Is something diabolical permeating our culture? What does that term truly mean? How can we spot it?
After recording my show yesterday, I couldn’t stop thinking of the vulgarity in Sam Smith’s music video and what it says about the decay in our society. While talking with my husband about the topic, he reminded me of a sermon about the Devil from Venerable Fulton Sheen that we had listened to over the weekend.
My husband and I also discussed the timeless lesson found in Adam and Eve’s fall from the Garden of Eden.
Grouped together alongside the current definition of diabolical — before the Left changes it — I perhaps we can answer the questions posted above.
“What is the diabolic from the purely psychiatric point of view?” the late-Roman Catholic Bishop Sheen once said. “Dr. Rollo May analyzes the word diabolic, it comes from the Greek words dia and balime. Dia-balime is to tear apart, rend asunder. Anything, therefore, that breaks pattern, that destroys unity, that corrupts gestalt, produces discord, that is the diabolical. Now, there has been a great increase of the diabolic. Notice for example the discord in the Church, the discord in religious communities, the discord among the laity regards the Church, discord in the clergy. All these are manifestations of a spirit of the diabolic that surrounds us. Now this psychiatrist [Dr. May] analyzes the way in which the diabolic works. And he mentions three: First love of nudity. Secondly, violence, aggressiveness. Thirdly, split personalities, no inner peace, disjointed minds.”
Does anything explain Sam Smith’s music video better than that description? Under that definition, his new video is truly diabolical.
It’s a love of nudity. It’s a love of violence. And, it even presents a split personality.
Sam Smith, once a normal individual, now identifies as ‘non-binary.’ In other words, he has a split persona. He doesn’t know what he is. He’s everything. He has no identity. That’s what being ‘non-binary’ effectively means. I have no identity. I think I can be anything and everyone at the exact same time.
He puts nudity on full display — in an aggressive and violent manner, no less — in the “Not Here To make Friends” music video.
So, yes, according to the psychiatrist and Bishop Sheen, that is diabolic.
Per The Oxford Learner’s Dictionary, the definition of diabolical means “morally bad and evil; like a Devil.”
That description brings me to the conversation I had with my husband on Monday.
“Why is Sam Smith doing this? His music is already great. Why does he have to stoop to this level and force us to say goodbye to his music? Why must we delete his songs from our library?” I more or less wondered out loud.
And my husband, who studied theology in school, began to discuss the Garden of Eden from the Bible. Everybody — even non-Christians — knows that in the Bible, The Garden of Eden was wholesome and full. It was peaceful and there was unity.
Then the serpent — something evil, wishing to tear that unity apart, and destroy that wholesomeness — came to trick Adam and Eve.
The Devil’s goal wasn’t just to get them to eat the forbidden fruit — it was to destroy the harmony in the Garden of Eden and separate Adam and Eve from God.
After being separated, they then see they are naked and feel shame. They feel shame because they know they have done something God didn’t want. The first sin was eating the Forbidden Fruit.
So what does the Devil ultimately desire? He wants us to feel no shame about offending God and thus be disconnected from our Creator forever. If we don’t feel shame about doing evil things and never ask for forgiveness, then we will never be reunited with God.
So, now we have a culture infested with that exact same evil. An evil that wants all of us to feel no shame. It’s accomplished by “pushing boundaries” — as the Left loves to say — of what they describe as rude, crude, and crass “art.”
Sam Smith is naked. Who cares?! Children can see this on YouTube? So what?! Have no shame! In fact, you should feel empowered by it all!
Yet Smith’s music video is really just the tip of the iceberg for this garbage. Evil is everywhere.
So, we have to do our own little acts to fight against it.
And that’s why I deleted all of Sam Smith’s music. I will pray for him. I hope whatever he is suffering from gets resolved.
As for the larger culture, perhaps it’s best we learn how to spot diabolical entertainment — using the definition described thanks to Sheen, May, and the Oxford Dictionary.