My Devil...

           Growing up Catholic in Colombia, I definitely had more than my share of lectures and sermons about God and the Devil. The way the Devil was presented to me when I was a kid was when something bad happened to someone or something, the act of it was a work of the devil but there was never a physical manifestation of the being itself. If God can work in mysterious ways why can't the Devil? hence I grew up believing that whenever something good happened to me it was the work of God, and the opposite for the Devil. As I grew older and changed by integrating myself with the American lifestyle, I began to step away from religion and questioned a lot of things that God himself did. I always did wonder how the devil came about, and I was fascinated to find out that he was an angel himself in the beginning of everything. Cast down for disobeying God and thinking himself an equal, the Devil was thrown to earth, stripped of his rank as an angel, and eternally damned to his own torture in the realm of Hell; yet still free enough to torment humans. Since angels are androgynous beings cast in the likeness of God, and we ourselves are also cast in his own image; that leads me to believe that the Devil is here on earth looking like us and able to shift his appearance any way he wants. What his endeavors may be are secret to us, but if we are to believe the bible; then his ultimate goal is to drag our souls to hell to join him. The Devil to me now is just a being or an idea that somehow influences an individual to make bad choices, hence pushing him more towards the path of hell. This being or idea is only as strong as our will is, and since we have free will this being purely depends on us to join him in eternal damnation.