The Devil Is Emotionally Disturbed

I hold a private theory about the devil. I believe that he is emotionally disturbed. If you want to understand the devil, think in terms of a boaster, bully, con artist, and control freak rolled into one.

Satan is a person—yes, an individual—who thrives on loveless power and shuns the power of love. He is devoid of relational or personality health, yet nonetheless has charisma, possessing the uncanny ability to make evil appealing and wrong appear right. Haven’t you run across a few people like this?

The devil personifies manipulation. If you want to grasp his modus operandi, imagine any human behavior that is rigidly stubborn, seductive, conniving, divisive, or cruel, and you’ll have a snapshot of Satan. Jesus knew the devil well and said: “There is no truth in him. When he lies, he lies according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies” (Jn 8:44).

A lot of unwarranted fears about the devil are quelled by seeing him as the misguided narcissist that he is. Though Satan is cunning in the lives of those who follow his lead, he cowers when rebuked in Jesus’ name. He knows the truth of John’s words: “The Son of God was revealed for this purpose, to destroy the works of the devil” (1 Jn 3:8). 

Of course, Hollywood movies trump up Satan’s power by scripting him to hurl objects through the air and make lots of scary noises. Don’t fall for it. A little old grandmother with arthritis and cataracts can send Satan packing with a few words spoken in faith from the victory of the Cross: “Get out of here you devil, in Jesus’ name.”

Satan departs! James, among the pillars of the early church, offers solid counsel: “Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God and he will draw near to you” (Jas 4:7-8). 

The differences between Christ and the devil deserve mention. Jesus is faithful and true, offering abundant life to those who follow him. He loves you and takes pleasure in leading you toward wholeness and fulfillment. Christ is a faithful and true guide up the summit that leads to everlasting life.

Satan, on the other hand, is exploitive and deceptive. He pursues a warped agenda that always lets you down. The devil resents the air you breathe and would like nothing better than to strip your personality, trash your relationships, and dump you on a garbage heap, a trophy to his egotism. And he’s not without his methods: he happens to be an expert at luring people into futile lives through the behavioral reinforcement of short term gratification.

I was counseling a seventeen-year-old who suffered from depression. After helping him make some progress, I mentioned that given his history of depression, he might take care to avoid the three major poisons that are peddled to youth.

“What are they?” he asked.

“Smoking, drinking, and drugs,” I said.

He flashed a worldly-wise grin. “Oh, don’t worry about me, Dr. Dan. I already smoke, drink, and use—and I’m doing just fine.”

It is difficult to warn each new generation about the ever-present means of self-destruction that is available everywhere. Mostly, people have to do their own research in discovering how evil works, and how tedious or disheartening life without Christ can really get.

Paul offers a list of destructive behaviors that are as accurate today as they were two thousand years ago: “fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these” (Gal 5:19-21).

Christians can and do fall prey to these attitudes and actions. For this reason, it serves us well to cultivate a lifelong habit of asking the Lord’s forgiveness, and seeking the Holy Spirit’s counsel in making progress toward personality and relational wholeness.

Miracles, Science, and Modern Life: Praying in Jesus' Name

I like writing for the Lord Jesus Christ because I am both a scientist, a psychologist by lifelong calling, and a person of faith. Yet I didn't always have faith.

It started in university years, my awareness that modern life, based as it is on modern science, has little room for a life of faith in Christ, and a scathing judgment that praying in Jesus' name for a specific need is a foolish thing to do.

All of my professors in chemistry, physics, and biology were atheists. The Darwinian Bible of the evolutionary development of humanity, The Origin of Species, was drilled into me principle upon principle, as fundamental to my Bachelor of Science degree.

However, the summer of my graduation, when my own agnostic-atheistic philosophy had driven me into depressoin about the meaninglessness of life, I decided to re-read the Gospel of Christ (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) just to re-evaluate what it said.

I didn't like what I read. The whole New Testament called for a life of faith in Christ, that he died for my sins and rose for my redemption. I had no such faith. My whole perspective on life, which I'd adopted from my sophomore year forward, required empirical proofs and deductive logic to be applied to every aspect of life. If there wasn't scientific evidence for a belief, then toss it out, I reasoned, and if you couldn't make rational sense of a proposition about life, it must not be true.

How arid. How sterile. How lonely my life had become. I had analyzed myself into a corner where I could only count on these facts: that I had to pay yearly taxes to the government and that I would someday die.

An answer was about to rush into the desperate vacuum of my soul. For I went to a simple church service, like the one in which I'd originally believed in Christ at seventeen, and heard the Gospel anew. Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand...If you keep hardening your heart to God, you may well reach of PNR (a point of no return) where you never seek him again...And die in self-willed separation that brings eternal torment.

I didn't like hearing this. Not one bit. I almost walked out of the service. But then a gentle tug pulled at my heart. Perhaps the Holy Spirit? And I walked forward to the altar instead. It took an hour of struggling to pray before the Spirit descended upon me in earnest, helping me to cry my eyes out over walking away from Jesus in my university years, choosing instead a godless, faith-killing Darwinian philosophy that was driving me to despair.

The second hour at the altar was different from the first, for the Lord had heard my cry of repentance, and Christ arose within me with such force in my soul that I felt transported into heaven. I praised God with every cell in my body, tears of joy streaming down wet cheeks, until the janitor tapped me on the shoulder and said, "Good sir, can you finish talking to God on your way home, so I can start sweeping the sanctuary?"

Fast forward three months. I'm enrolled at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine, where a summa cum laude degree had earned me a full scholarship. Only I had a problem. I had barely enough money for books, and no money left at all for the white lab coat we med students were required to buy.

Would Monday arrive and Dan Montgomery appear in the class of thirty-two students, the only one wearing street clothes? Time to pray, to apply my scientific background in a more creative way than before. I reasoned, If Jesus tells me to pray in his name for the things that I need, and that God the Father will answer these prayers to glorify his Son, then now would be a good time to do it.

The empirical proof would lie in whether this prayer experiment brought measurable results or evaporated into nothingness. So Saturday morning I said, "Father, I need a medical school lab jacket really bad and really fast. Can you please supply me one in Jesus' name?"

Nothing happened. So I carried on as best I could, picturing my upcoming humiliation in Monday morning classes.

Driving back to campus, I saw a Goodwill store on the left. An inner presence, much like the one I had experienced at the church altar, formed an image in my mind of me walking into the store and reaching into one of the boxes.

Shrugging my shoulders, I thought: What the heck. This experiment may have a very foolish outcome. But on the other hand, I'll never know unless I take the risk of faith.

I walked into the store and stood amidst a dozen huge boxes stuffed to the brim with clothing. I almost walked out again, but not before a presence formed an image in my mind of going to the third box and reaching deep down into it. So I did just that, my heart beating noticeably faster, since the result of the experiment was at hand.

I grabbed a piece of cloth about two-thirds of the way down, don't ask me why. My fingers simply gripped it and I yanked it out.

A white good-as-new medical school lab coat in just my size. 

I rushed to the cashier and paid the thirty-five cents it cost, then hurried to the dry cleaner next door.

In Monday morning's class thirty-two students appeared sporting bright white lab coats, Dan Montgomery among them.

I couldn't stopped smiling at the evidence I wore of the invisible Father whom science denies, yet faith affirms, providing for those who pray to him, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.