Mark 1:24 - The Stupidity of Hell (A One Act)

The Verse

Mark 1:24 “Why are you interfering with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are—the Holy One of God!”


My Paraphrase

"What are you going to do to us, Jesus?  Will You destroy us?  I know you're God's Chosen One!"


My Thoughts

(If you are just tuning in, I am doing a verse-by-verse study of the Book of Mark, and it helps me to think when I reword the verse. I'm not suggesting that my paraphrase is Scripture or anything. It's a little Bible study tactic I learned from a Priscilla Shirer simulcast.)


 So many things in this verse and where to begin. . .


So first of all, whenever I have read this verse in the past, I tended to read it as though the demon had all the information that we do today. (Just like how I used to read the temptations of Jesus as though Satan actually knew with Whom he was dealing in verses 12-13. . .You know what? Go here if you don't know what I'm talking about.), so I used to think that maybe the demon was being sarcastic like how Goliath was all, "Am I a dog, that you come at me with a stick?" (I Sam. 17:43)  Like. . ."Is this tiny person supposed to scare me?  I'm so much scarier!  Bwahahaha!"  


When I was little, I used to be really scared of demons, so I think that now--even as an adult--I have just given them too much credit.  Honestly, I think the demon in this verse was just going on whatever information Satan was able to give him from his "Temptation of Jesus." 

Which, honestly, was not much.  During "The Temptation," Jesus hadn't done any miracles.  He hadn't tried to fight.  He hadn't tried to prove Himself.  All He had done was to withstand temptation--which, granted, had exceeded most Old Testament men's decisions (Think: David and Bathsheba, Noah and his daughters, King Saul and. . .everybody....*cough*) 


So here's how it probably went down: Satan tempts Jesus.  Jesus withstands temptation.  Satan concludes, "This Guy must be at least a prophet--and a good one at that. . .But is He that blasted "M" word?. . ."  Remember, it's the Messiah that he has been trying to thwart all the way since the Garden of Eden, so any prophet up to this point has been fair game.  (Talk about being a nervous wreck!  Satan has known this Messiah to be his undoing for millennia!)  

So, anyway, Satan gathers his minions (Like. . .the actual definition of the word.  Not the adorable one-eyed yellow rip-offs of the Aliens in Toy Story. . .). Satan tells them, "Okay, Guys. This Man needs constant surveillance--I couldn't even crack Him!"

Obligatory gasps.  

"What in bleepity-bleep is Yahweh up to???"  Satan notices one demon in the crowd that didn't gasp.  He's too busy playing Words with Enemies on his cleverphone.  

"You!"

All hell is silent as all eyes fall on this demon.  His buddy next to him nudges him.  He shoots his buddy a look of death and then realizes the situation.  He is mortified.  His cleverphone zips out of his hand and up onstage onto Satan's podium.

Satan looks at the phone, holds up his fist to smash it, stops at the last second, and then starts speaking. . .patiently, yet through his teeth, "Since you obviously have a lot of time on your hands, you will go to that synagogue, and when this Jesus starts preaching, I want you to FINISH HIM!"

The demon whines, "But, Sire!  It's not fair!  I'm only second level!  I haven't even been given grave wandering rights yet, let alone execution ones!"

Satan, hot with (self-) righteous anger, yells, "Oh my...G-Gog and Magog!!!" grabs a lightning bolt from his stack, and is about to hurl it at the demon.  Just then, the guy on Satan's left taps his shoulder, whispers in his ear, Satan turns to listen, after two seconds pushes him away, looks back at the demon in question, and waves his hand. "Okay, so.  Whatever.  Avada-Kedavra! Boom! You have them now, Okay?"

Another frantic tap to Satan's shoulder.  More whispering.  Lots of pointing and "No"-nodding and hands making an "X" like, "Not the best idea with this one. . ."  Satan looks perplexed, smacks his forehead, and whispers under his breath, ". . .So hard to find good help these. . .ever. . ."  He looks up realizing he said that into the microphone.  To the crowd he says, "Just another perk of running hell.  Am I right?"

The crowd laughs nervously, thankful for a little tension release.  

Satan turns back to the demon with feigned composure, "Can you. . .inhabit?'

The demon says, "Yes."  Buddy nudges him again. "...Sir!"

"Can you intimidate?" 

"Probably. . .Like. . ." The demon furrows his brow stupidly, "That means yell, right?"

Satan rolls his eyes, "Yes. . .Yell!. . .Wave the guy's arms!  Froth at the mouth!  The regular routine!"  Satan grabs the podium with both hands trying to restrain anger, "I mean...anti-Christ!  Do I have to spell it out for you???  Just get him to reveal His plan!. . .If you can, do the--" Just then a thought pops into his head and he begins pacing onstage as he brainstorms,  "Here!  I know what to do!--I can't believe I didn't think of this before!  When I had my one-on-one with Him, I kept qualifying His title with an 'if,' as in, 'if you are the Son of God,' and that didn't work, because it was too easy to brush off!  It wasn't in-your-face enough!"  Satan stops pacing, looks at the demon, and starts wagging his finger, "What you need to do is look Him right in the face and, as eloquently as you can, get him to divulge His secrets!"   

"But how--" Nudge. "--Sir?"

At this point, Satan ignores the demon's ineptitude because he is so excited with his super intelligent plot, "Try calling Him. . ." He puts a hand to his chin and then releases it, "The Messiah!--No, no, that's not grandiose enough. . .Try, 'The. . .The Holy One of God'!--Yes!!!--and see where that gets you!"  Satan claps for emphasis and then crosses his arms, standing tall,  "If you puff Him full of smoke and flattery, maybe that will trip Him up!"

The demon slowly repeats the words, calculating how they feel in his mouth, "The. . .Ho-o-oly Wu-u-un of G--"

Satan interrupts, "--But remember!  Be eloquent!. . .Remember what you learned in 'Inhabiting an Atheist Professor' class!"

The demon looks a little confused, but says "Uh.  Okay. . .Right. . .Yeah."  Then, his face changes to spoiled boredom and he says indignantly, "I can do it.  Okay?  Whatever.  Can I have my cleverphone back now?"

Satan lifts his fist upward and shakes it as he yells, "Intertestiment-tennials!!!"

---------------------------------------

So the demon leaves, finds someone easily inhabitable in the synagogue, and finally the big day comes.  He's confident.  He's rehearsed his speech a thousand times. . .or at least twice.  He has bullet points.  He has rebuttals.  He even has pauses for laughter.  The whole shebang.  So he gets his guy to sit down in the midst of the crowd.  He's ready.  He's golden.  Then Jesus comes in.  All of a sudden the demon is struck with a strange overwhelm.  His guy's heart rate goes up.  Just be cool, he whispers to them both inside his guy's head.  Jesus starts preaching.  But His words are like nothing he, or his guy, have ever heard before.  Such authority.  Such amazing grace.  So. . .truthful.  All of a sudden, the demon starts losing his bullet points. . .Wait.  What was point one?  Was it, "How can there be a loving God if there is pain and suff--?. . .Errrrrr was that point two?. . .Was it. . .Wait. . .Evah. . .No. .. Evo. . .lu-tion?--No, no no! That one doesn't come for another 1800 years!!  His guy's palms start to drip from sweat.  Wait. . .What's my name again?. . .Not your name, Stupid! Mine!  Just then Jesus looks right at him, he panics, and the guy's leg straighten.  He's up.  Oh no.  Everyone is looking.  No going back now.  And he blurts out,

"What do you want with us, Jesus?. . . .To destroy us??" . . .Wait. . .that wasn't right!. . .Idiot!  Just keep going.  Oh!  I remember now,  "I know who you are!  The Holy One of God!"  Yes!  There!  At least I did something right!--err--wrong. . .?

And then his guy thinks to himself, "Well, that's it for me here.  Guess I better see if they're hiring in Damascus!"


[Aaaaaand. . .Scene!] 



Okay, I'm pretty sure that's not how it went. . .


Still, how completely gauche and pedestrian is it to blurt out "Why are you here??? To destroy us???"  Seriously.  Giving away the punch line before the joke is even told?  No class at all.  How can you scare Someone who clearly scares you and fills you with such paranoia?  


The stupidity of hell. 


Lastly, look at this demon's tactic:  He tries to intimidate Jesus by "blowing His cover."  It's like he's taking the glasses off Clark Kent and everyone is supposed to gasp in horror or something.  "I know who you are--The Holy One of God!!!"  This, of course, is what is so hilarious about that statement: In trying to "out" Jesus, he is actually helping to solidify Jesus' Messiah-ship.  How many non-believers became believers that day just because of this demon?  Answer: Plenty of them did.  (Spoiler Alert: Skip ahead to verse 27.)  Way to go, Satan.  Playing right into God's hands.


As per usual.


That's the thing about Jesus, Y'all.  You can tell me that Jesus was just a good man, and that He's nothing special.  So why do demons react to Him like this, then?  Why do people who reject Jesus reject Him so much? 

In the words of Billy Shakespeare, "Methinks thou dost protest too much. . ."

Heaven . . . Is Not a Place on Earth

Last night, my friends and I were approached by a Korean business man who ostensibly was wanting to practice his English while at the same time wanting to discuss the flaws of Christianity. He just kind of wanted to talk and not listen . . . although, who am I to say, maybe He was listening. He was killing two birds with one stone, so we can at least applaud him for efficiency.

He just seemed to ask questions that he thought would stump us, and when we'd actually answer his questions, he'd ignore the answers and start asking new ones.

I can't get all "high and mighty" about his behavior. He was just acting normally. How often when we feel we are right about something do we actually stop and listen to what is being said on the other side? So we can't really blame him for acting this way. Not if we are honest with ourselves, at least. It's the old nature not wanting to accept that there just might be another perspective that we didn't think of initially.

Least ways, it made me think of something.

He brought up the old argument that if you are a good person, you will have a good afterlife. I brought up the old counter argument that if you had a glass of water and someone added three drops of poison in it, would you still drink it even though MOST of the water was pure? Then he told me that I was using an analogy that didn't relate to the issue at hand. That made me think about something.

While the water analogy is arguably not relatable to this issue, I think it still . . . holds water . . . not b/c water and holiness are the same, but b/c holiness and unpoisoned water both have to do with purity.

Let me explain without analogy for a second. Think of the word heaven. Do you think of:
(a) a perfect place,
(b) a place just like here where there are good things that happen and bad things that happen, or
(c) a bad place?

Chances are you would rule out "C" right away, b/c we have another word for a place like that: hell. Now, the next pass over "A" and "B" should give us the answer "A" b/c the word heaven has been integrated into our minds and even every day vocabulary as something way better than we can know now. A place of divine ecstasy. Somewhere where happiness abounds evergreen. A place of zero sadness.

However, although most people would choose "A" as the correct no-brainer answer, quite a sizable group of naysayers would say that in order to get to such a place, one merely needs to be "mostly good." While critical thinking is a necessary skill, sometimes people regard nay-saying as the same thing--which it isn't in this case. Being "mostly good" doesn't make any sense. How can anything but perfection dwell in a perfect society? The second someone or something flawed enters a perfect society, the society ceases to be perfect. Think of a diamond. A perfect diamond is almost priceless; however, just one tiny speck--not even distinguishable by the layman's eye--and the diamond is decreased considerably in value (and would actually be worthless except for "the man" wanting to take your money). You can't have imperfection in perfect or perfect would not exist. Saying that imperfection can dwell in perfection is not "deep thinking." It's the Emperor's New Clothes.

Now . . . let's assume that you immediately saw through the "A, B, C" ploy and instead of answering "A" like a naive child, you were a highly educated intellectual and answered "B." Answering "B" actually becomes a much harder problem for you, and not just b/c of what I've already discussed (imperfect does not = perfect). If you answer "B" that heaven is actually just a place much like here, then you need to explain why the word heaven has such a good, Utopian, fantastic connotation. I suppose you could explain it away like Freud does for terms like guilt. (He says it only comes from the fact that we ultimately desire power, and so when we kill those in power we actually suffer from not having protection anymore...but that doesn't actually explain why we feel guilty--we just feel bad. But it's more of a selfish "I shouldn't have done that, b/c I now need protection" bad, not a "I shouldn't have done that b/c it was wrong and I know I am to blame" bad. In other words . . . he actually doesn't answer the question of guilt at all.)

Heaven is a much harder conundrum than guilt even and here's why. If we currently live in a society of good and bad and if everything happened b/c of natural causes . . . then why would we ever expect anything to be better than it is now? How would we ever have known that anything COULD be better? How would we ever long for heaven? . . . Or intellectually: How would we ever know that heaven was something we could overcome by explaining away? This is something my mother calls the "Eden Syndrome." We all have a hidden memory of Eden and how perfect it was and how we all messed it up, and this is the reason we are all unhappy and discontent.

Anyways . . . why does heaven have such a positive connotation? Well, you have to explain that if you are going to choose "B." Are you up to it?

Personally, I'm going to stick with "A."

Fortunately, the work has been done for us. Just believe and trust in Jesus. He did everything necessary for you to get to heaven. It's really the only way. Just think about it. Get all the information you can and think about it (Proverbs 4:7).