THE DEVIL’S GREATEST TRICK
Author: Fr. Michael Byron
March 01, 2020
“The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the
world he did not exist.” You may remember that iconic quotation from the movie
titled “The Usual Suspects” (which, by the way, should never, ever be viewed by
children). That line comes at the very end of a violent story in which a
larger-than-life terrorist named Keyser Soze has put dead fear into everyone he
meets. The police investigators are trying to find him, but it seems that
nobody who has ever seen him has lived to tell about it. So nobody knows what
he looks like. In the end, the police become so skeptical about the stories
they’ve been told about this man that they conclude that all of the testimony
is fake. Nobody could possibly be as ruthless and elusive as this alleged
Keyser Soze is said to be, so they let the suspects go free.
But here’s the spoiler alert: the last of the suspects to
walk out of the interrogation room and to disappear forever turns out to have
been the real Keyser Soze. The investigators never even considered the
possibility, because their man was so expert at pretending to be weak and
stupid and cowardly, and he had the audacity to be sitting right in front of
them all along, spinning lies about his story.
“The greatest trick the devil ever pulled,” says Keyser Soze
to the investigator, “is convincing the world that he does not exist.”
Then he walks out as a free man. And the arrogant cops
completely bought it until it was too late to find him again.
It is sometimes said today by older Catholics that we just
don’t hear enough preaching about sin anymore, the way we used to when we went
to church. If that sentiment resonates with you at all, then this 1st Sunday of Lent is your lucky day. Todays Sacred Scripture put evil and sin and
deceit at center stage. Those things are all very real, very big, very
threatening, and they have been with us from the very moment that human beings
have existed. And if we are tempted to doubt that, maybe that is owing in part
to the fact that sin is so mysterious, and the urge to do evil is so senseless.
And so even in the bible we have to speak of it in terms that can seem simply
unbelievable or fantasy. The book Genesis, today’s 1st reading,
attempts to account for sin in the world by telling the tale of two naked
people in the woods conversing with a talking snake. Really? We’re supposed to
believe that? We’re all sinners because Adam and Eve ate a piece of fruit from
a tree that was off limits? Who can take that seriously, literally?
Well the fact is that we Catholics don’t have to take the
story as literal history, but if we use that as the reason to dismiss the
profound truth of its’ message—i.e. the harsh reality of systemic sin in the
world and in our own lives—then we have fallen in to exactly the same trap of
which Keyser Soze warned us: The devil’s greatest trick is to convince us not
to take him seriously, or his enduring effects.
Something of the same problem confronts us in today’s gospel
of Matthew, which tells us of Jesus’ temptations in the desert in conversation
with a being called “the devil.” It’s easy for people to hear that and to
conjure up images of a powerful and scary lone man with horns on his head and a
pitchfork in his hand and a red cape on his back with which to fly around the
Holy Land. That’s the stuff of film fantasies and it is difficult to reconcile
with any normal human experience, at least for most of us. And so the
temptation is to discount the truth of the story on account of the fact that
it’s so hard to present it in everyday language. Because it’s mysterious. But
so real.
And for those of us who try to take the spiritual life
seriously, it’s really not so hard to recognize—if we don’t let ourselves get
distracted by our relatively poor powers to put it in to words or pictures. In
fact, the harsh truth of sin and the temptations that lead to it are glaringly
obvious to those who care to notice. Who among us hasn’t felt the urge to live
selfishly, to inflict harm upon others unjustly, to excuse ourselves from
caring about the sufferings of the poor and oppressed? Who hasn’t confronted
the temptations to exploit people and things for our short-term benefit, to
make passing pleasures more important than God? Who hasn’t wished to issue the
harsh judgement or the humiliating word in the face of people we don’t like—or
who don’t like us? Who hasn’t noticed the collective social sins of climate
change, endless war and violence, terror and cruelty to the most vulnerable of
human beings? Where does all that come from? Why do we endure it or even
perpetuate it? Why do we glory in the most superficial of life’s passing
comforts and ignore the things that matter most? It doesn’t make sense. It’s
dark mystery. And we had better be ready to recognize it for exactly what it
is. As Jesus did. Adam and Eve could have eaten from any of the millions of
trees in the Garden of Eden, and yet they chose to do the one thing that was
wrong because of the advice of a passing reptile? That’s crazy. But it is true
to its’ deepest depth. The story of sin is part and parcel of the human
condition, and when we ignore or deny it, Keyser Soze wins—the devil triumphs.
In this new season of Lent, we take great comfort and hope
that the story of Jesus Christ means the end to the rule of sin and evil. But
that story really isn’t very important or interesting at all if the devil
doesn’t exist in the 1st place. Let us pray during these holy days
and weeks not to be taken in by the trick, and to live ever more faithfully in
to the truth that we know.
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