一直对写作战战兢兢，但《On Writing Well》这本书给了我许多鼓励与启发。今天花了两个小时写了篇小文，谈了谈我的信仰，还大加想象了一番如果我是撒旦我会怎么做。写完后，深感只有实实在在的写才能提高写作水平呀，写完后改了半个多小时，文法句式用词都发现很多不足。嗯，我还要继续练习！

If I were Satan the Devil

I was born and bred in a half-blood atheist family. My mother is an atheist and my father an occasional temple goer. My grandma was the only devout believer that never doubted the existence of God even though a good part of her adulthood was inundated with the Party’s bombasts on the holiness of the Communism. One of their slogans I could never forget——Demolish all the Gods and monsters.

She is a Buddhist, and knows many fellow women who also adhere to Buddhism. Morning prayer she has never forgotten to make. Her prayer covers every family member, and I am grateful that a good part of it is dedicated to me. Whenever the housework is done, she would get the prayer beads out and pray “nan wu amituofo” in heart, her eyes being half closed and wrinkles radiating from her mouth. When I was a kid, my grandma taught me a lot of things, she showed me how to make dumplings; how to knit a coat for my doll, and she also tutored me how to fold paper gold ingot, the currency dedicated to the beloved dead ones.

I fancied what my grandma had been practicing was both interesting and gracious. Then I went to school, where many scientific giants came to belittle the holiness of her doing. In Math class, it’s Hippasus, the one who discovered the irrational number——square root of 2; for that sake the church burned him alive. In Physics class, it’s Copernicus, the one who dissolved the geocentric theory and was killed for the heliocentric theory he proposed. In Biology class, it’s Charles Darwin, who seemed to have puzzled out the origin of species after the voyage of beagle. Moreover, in History class, it recounted that countless wars and manslaughters were ignited by religious conflicts. The path of my worldview was altered. So heaven and hell were but myths created by stubborn and foolish priests… Religion must be ridiculous; believers must be hilarious, I reckoned back then.

My deep prejudice for religion makes my conversion to Christianity seem unbelievable. I’ll briefly explain how I made it.

Though I thought little of religion, be it the Buddhism, Islam, or Christianity, thanks to the school education, I paid full respect to the literature, i.e. the Qur’an, the Bible, etc. I got my first Bible when I was a freshman, and have kept reading it ever since. I was amazed at the thought-provoking scriptures in the book Proverb and the beautiful verses in the book Songs of Solomon. The more I read, the more treasures I uncovered. Still, I was not convinced that God created us. At least, that seems to contradict with what the science textbooks say.

At length Stephanie came in to rescue my worldview last November, and she has been guiding me through the Bible ever since. It’s not until then I that my prejudice started to melt down little by little. I came to realize that almost all the contradictions between religion and science were hatched by misinterpretations of the Bible. For example, the Bible never claims that irrational number does not exist, that the Sun revolves around the earth, that the earth is flat… The churches did. The Bible never urges Christians to wage wars, to discriminate against and to kill brothers and sisters, the false disciples did. If you read the Bible from the cover to cover, you’ll be astonished at how many lies and false teachings you’ve been exposed to.

Had it not been for Stephanie’s patient guidance, I would never have known the truth. Had it not for God’s patience, I would have been seduced and fooled by Satan the Devil. Nevertheless, doing the right things proves even more difficult than knowing the truth. Though having the true teachings as my shield, I am still facing a lot of difficulties. And as my study deepens, more questions are knocking on my head; more temptations are flooding into my mind. But when I am inclined to do things that God does not approve, I would remind myself how happy Satan the Devil would be to witness my fall. Indeed, Satan is smart, he’ll do everything to distract us from knowing and obeying Jehovah the God. If I were he, I’d do the same tricks as he’s been doing now.

I would make people become atheist. I would allege that being an atheist would make us happier because in that way, we’re no longer subject to moral restrictions. We’re free to do anything that gives us pleasure. Should the spiritual need of humans not met, I would ask the Press to publish numerous self-help and how-to books to feed their mind. Anyway, there is always better self-help book to come.

If I saw many are still confident in God’s existence, I would convince them that creeds of all religion are good for human beings. Buddhism instructs us to be kind and repent for wrong doings, Islam urges us to abstain from evil desires. Confucian teaches us how to be a noble gentleman… Of course, few would follow a religion that makes people to sin, that’s why I have to create those ostentatiously good religions.

What if some firm believers knew that Jehovah was the alpha and omega, the only God? In that case, I would try to prevent them from translating God’s words, i.e. the Bible. Even if many believers have finally fought to translate the Bible into more than 2800 languages, I would try to prevent them from studying and understanding it. I know many who claim to believe every word of the Bible have never finished reading the Bible even once. As long as the truth of Bible remains hidden, I could always steal the truth out from their mind.

What if someone succeeded at eschewing all of my traps? That’s too bad. However, I would make them a mere hearer, instead of a doer. It’s easier said than done. That’s human nature, and I know that. As I have full control of the media, so trapping them in worldly desires might be a piece of cake…

Those are the tricks that I could conceive, but Satan the Devil has more invisible dirty schemes that I am unaware of. That’s why apostle Paul encouraged us to take up the full armor of God to resist the devil in his letter to Ephesians, which says:

Stand, therefore, with truth like a belt around your waist, Righteousness like armor on your chest, And your feet sandaled with readiness for the gospel of peace. In every situation take the shield of faith, And with it you will able to extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is God’s words.