The Devil and Miss Prym - Paulo Coelho

The Station Arts Centre

Paul Coelho’s “Novel of Temptation,” The Devil and Miss Prym, is an alternative way of looking at the functioning of the human brain (alternative, that is, to my previous commentary on the Charlie Rose series on Detroit Public Television—thanks, GF for providing me with the name of the moderator of that series on brain function). Coelho’s characters have the devil on their left shoulders, an angel of light on their right. The temptation coming from their left shoulders, in this case, is to sacrifice (read murder) an apparently useless member of the village in exchange for unheard-of wealth. Unapologetically contrived, this plot nevertheless constitutes a parable worth reading about the wrestling match between the demons of fear, aggression and self-preservation with the angels of social decency.

A wealthy arms dealer concocts an experiment to prove to himself that humans are basically and intractably evil. He’s come to this conclusion as a result of the kidnapping and murder of his family in an aborted attempt to extract money from him. His bet is that if he offers ten bars of gold to a certain staid and steady village—if they will murder one of their members—they will conclude that the sacrifice will be worth it. Oh, they will rationalize it somehow—even so far as to say that since Jesus was sacrificed for the benefit of the many, the sacrifice of the old widow (who may be a witch, in fact) follows that precedent!

Temptation and human fallibility are, of course, ubiquitous themes in the body of our literature, from Genesis to Macbeth to Faust to Rudy Wiebe’s Peace Shall Destroy Many. Coelho employs that ancient metaphor where temptation is personified as“the devil,” virtually another god competing shoulder to shoulder with the good God. The panel on Charlie Rose on PBS would likely describe temptation as the urge to ignore civilization-imposed limits on genetically or environmentally transmitted impulses (like sexual lust, or greed).

Some of Coelho’s “sidebars” end up being meatier than his story, actually. Here’s one that I read a few times, probably with a quizzical look on my face. “Playing the part of a charitable soul was only for those who were afraid of taking a stand in life. It is always easier to have faith in your own goodness than to confront others and fight for your rights . . . and it’s only at night . . . that we can silently grieve over our own cowardice (p. 44) .” Coelho raises the possibility that piety arises from fear, not from strength. Not a new argument, actually.

This theme is repeated frequently. Historically, Coelho’s fictional village was inhabited by bandits and murderers and it was only cleaned up after a huge gibbet was constructed in the town square for all to contemplate on a daily basis. At one point, “the devil” says, “There is no such thing as Good: virtue is simply one of the many faces of terror . . . (p. 84).

When goodness is boiled down to the basics—reverence for creation and abiding consideration for those around us—the ancient tension between God and Satan and the more current biological explanations are generally pulling us in the same direction. I, for one, would like to see us carry less of the baggage of good-evil-sin-guilt in favour of more of the light that science has been shedding on the human condition. Biologists, geneticists, after all, are working at the same task as the prophets, namely, understanding what God has made.

Wilderness temptation

Grand Canyon wilderness

Sunday Morning. Hallelujah, schoener Morgen, Heute muss Ich nicht besorgen! We used to intone this perversion of a familiar German hymn (Halleluiah, what a morning, I don’t have to help with the chores today!) We still have some of those feelings. Sunday relieves us of our obligations for a short time. Ironically, on dairy farms that surrounded me when I was a kid, Sunday chores looked a lot like the chores of any other morning.

Our Sunday School discussion will focus on Matthew’s telling of the story of Jesus’ wilderness temptation. Dorothy Jean Weaver wrote the student book, I wrote the teacher’s manual and my friend E.T. will guide the discussion. The discourse will likely run the usual course, namely that the story illustrates Jesus’ temptations to chuck his messianic mission in favour of an easier road to power, self-gratification or personal comfort. If it stays there, however, it will miss an important other aspect: the legend of the wilderness temptation is a teaching parable, and we do well to interpret it more personally.

Take the temptation to turn stones into bread. Taking shortcuts to ensure that we in the West will always have food security—indeed the right to gluttony—is illustrated by this wilderness temptation. We have put our faith in chemicals, artificial fertilizers and technologies to such a degree that we are poisoning our environment in the interest of profits and food security while much of the world starves.

Take the temptation to hurl oneself off the pinnacle of the temple in a show of magic and the favour of God and His angels. The US went into Iraq with the “shock and awe” slogan and the prayers that God should “bless America.” While the citizenry cheered—especially the right wing of the Christian Church—the administration and the military “hurled themselves from the pinnacle of the temple” in a show of might and God’s favour. This will turn out to have been an evanescent dream; the evidence is there before us already.

And then there’s the worship of Satan as a route to ultimate power. Much of Christianity doesn’t get Satan as a mythological stand-in for the evil that all of us humans are capable of. At the root of much of our temptation is not a literal “worshipping of the devil,” but a very human “love of money,” and we are currently living through a depression whose very root is that evil, the worship of that “Satan.” It certainly grants power, this obeisance to that demon, but it is, in the end, a power founded on an evil preoccupation. This temptation is very strong and tests all of us one way and another. Our government has currently told us that “the economy is people’s main concern now,” not the environment or the Afghani detainees, one might add.

Matthew’s parable of the temptation is not actually about Jesus, it’s about you and me.