Trials and Tribulations - The Devil is Negativity

If God is the most benevolent and the most merciful (or rather benevolence and mercy itself), than the Devil is surely the most wicked and cunning. His patience is unparalleled, for he existed before our very concept of time. He waits ever so calmly, allows you to feel strong and optimistic. Let's your faith in God or even just in yourself build up, to a point where it seems bulletproof. You feel as if you can cry out to the heavens with such conviction that "nothing can stop me!". It's funny though, how when your confidence builds up your guard goes down. Here he strikes, full force. Flooding your conscious with thoughts of pessimism, anger towards others, and feelings of worthlessness. After he beats you down, temptation is his weapon of choice to finish you off, to win back your soul, as it can so easily be cloaked in a veil of innocence. Dropping little reminders like mental raindrops of how fun and seemingly harmless sin can be. How your old ways never seriously hurt anyone. Remember how many more friends you had? Remember how freeing carelessness felt? Wasn't it so much fun? You don't have to go back to that being the routine, just engage in the debauchery once in a while, everything in moderation right? In fact it'll be good for you, a little release from all this stuffy morality and righteousness. The hiss of the Devil is one of reason and nonchalance. And like the wicked witch leading Snow White to her death with "just a bite", so the Devil shepards the pious into darkness with just a taste of sin. Lest we forget, however, that it was not a grand feast that caused Adam and Eve to be cast from heaven down to earth, but merely a taste. Seduced by the same whispers of that eternal serpent, who till today coils around our souls waiting patiently for our ears to open to his hiss. Perhaps the only time we should truly dwell on the past is to help us look ahead, by reviewing mistakes to ensure they won't be repeated. Whether initially done by us ourselves, or by our earliest ancestors.