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The Devil Is The Father of Lies: A Word On Cyber Demons

The Devil Is The Father of Lies: A Word On Cyber Demons

Last updated on: July 28, 2016 at 2:13 pm by Mary Pezzulo

The Devil Is The Father of Lies: A Word On Cyber Demons 2016-07-28T14:13:08-04:00 Mary Pezzulo

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Let’s talk about Pokemon. I did not play with Pokemon cards back when they were cards; I don’t play Pokemon Go right now either. This is not because I’m better than people who enjoy playing silly games, mind you. It’s because I prefer other silly games. I’m hoping to be able to afford to buy the brand new Cyan Worlds game and write a review about it here when I do, so you’ll get to hear me geek out then. But I’ve never played Pokemon Go.

I was amused, however, that it took approximately five minutes for the usual factions to declare Pokemon Go to be demonic. It always does. As soon as there is a fun new trend on or off the internet, a Protestant pastor or Charismatic Catholic shows up to claim it’s demonic. It happened in my nutty childhood on the Planet Charismatic. My mother was concerned with my first favorite computer game, Cyan Worlds’ brilliant work of art, “Myst.” I think she was concerned because “Myst” might stand for “mystical,” which would mean it was to do with the occult.

I was allowed to play Myst when I assured her that it stood for “Mystery,” which I’m still not sure it does.

But for an alarming amount of time we ended up playing horrendously bad Game Boy games from the Wisdom Tree corporation– Spiritual Warfare, Joshua and Exodous were the ones we owned. Spiritual Warfare was actually pretty entertaining; it was like the Legend of Zelda crossed with Vacation Bible School. Your character possessed several different “Fruits of the spirit” which were actual fruits: a pear which moved slowly, a banana which moved quicker, grapes which would spray in different directions, a pomegranate. Each fruit represented an actual fruit of the Holy Spirit; I think the banana was joy, and I was so sheltered at the time that I didn’t make a gross innuendo about that. You walked through mazes throwing bananas and pears at passersby until shrieking demons flew out of them; then you had to throw fruit at the demons or you yourself would become possessed. If you looked in the right place, you could receive armor pieces such as the Breastplate of Righteousness, which would cut down on the damage received from passersby and demons. But if you went into buildings marked “BAR” or “CASINO,” a vengeful angel would take your armor away and you’d have to go looking for it again. You also possessed a limited number of “vials of God’s Wrath,” which looked like fat mason jars and which contained explosives. You could drive demons out of people with “vials of God’s wrath,” and you could use them to force open pathways, but they’d also kill you if you didn’t dodge quickly enough. Every once in awhile, an angel would appear and ask you Biblical quiz questions; if you answered all of them quickly enough, the angel’s necktie would spin around and you’d receive extra lives– excuse me, I mean “spirit points.” Somehow, this whole game was considered to be catechetical instead of Blasphemy of the Spirit. I still can’t figure out why.

As for the other two games, “Joshua” fried our Game Boy every time we turned it on, and we could never get past the fourth level of “Exodus” because Moses didn’t have any fruits of the spirit. He only had Vials of God’s Wrath and the occasional giant boulder he lifted over his head to throw at skulking Egyptians. It was very difficult. I must have killed Moses a dozen times on the average road trip, before it was my brothers’ turn on the Game Boy. Not to mention, the eye strain was terrible. And the theme music was all hymns that got stuck in your head for days afterwards. To this day, every time I hear “Father Abraham Had Many Sons,” I say “that’s the Exodus theme music!” and have the Pavlovian desire to go throw mason jars at Egyptians or bananas at demoniacs.

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