priestly, to which she replied, “Well, they do have the same haircut,” outing the elephant in the den: why on earth would a sixty-year old female fashionista have that early-’90s skaterboy hairstyle? I mean, I’m no fashion expert, but all that thing needs is some sideburns and a leather jacket with popped collar and she could be “shredding it” on her “deck” in no time... In fact, I think the natural next step here would be to shave around the sides and back, but leave the top intact. 

Anyway, this all just goes to prove that Meryl Streep is gorgeous no matter what Vanilla Ice-era phenomenon is thrown at her. Flank her with Stanley Tucci (who should be in every movie, ever) as the eventually-empathetic layout designer and Emily Blunt as the vicious former assistant to the Devil, who hates anyone less fashionable than herself and who would later reprise this role in 2011’s The Muppets (working for Miss Piggy, which is weird, as Blunt also played Ruthie “Pig Face” Draper in Dan In Real Life, which is probably a better movie than this one, despite Dane Cook’s attempts to make it into a Dane Cook movie). And you thought St. Paul wrote long sentences.


Now enter Andy Sachs, a plucky, young aspiring journalist whose last hope at working for a NY magazine is this job opening (that millions of girls would apparently kill for, but not really) as Miranda Priestly’s new assistant. Andy is played by Anne Hathaway, who cut her teeth in another plain-to-glamorous transformation movie as an awkward adolescent in some Disney princess-flick with an aged Mary Poppins (and who will someday be forced to answer for ruining Cat Woman for a generation).

Through a twist of plot-contrivance, Andy gets the job, struggles greatly for a time, and then slowly finds her sea legs, while (gasp!) becoming more like the people she works with! We know this is happening because she starts dressing more like a prostitute and because her trollish boyfriend, who is always cooking and/or moping, starts cooking less and moping more. That and she answers the phone a lot when her boss calls. Upon first laying eyes on Andy, Tucci’s character asks, “Who is that sad little person? Are we doing a before-and-after piece I don’t know about?”  Answer: yes.  Before and after the Devil gets her hooks into poor Andy.


The “Dragon Lady”
So what makes Miranda such an accurate Devil? It’s not that she is curt and demanding with her employees, but that she enjoys turning friends against each other and manipulating people into betrayal. Perhaps even more than that, it’s that she wants to turn everyone else into her miserable,
hard-hearted self.

And like the Devil, Miranda works slowly and methodically, not caring about instant change. She’ll happily spend years molding Andy into her own image, but in just a matter of months, we see her young assistant already conforming to Miranda’s wishes, even failing the fairly obvious, “Do I answer the Devil’s phone call or tend to the last hanging thread of my closest personal relationship?” test.

Andy, for her part, deals with all of this the way most of us deal with the relentless work of the Enemy in our lives: she justifies herself. A lot. She’s just trying to stick it out for a year, she tells herself. She just can’t let Miranda “get to her.” But when you dance with the Devil, the Devil don't change—the Devil changes you. Before long, her boyfriend has stopped moping long enough to whine that, “You used to make fun of the Runway girls. Now you’re one of them.”

As they are wont to do, Andy’s self-justifications grow quickly from, “Same Andy, better clothes” to throwing up three lame, half-hearted objections, followed by a defeated, “I’m out of excuses,” followed in turn by sleeping with the creepiest looking dude in the history of film, despite having a committed boyfriend.

At the heart of all this is, of course, the believing of lies. That’s the Devil’s whole gig. Mopey accurately calls it, when he declares, “Looks like somebody’s been drinking the Kool-Aid.” We, the viewers, see it when Anne Hatheway says, with a straight face, “I’m not skinny.” What?! Everybody’s skinny in this movie! Everyone! Even the perpetually-chubby Harry Crane from Mad Men is skinny here. But once we start letting ourselves believe little lies, it’s not long before we believe the big ones. In the world of Andy Sachs, deliverance comes in the form of quitting her job and getting back to who she originally wanted to be (i.e. a reporter for a NY newspaper that hasn’t existed in a century). When dealing with the lies of the actual devil, deliverance lies not in ourselves and our self-justification and self-affirmation, but in denying ourselves and being justified by Jesus Christ.


Best Scares

• The first appearance of the creepy (and less than helpful) twins. Come play with us, Andy. Forever and ever...
• The first glimpse of Miranda sans makeup. But, after a second, you again realize that Meryl Streep is always beautiful (except when she’s doing that Margaret Thatcher voice, which gives me all kinds of the willies). 

Memorable Quotes

• “The person whose calls you always take—that’s the relationship you’re in.” BTW, Andy, for crying out loud: change your ringtone! Seriously, what person (under 70) leaves the annoying Nokia jingle that comes default on their phone? I can’t imagine they paid for product placement here, seeing as how the phone essentially destroys the protagonist’s life, relationships, and character.
• “By all means move at a glacial pace. You know how that thrills me.”
• “That's all.”

Supernatural Movie Reviews: The Devil's Advocate

So, I’m reviewing this movie largely from memory. I saw it in 1997 when it first came out. I was a college sophomore and I remember thinking it was a decent movie with some very interesting biblical themes running through. Of course, as a biblical studies undergrad, I saw Scriptural themes everywhere. Well, last night my wife and I fired up this ’90s Al Pacino HOO-ah fest, only to find that I was decidedly wrong about the “decent” part. About halfway through, it decided to morph into what we used to call a “dirty movie” and we decided to turned it off. The sad part is that I didn’t even remember all that, desensitized as I had become to such things in cinema.

What I do remember, however, is the ending. And just to make sure, I watched it again on YouTube. Below, then, is my review of The Devil’s Advocate (which I recommend skipping), based on my cobbled-together half-viewing last night, my unfortunate full viewing fifteen years ago, and various clips of Pacino’s soliloquy at the climax of the film.

Why bother to review it all? Partially because I don’t want to miss two weeks in a row and partially because there really are some valuable concepts about the Enemy contained therein. It’s just a shame they gave him equal time.

The Devil’s Advocate

Year: 1997
Starring: Keanu Reeves, Al Pacino, Charlize Theron
Directed by: Taylor Hackford (Proof of Life, Ray)

I'd bet five thousand dollars that someone at Warner Brothers came up with the title of this thing before they dreamed up the plot.
     “What about a movie called The Devil’s Advocate? That would look great on a hat!”
     “Sure, but what would it be about? Like, someone is a lawyer for the devil? Does that really make sense? Ah, who cares? Let’s do it!”

Apparently, the first draft was an effects-driven, storyless blockbuster. But then, according to IMDb, the original script had to be re-worked, toned down, and re-pitched to Pacino several times before he signed on to the project. Somewhere in that process, the story became strong enough to justify its existence. Parts of it are subtle, even.

But parts are not (and I’m not just talking about the gratuitous sexual stuff). For example, the movie begins with a black screen, then fire flares up over the black screen, then a red title in nineties horror-movie font on top of that. And you’ve got to be kidding me with Pacino’s Devil calling himself “John Milton” (with a couple quotes from Paradise Lost thrown in just in case we were too thick to catch on).

And then there are the effects that they did use. While Keanu and Pacino talked on the safety-rail-free waterfall balcony, I was thinking “Fifty-seven million dollars to make this movie and they couldn't make their Manhattan backdrop look more real? And, seriously, there's no wind way up there? Not even enough to move their hair a little bit?” But then I read that they used a real eighth floor balcony in New York City, so I don't know what to think. Which I guess kind of fits the theme of the movie.

And speaking of not-subtle, the story opens with Keanu's character defending a man charged with molesting a teenaged girl. While she gives an account of what happened, Reeves's character notices his client obviously (and disturbingly) reveling in the memory. I guess that’s in there to remind you of how defense attorneys have to continually lay aside their integrity and enable the wicked acts of wicked people. Although that's a weird theme in a movie about the Devil, who is pictured as the prosecutor in several courtroom scenes throughout Scripture, and whose very name means “The Accuser.” I guess it would have been harder to scare up a story where the devil is a DA (which could stand for...waaaait for it...Devil's Advocate), but I think it would have been worth the extra work.

Merits and Demerits
On the whole, the production and acting were better than I remembered. Keanu's Southern accent isn't even that bad (surprisingly better than the uber-talented Theron's), although it does occasionally disappear.  There is great chemistry on-screen, until those scenes where the filmmaker takes the lazy way out. And the script was obviously punched up by someone with a knack for dialogue. (“And the black thing, you bein' black...that's just priceless.”

Still, some of the supporting characters are a bit two-dimensional. (I realize how that sounds when discussing a movie whose main character is literally the devil, but come on...) Keanu's mother could have been a really rich and interesting character for the viewer to try and figure out.  But they leave nothing to figure out, overdoing the Southern folksiness of her character, slapping a big ugly sweater on her, appliqued with a bird house and heavy laden with button pins (literally, pins decorated with buttons) and a large cross necklace. She talks with that annoying I'm always annoyed tone that one associates with religious characters in Hollywood productions. Of course she can't just be a regular woman who goes to church and is concerned for her son. Does such a person even exist?  No. Fanatic or secularist: those are your options.

To keep with my running theme of the Nineties and their ups and downs, this particular specimen is pretty dated by its nineties fashion and flavor, without reaping many of the benefits. Check out Keanu in a bar in rural Florida with his white T-shirt, jeans, and suit coat. And then, in the next scene, we see him wearing the rest of that same suit in court in New York. What a versatile time.

Furthermore, while he's always amazing, something about Pacino's performance hasn't weathered the intervening decade and a half very well. It wasn't bad, it's just that...now and again, he seemed to be doing a Michael Scott impression. That's the best way I can put it.

I also found myself a little distracted by the casting choices for the supporting roles. Not that people did a bad job, but for a borderline horror movie that takes itself really seriously, they sure stacked the deck with some actors known for less-than-serious fare. For example, apparently Craig T. Nelson (that's right: COACH) murdered his wife, stepson, and a maid. Riiiight. And the guy who plays Guffman on Waiting for Guffman is a higher-up at the Devil's law firm, as is Jeffrey Jones (best known for playing Principal Ed Rooney, foil to Ferris Bueller, and who also appeared in the two worst movies ever made: Howard the Duck and The Pest).

Biblical Themes
Things start out promising when Keanu (his character's name was Kevin, but, when he's not Neo or Ted, he's Keanu, amIright?) meets his mother at her church and we hear the congregation singing, “The God of peace will soon crush Satan Under Your feet, Romans 16:19-20” (yes, the Scripture reference is part of the lyrics), which is a key text to developing a biblical doctrine of Satan. Unfortunately, they don't really bring it (the Scripture or the concept) up again.

The rest of the good stuff comes from Pacino's lips, from the moment we meet him. Some highlights:

• “I’m a fan of man. I’m a humanist—maybe the last humanist!” What an odd epiphany for a Hollywood movie to have. But, yes. Satan is a fan of man as man established himself at the Fall. What does that look like? Observe:
• “[God] gives men instincts . . . and then, for his own private cosmic gag real, sets the rules in opposition. He’s a sadist.” If I had to update the approach used by Satan in Genesis 3, I could do no better than that quote. Unfortunately, while Kevin (see? It doesn't feel right) is somehow able to resist these lies of the Devil, he never corrects them or even disagrees. A theme of my book Playing Saint is that one cannot resist the Devil until he or she has submitted to God (that's not mine—I stole it from St. James), but in Hollywood, free will is the answer. Even though, as Pacino gloats, human free will is his secret weapon. They're both wrong. Human bondage to sin is the Devil’s secret weapon and Christ’s liberating our will through the cross is the solution.
• “Behold, I send you out as sheep amidst wolves,” Pacino’s Devil says, quoting Christ. This (quoting Jesus) is a prerequisite for anyone trying to get the Devil right. Even better would be to have him mix in some mis-quotes (i.e., “Did God really say . . . ”). Oddly, it's the religious mom who actually misquotes the Bible (wide is the way that leads to destruction, lady, not to temptation).
• Upon noticing that there is no bedroom in Milton's Penthouse, Keanu asks, “Where does he sleep?” to which Principal Rooney answers, “Who says he sleeps?”
• During their first conversation, as Pacino's character is recruiting Keanu to work at his law firm (or maybe it's not a law firm; it seems to change throughout), Keanu asks, “Are we negotiating?” The Devil answers, “Always.” This is where, even with his broad, Dunder-Miflinesque gestures and expressions, Pacino's Devil rings true. “That's our secret,” he confides to Keanu, “we kill you with kindness,” later advising him, “Never let them see you coming. You gotta be small, innocuous . . . Look at me—underestimated from Day One.” Is he negotiating? Always.

And let me break off the bullets and say that maybe this↑ is the best lesson we can take from this film, which starts with the replaying of a disgusting crime against a child in a courtroom, then drops in Coach, Guffman, and Principal Rooney. But did you know that Jeffrey Jones (who played Rooney and the foppish emperor in Amadeus) now resides on the sex offender list?

Well, he does. About a decade ago, he did some awful stuff involving an adolescent boy and they found child porn on his computer. I definitely didn't see that coming. He seemed innocuous. And yet, to quote St. James again, he was enticed and dragged away by his own shameful lusts. Free will wasn't the problem—slavery to sin was. And until a movie deals with that, their picture of the Devil is going to be fatally incomplete.

Now, I normally include a little section of  “Best Scares” in these reviews, but The Devil's Advocate doesn't really play out that way.  I do have a murky memory of Keanu's (possibly schizophrenic) wife finding a baby in her house and then realizing the baby is playing with intestines of something. That's sort of scary, I guess. But we didn't get that far. I remember it being chilling and I remember the end being satisfying, and I kind of wanted to push through and see it.

I mean, really, what's the big deal? It's just a little skin. Or maybe a lot.

Are we negotiating? No, not this time.



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