Dmitry Orlov

An odd set of events has recently taken place in the world of diplomacy: the governments of various Islamic countries have summoned French ambassadors in order to express to them utter outrage at the profanation of the great Islamic prophet Issa (a.k.a. Jesus) at the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in Paris. There, the organizers saw it fit to present a ghastly tableau in imitation of Leonardo da Vinci’s classic The Last Supper featuring a fat lesbian in place of Jesus and a motley crew of transvestites in place of the apostles, all disporting themselves in a maximally perverse fashion. The leaders of Orthodox Christian nations did not follow suit, perhaps adhering to Issa’s dictum “Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you.” (Matthew 7:6)

We can be sure that the organizers of the Olympics did not set out to maximally disgust everyone; they wanted to impress and to inspire. The Olympiads originated in festivals held to please and impress the gods of Mount Olympus — a quest for the divine. But it is a sign of extreme incompetence when an artist’s attempted renderings of angels end up looking like poorly drawn demons. More than that, in order to draw angels convincingly, one must be able to sense them (not necessarily to see them or, more likely, to hallucinate them); that is, there must be a spark of divine inspiration (as was clearly the case with da Vinci, or his masterpiece would not have been revered for five and a quarter centuries). Lacking any trace of divine inspiration, an artist would be well advised to stick to drawing demons.

Do I believe in divine inspiration? Belief is a vexed question for people who fancy themselves thoroughly modern and therefore thoroughly scientific. The Christian credo reads like a work of mythology laden with miracles — immaculate conception, resurrection, ascent unto heaven, etc. — and skeptics want proof before they will believe any of it. Such skepticism is important in many pursuits — forensic medicine, for instance — but not in others. What is love, for instance? Let’s be skeptical and consider it a hormonally mediated emotional state. Congratulations, skeptics, you are now self-identified as animals stuck in a perpetual mating season!

It is never a good idea to confuse knowledge with belief. Knowledge rests in proof; belief rests in suspension of disbelief and in a certain sense of trust — including trust in the inexplicable and the supernatural. Treated as separate, knowledge and belief can quite happily coexist inside any given mind. Moreover, belief is hardly ever a question of choice. More frequently, it is a matter of direct experience: you either can sense something that causes you to believe, or you can’t. Of course, if a child grows up surrounded by adults who claim that a child’s spontaneously developing spiritual sense is a fantasy or, worse, a hallucination, then it can be stifled quite effectively.

Those lucky enough to have been endowed with an innate spiritual sense that has not been stifled can perceive a certain difference between humans and animals — or, rather, human and animal souls. Lab mice have souls so puny and insignificant that they can be regarded as little biological machines. They are innocent creatures, incapable of good or evil, for their simple souls do not offer them that choice.

Humans, however, typically do confront that choice. In turn, those whose spiritual sense has not been stifled can perceive certain differences between human souls — by looking into a person’s eyes. Although some people have eyes so unexpressive that they might as well be bellybuttons, that is a rarity. What the eyes express most readily is vices: selfishness, viciousness, pride, avarice, envy, hatred, malice, lust, etc. In demonology made simple, those vices are demons that infest the soul; theoretically, they can be expelled. The more demons, the less the possibility of doing good and the greater the possibility of doing evil.

Can demons infest a body in absence of a soul, or in case of a soul as insignificant and puny as that of a lab mouse? It would seem that they can: animals can be conditioned to be arbitrarily nasty. For instance, pit bulls can be trained to attack and kill children. This does not make them evil: the evil is entirely in their human trainers. What, then, of humans whose spiritual sense has been stifled in childhood by being surrounded by scientifically minded skeptics that have never been taught to distinguish knowledge from belief, whose souls never developed beyond those of a lab mouse? Surely enough, with no spiritual sense to guide them, they can readily develop into characters that are nothing more than a combination of vices — an unsupervised playground for demons. Looking into their eyes causes buzzers and warning lights to go off in your head. In this way, your spiritual sense can keep you safe in everyday life and to help you avoid wasting your time when interviewing job applicants.

Why do demons exist? Here is Christianity made simple: they exist to tempt us. Without temptation there can be no sin, without sin there can be no repentance and without repentance there can be no salvation. Life is a trial in which our task is to fight off demons and to attract angels. When we fail, our souls are claimed by Satan; when we succeed, our souls enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.

Satan came to Paris hoping to claim some Christian souls at the Paris Olympiad, and what did he find? He found people working hard to impersonate demons: “Come, Satan, and claim our souls!” “What souls?” thought Satan, “You hardly have any! You are just some lab animals who have been trained to act out perversions. The efforts of my demons have been wasted on you. This is soooo frustrating!” And at that Satan wept.

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