I do not believe in the “God” or “the Devil” of the Judeo-Christian / Islamic traditions. But I am not an atheist. To my knowledge my personal view of God and the Devil are uniquely my own. They do not mirror any other system of belief that I have yet come across. I believe that organized religion has distorted a simple idea (or simple ideals)  into something more complex than it really is.

I believe that God and the Devil represent the supreme human tendencies: Love and Hate; Peace and Anger; Good and Evil. They are not sentient beings that exist on an unseen plane of existence. They are two archetypes that we are born with imprinted upon our souls .

And this is why the Devil is so frightening. “He” lives deep within every soul. Not in the literal sense. The Devil is NOT  a sentient being, but a possible manifestation within each of us. The Devil is frightening because any one of us can become the Devil. The Devil represents the in-born capacity of each one of us to commit the most evil of acts. Adolf Hitler is a perfect example. The Devil is what every person fears they can become given correct circumstances. The Devil frightens us because we are aware that it takes so little for us to become evil. Unlike the God within us, to become like the Devil is relatively easy. To give into fear, anger, or hate, only passion is required. Only a moment of inattention. A flash of — something. Anything. This is why the archetype of a Devil personified (created by some religions) has such resonance in our psyche.

Whereas becoming and maintaining the God within us is very, very difficult. It requires literally constant meditation upon what is Right. To become what we think of as Good, to become Godlike, requires us to continually monitor our selves. It requires us to constantly watch what we say, think, feel, how we react to others. What we tell ourselves, how we act “when no one is watching.” People like Buddha and Jesus Christ are excellent examples of human beings that became Godlike. Buddha called this process “Enlightenment.”

Few people can ever become Godlike. I dare say it requires decades of effort, mediation, prayer, and other strategies to master your mind. It certainly requires some kind of special insight. I think this is why the few people who reach this lofty goal are in turn worshiped by other people as “Gods.” Conversely, most people never become the Devil either. But the road to evil is far shorter than the other road. I think most people spend their lives caught somewhere between these extremes.

This is what being human is all about.

Somewhere deep in our consciousness every person knows this. Every human being is aware of this fact on some fundamental level. This is where the archetypes that represent Good and Evil stem from. The struggle within ourselves to be be Good or to be Evil is what has given rise to metaphorical figures of “God” and “the Devil.”