The Devil’s Playground
The Devil’s Playground
Let’s review our journey. You were born on the Island of Desire where you moved instinctively toward pleasure and away from pain. When you were hungry, you ate. When you were thirsty, you drank. When you were tired, you slept. If it felt good, you did it. If it felt bad, you avoided it. Simple.
You began to notice patterns: the lines of your mother’s face, the bars of your crib, the three dimensions, time. You learned to name what you saw and describe it with language. You became self-aware, conscious.
Consciousness forced you to look at your existence through the lens of story. You could no longer stay on the Island of pure Desire. You moved to Story Island.
When you landed on Story Island, it was in your parents’ story. As you grew, you developed your own. Faith was the story you believed about yourself and your world. This determined what you hoped for as well as what you loved. Faith gave life meaning. Hope was a motive to go on. Love provided a place to belong. And so your story met your need for meaning, motivation, and belonging.
Other people’s stories conflicted with yours. They tried to get you to live in their story. You tried to get them to live in yours. Strife broke out. Then things became even worse: the Specters tore everyone’s stories to shreds.
- Ignarus exposed stories to be the work of human imagination. Without faith you were cast into life without meaning: nihilism.
- Vanitas ruined every happy ending. Without hope there was no motivation to go on. You fell into despair.
- Rapax tore away mask off of love, revealing self-interest to be the driving force of every action. You didn’t belong anywhere and felt alienated from others and even the world around you.
Without a story you were in the middle of an existential crisis. This is often called the dark night of the soul.
This is where we find ourselves in today’s episode. There are only two choices: you must face the Specters or hide from them. Today we will explore the place we go when we choose to hide: The Devil’s Playground. It’s crowded there. Nearly all human activity takes place in the Devil’s Playground.
The Devil’s Playground is not a wellness retreat. The rides leave you sick and disoriented. Today, I will describe eight of them.
1. The Dogmatist
The Dogmatist allows you to escape the Specters by ignoring the world as you perceive it. When Reality pokes a hole in your story, you cling to an imaginary story that brings you comfort.
Were you a lousy parent? Let imagination replace your guilty memories with a creative story of an idyllic family. You were a great parent!
Do 60 courts agree that you lost the 2020 presidential election? Ignore them and say you won. Repeat this until you believe it.
Are you a fundamentalist pastor who finds inconsistencies in the Bible? Pound the pulpit and preach about how you trust the inerrant Word of God.
On The Dogmatist, if you don’t like the world you see, you just make up the world you want and live in it instead. The problem is that when you betray your own perception, your life becomes a figment of your imagination. Plus, it takes a lot of work to prop up your story and defend it against others who refuse to go there with you.
2. The Rocket
Do the Specters haunt you? Take a ride on The Rocket. Stay so busy you don’t have time to think about them. Cram your schedule. Check your phone. Check it again. Multitask. Who has time to consider the mysteries of life? It’s time to go! Have another cup of coffee. Go, go, go!
The Rocket protects you from the Specters but leaves you strung out and exhausted.
3. The Leech
Tired of our life? Slip into someone else’s.
Don’t sit around the dinner table discussing your day. Sit on the couch and enter the imaginary world of Seinfeld.
Is your marriage a going stale? Slip into the bathtub, light a candle, and drown your sorrows in the world of Harlequin Romance.
Does your life lack meaning? Immerse yourself in politics. Pick a side and lock in on your phone to hear about the latest scandal.
Social Media is a great way to leech off of the lives of others. Enter the curated lives of your friends. Craft your own story and add it to the mix. Why face reality when you can play make-believe?
There is nothing wrong with a flight of fancy now and then. We all need a break. The problem occurs when this becomes a replacement for flesh-and-blood existence. The Leech turns you into an empty shell, sucking lifeblood from others to survive.
4. The Christian
A third of the world identifies as Christian and no wonder. Christianity offers an escape from each Specter.
To Ignarus, Christianity says, “Of course you feel lost. You are a finite creature. There is much you don’t know. Never fear! You have a heavenly Father who knows all and has a wonderful plan. As for daily living, you have the Bible to guide you. Simply read the instructions and follow them.”
To Vanitas, Christianity says, “Of course longing can’t be satiated. You live in world that has been ruined by sin. Never fear! God has stepped in to save the day. His plan is to create a new heaven and earth. He will wipe every tear from their eyes, and there will be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain. To Rapax, Christianity says, “Does this world seem cruel? Do you feel alone? Jesus was despised and rejected too. He understands your suffering and walks by your side. Soon you will be with him in heaven where you will enjoy the Father’s love forever. In the meantime, you have God’s holy family, the church. There, you will experience this love, even before you get to heaven.
The Christian is the biggest, shiniest ride in the park. The day you hop on board is so joyful that you describe it as being born again. Once the ride starts, though, things get bumpy. The Bible, which is the basis of the whole story, is filled with puzzles and contradictions. Focusing on a new heaven and earth makes this one feel unimportant. Jesus, who walks by your side, is an imaginary friend who is only as faithful as your imagination. The people at church are self-centered, just like everyone else.
The Christian offers only temporary escape from the Specters. As a solution for them it turns out to be a big dud.
5. The Zombie
Zombie movies are all the rage these days. A zombie is a human being reduce to pure appetite. We see in Zombies the creatures we become when we escape our stories by giving ourselves over to sensuality. Gaze at porn, eat a pan of brownies, take your favorite drug, have another glass of wine, go shopping… Pick your poison. Plunging into pure sensuality is a sure-fire way to turn off your pesky consciousness and escape your story.
But it’s like holding your breath. You can only stay submerged in pure desire for so long. As hard as you try to stay down there, you keep popping back up into your story. When you return, things are worse which makes the need to escape even greater. You plunge back into sensuality. When you resurface again things are even worse, making you want to dive back in. And so on, ad infinitum. Welcome to the cycle of addiction. Hello zombie.
6. The Levitator
The goal of the Levitator is to escape your story with meditation. This is less destructive than becoming a zombie and can be a healthy way to get in touch with yourself as a creature who is more than stories. But meditation can be just another form of escape if you make it a way to live. You can only levitate so long. You eventually come crashing down, back into the story you were trying to levitate out of.
The only real way to embrace your life is to do so in all three dimensions: desire, story, and being. Christianity, and other western religions, are one dimensional, residing in the realm of story. Eastern religions reside in the realm of being. Sensuality offers first class vacations to the realm of desire. In the next three weeks, as you face the Specters, you will find a way to embrace your life on every level. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s move on to the next ride.
7. The Patient
Outside perspective can be a useful way to make sense of your life. A wise friend or counselor can help you make breakthroughs and take leaps forward. But turning yourself a lifelong project is just one more way to avoid your life. Plus, it’s expensive.
As a former counselor, I am suspicious of counselors. Probably it’s because I was no good at it, but I never felt like my pastoral counsel did anyone much good. People came to me with broken stories. I tried to repair them. Sometimes I successfully applied a but there was no way to make people’s stories what they wanted them to be—a foundation for life. What they needed was a a new way to regard story itself.
What is true for counseling also goes for medication. Mental illness must not be stigmatized and psychiatry is a necessary profession, but when one in six Americans are on anti-depressants, you can’t help but wonder if we are looking for answers that are beyond the ability of chemistry to solve.
Even if you dial your chemistry in perfectly and find a highly skilled counselor, you still have to live in a world where the Specters undermine your story. No wise advice or pill is a match for Ignarus, Vanitas, and Rapax.
8. The Scientist
Science begins by acknowledging human ignorance and setting out to explore. It tests and retests what it observes and records its discoveries. Science is grounded in the world of perception, not imagination. It has expanded our world, not shrunk it. We see more than ever, while at the same time acknowledging the vastness of what we do not see. Our headlights pierce Reality only a few dozen feet.
Science breaks down when it dons the mantle of all-knowingness, when it claims the sliver of Reality we perceive to be the Whole. When science falls for this trap it can be as brittle and dogmatic as the most fundamentalist religion, sneering at all who fail to bow.
Science and religion are at their best when they point to the vastness of what is not known and say, “Wow!” As a child, my mother read us the Chronicles of Narnia. The children’s adventures ignited my imagination and expanded my world. In the same way, Carl Sagan’s Cosmos series pointed to a vast and mysterious universe that left me in awe and made me want to go exploring.
Conclusion
Thus concludes our tour of the Devil’s Playground. There are other rides but hopefully this gives you a taste of the inauthentic life you are forced to live if you choose to hide from the Specters.
Your escape to the the Devil’s Playground is like Pinocchio’s escape to Boy’s Town. Each ride leaves you a little more wasted, a little less human. Eventually you grow sick of it and accept the fact that, as terrifying as it may be, you must face the Dark Night. When you do this, as hard as it is, you will discover that, far from destroying your life, the Specters give you a new way to enter it.