statement should give everyone who encounters it pause. There was no
possibility for movement upward, in that great psychiatrist’s deeply
considered opinion, without a corresponding move down. It is for this reason
that enlightenment is so rare. Who is willing to do that? Do you really want
to meet who’s in charge, at the very bottom of the most wicked thoughts?
What did Eric Harris, mass murderer of the Columbine high school, write so
incomprehensibly the very day prior to massacring his classmates? It’s
interesting, when I’m in my human form, knowing I’m going to die.
Everything has a touch of triviality to it.^135 Who would dare explain such a
missive?—or, worse, explain it away?
In the desert, Christ encounters Satan (see Luke 4:1–13 and Matthew 4:1–
11). This story has a clear psychological meaning—a metaphorical meaning
—in addition to whatever else material and metaphysical alike it might
signify. It means that Christ is forever He who determines to take personal
responsibility for the full depth of human depravity. It means that Christ is
eternally He who is willing to confront and deeply consider and risk the
temptations posed by the most malevolent elements of human nature. It
means that Christ is always he who is willing to confront evil—consciously,
fully and voluntarily—in the form that dwelt simultaneously within Him and
in the world. This is nothing merely abstract (although it is abstract); nothing
to be brushed over. It’s no merely intellectual matter.
Soldiers who develop post-traumatic stress disorder frequently develop it
not because of something they saw, but because of something they did.^136
There are many demons, so to speak, on the battlefield. Involvement in
warfare is something that can open a gateway to Hell. Now and then
something climbs through and possesses some naive farm-boy from Iowa,
and he turns monstrous. He does something terrible. He rapes and kills the
women and massacres the infants of My Lai. And he watches himself do it.
And some dark part of him enjoys it—and that is the part that is most
unforgettable. And, later, he will not know how to reconcile himself with the
reality about himself and the world that was then revealed. And no wonder.
In the great and fundamental myths of ancient Egypt, the god Horus—
often regarded as a precursor to Christ, historically and conceptually
speaking^137 —experienced the same thing, when he confronted his evil uncle
Set,fn2 usurper of the throne of Osiris, Horus’s father. Horus, the all-seeing