Lord Galdbrand's Journal #6

The Devil Knows Better

For the purposes of this you can think about who or what the devil is depending on if you are a Christian or not. If you are a Christian then the devil is literal. He is a spiritual being that was created by God and wants to destroy mankind. If you are not a believer then read this as an archetype. The reason I start with this is that even a secular person can benefit from this analysis even if they don’t believe in God, the spiritual, or Christianity.

What do I mean by “the devil knows better?”. How can the devil know better and better than who or what? When I say the devil knows better I mean he knows better than you or me. He knows scripture better than me. He knows myself better than me. He knows more than I ever will. He is not of this world and so he has more knowledge than I ever will. He looked upon God in his purest form and rejected it.

So then what does this mean for us? It means that if you try to fight back against evil, because that is what the devil is and what he seeks to spread, you will lose. Because you are a human being. Humans cannot know everything. We don’t even know what we don’t know. If there is a progress bar showing what percentage of all knowledge we collectively have discovered we will never know how full it is. We are by our nature limited.

This means that fighting evil is impossible for a human to do alone. This is why calling on God and Christ to help us fight back is so important. Because God is truth and is light. These are the exact antidotes and poison to evil. This is why fighting a spiritual battle needs to be done with God and not without Him. This is why trust in God is so important when dealing with the devil. Without God you are fighting something that has superior knowledge and can use it against you.

Since God loves us in even our sinful state we can call on him and he will help. That means no matter who you are, God will not turn his back on you. That love and protection is so important to who we are as people. Without it we would be miserable, or more miserable than we already are. Without a sense of love and certainty coming from within we would be fighting our battles alone and with no reserves to draw on. This is why making everything external to the self is so dangerous. The world and its people shift like the waves of the sea. You cannot rely on them alone.

The good news, aside from the love of God, is that fighting evil in the physical world is much easier. Speak the truth and live in it and evil will eventually be pushed back. Because people who choose evil do not know more than the devil. The devil does not love them and does not share his knowledge. So the ones who choose evil also choose lies. Living lies leads to downfall every single time.

This is because the world itself runs on truth. This is why we have objective reality. After all if reality was subjective then the rules would change all the time. Math and science would not work because there would be no stable rules. Some say that parts of reality are subjective and that is what they mean. I laugh at that notion. Because how can there be rules that are objective and never change and also rules that are subjective and change all the time. Both cannot be true at the same time.

The issue is that people are conflating what is mind dependent and mind independent. What is truly objective is independent of the mind and our experience. What is truly subjective is what is wholly dependent on the mind. Meaning that math is objective because it is true no matter who is doing it or viewing it. Meanwhile taste is truly subjective because it depends on the mind viewing and experiencing it.

This is why living in truth and choosing it over lies is so important. People who choose the devil will choose lies every time. In time though the lies will cause collapse. Meanwhile the person who chooses truth will succeed in time. If enough people were to stand up and speak the truth, lies would die.

I understand that the reason why most people don’t stand up is because they can lose things. Personally I cannot stand that. I don’t want to call others weak or pathetic for choosing to side with lies for comfort or to keep their income. At the same time, why would you do that when you can choose truth? The devil will always make you take one more step forward if you accept even one lie as the truth. Why give him that hold on you? Why not start something or build something based in truth?

This is why I say the devil knows better. He knows all of this and more and you want to fight him using only the tools a mortal man can have. Fight with truth and with God and you will win. It won’t be easy or comfortable, but it will be satisfying. In the end it will bring peace. That is why choosing the right thing is the most important thing we can do every day.