GODSTUFF: The Devil doesn’t have a blog, but if he did…

“Well, there are all manner of lesser imps and demons, Pete, but the

great Satan hisself is red and scaly with a bifurcated tail, and he

carries a hay fork.”

   — Ulysses Everett McGill in “O Brother, Where Art Thou?”

Throughout the ages, classical depictions of Satan — a.k.a.

The Devil, The Evil One, Lucifer, The Morning Star, the Prince of

Darkness, Beelzebub, The Accuser, The Serpent — envision him as an

otherworldly dragonlike creature, often of a reddish hue with horns,

scales, hooves, bat wings and a pointy tail.

But it’s not always that way — and it probably shouldn’t be. Maybe

we need to see Satan for the invisible threat that he is.

In his 1942 satirical novel, “The Screwtape Letters,” renowned

author and Christian apologist C.S. Lewis casts Satan as Screwtape, a

meddling, scheming bureaucrat, the “Senior Tempter” and undersecretary

of his department (in the “Lowerarchy” of hell).

Lewis presents a series of 31 letters of correspondence between

Screwtape and his nephew, Wormwood, as the younger tempter tries to lure

his target (an average man in pre-World War II Britain known as “The

Patient”) away from God and toward damnation.

In the preface to “Screwtape,” Lewis bemoaned living in a world of

“Admin,” where “the greatest evil” isn’t necessarily confined to

Dickensian squalor or concentration camps or battlefields.

Rather, he wrote, evil is “conceived and ordered … in clean,

carpeted, warmed, and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white

collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to

raise their voice. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for hell is

something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the offices of a

thoroughly nasty business concern.”

In his wickedly funny new book, “Devil’s Ink: Blog from the Basement

Office,” Elon University professor of religious studies Jeffrey C. Pugh

borrows a page from “Screwtape” but presents a thoroughly modern

Mephistopheles.

Rather than a series of correspondence — because, really, who

writes letters anymore? — Pugh reimagines the Devil as a blogger who

communicates his twisted point of view on humanity, God and the world to

his “colleagues” through dozens of blog posts.

Why a blog? Pugh’s Satan explains in the opening lines of his first

blog post titled, “Pleased to Meet You, Hope You Guessed My Name”:

“You may wonder why I am starting a blog. The fact is, my

colleagues, we must be flexible and innovative or we risk losing

influence, and if there is one thing that I fear, it is losing

influence.”

Pugh’s Satan anticipated readers’ questions about why his Satan

chose to embrace a  blog rather than another social media platform.

“I debated whether to start a Facebook page, but there are so many

who are doing the heavy lifting for us there it would be merely

redundant,” Pugh’s protagonist writes. “I am also thinking of a Twitter

account, but am still trying to figure out what the point is.”

Like any good blogger, Pugh’s Devil arranges his dispatches by

topic, complete with “tags” at the bottom of each post. He mixes it up a

bit in terms of form and content, weaving clever pop culture references

with music (did you catch that Rolling Stones reference earlier?),

television, movies and celebrity throughout.

Some of the fictional blog posts are short, others rather lengthy,

and the subject matter varies wildly: Desire. Grace (which the Devil

calls “unseemly and obnoxious”). The Book of Job. Gitmo. Terrorism. The

politicizing of the church. Theodicy. Rationalism. And the Amish (who

apparently make Satan terribly nervous.)

The blogger’s tone is consistently sarcastic and often caustic (he

refers to his colleagues as “Duh-sciples”), but what would you expect

from The Prince of Darkness?

In one of the funniest posts, “I’m Going to Disney World,” the Devil

explains why the happiest place on Earth serves his purposes more

elegantly than the infamous Las Vegas Strip:

“I love Disney World. No, seriously, it is one of my most enjoyable

places on the planet,” he writes. “It has given them so, so much:

illusions, fantasy, Britney Spears. One small thing I have always

enjoyed about it is the nuance and deception on display. Take Vegas, for

instance. There we don’t have to concern ourselves with working hard.

… But Disney World is even better because we can still fleece the

rubes, but this time we use their most precious possession to do it,

their children.”

Pugh is wonderfully clever and bold in his critique of church

culture. The book is not a meditation on personal holiness and sin but

rather “an exploration of the ways that evil embeds itself structurally

in human life,” particularly through the seemingly frivolous (and

not-so-frivolous) avenue of popular culture.

(Pugh has continued Satan’s fictiious blogging adventure at Devil’s Ink Blog.)

“Though our methods are timeless, we also have learned through the

ages to use those fleeting and transitory things that humans have

created to help us reach our goals,” Pugh’s blogger writes. “One must

change with the times or risk being irrelevant, and if there is one

thing I am not prepared to be at this time it is ignored.”

Perhaps church leaders who read “Devil’s Ink” will be chastened to

rethink their passion to remain “relevant.”

The post originally appeared via Religion News Service.