insights

If you’ve ever watched a professional billiards game, you will notice that the pool players always plan around five to seven shots ahead of the one they are working on. They know the physics and trajectory of where the ball will go, and set up for the next shot up to five or seven strokes. In the same way, the devil plans ahead what he wants you to do. He sets us up step by step, move by move, until you don’t realize how close you are to the edge of falling. As the saying goes, a frog thrown into a hot boiling water will be in shock and jump out, while a frog in warm water will remain and not notice the heat and temperature slowly rising. The devil plays the long game and the short game. He is patient and willing to wait for you to sin. If he cannot get you to sin immediately (short game), then he will lure you into it over a period of time (long game). He is not stupid. He has been playing this game for a very long time.

Do you sometimes talk to yourself? As children, we do this while playing with toys and other random objects. We can see kids having full conversations by themselves while they play in their imaginary world. Do you ask yourself questions and ponder issues as if you are having a conversation with yourself, like you did as a child? Do you sometimes rationalize about things, excusing the guilt? We all do this. We all talk to ourselves. The movie over-dramatizes this by scaring people into thinking that the kids are talking to dead spirits. Science will validate that children’s minds are in development and are more likely to have creative imaginations that often exceed those of adults (Abraham, 2018). But as adults, do we suppress this imagination of speaking to someone in our heads and conclude it is just our conscience?