Last night I watched about half of Dominion: Prequel to The Exorcist, not to be confused with Exorcist: The Beginning, which is the film that resulted when the studio discovered that director Paul Schrader had delivered a thoughtful exploration of faith and evil prompting the executives to turn to Renny Harlin to make them a jump scare movie without any deep questions.

As I watched the young Father Merrin grapple with the evil in the world it occurred to me that the existence of the Devil makes for a strange sort of comfort. If evil exists outside of people, as some directed malicious force constantly tempting, tricking, and deceiving humanity into acts of base cruelty that in some manner absolves humanity of their agency and responsibility. Without the weird sisters Macbeth is simply a bloodthirsty, ambitious, noble willing to murder countrymen and kin alike for his own ends, but with the witches the web of responsibility becomes tangled.

If you reject the theology of a god and his demonic counterpart then you are left with the inescapable and cold conclusion that all evil lies without us, that any one of us is capable of terrible acts. It takes not Prince of Lies to lead us into greed slaughter, and cruelty and that the only things holding our society together is the willingness to be socialized. It must be comforting to be able to hold oneself as inherently good and place all blame for humanity’s evils on some disgruntled rebellious celestial.

There is comfort in the non-deistic view as well. For even thought all that great evil lurks beneath the skin of all of us so does the potential to be great, to do good.

As always the choice is ours. How will you choose?