Why is the devil red? Where did the notion come from that Satan is a hulking red brute with menacing chiseled features: protruding brow supporting ominous speared horns and hides sunken yellow eyes; a hardened jaw line framing a ravenous mouth of abnormally long, piercing incisors that look to shred the most tensile metal; a sniping tail that wields to unexpectedly pierce lustfully at the nearest flesh? (Perhaps some of you good Cybermaritans could research these origins for me?)
i did a little research and found the first recorded public encounter with Satan occurs in the Bible, the book of Genesis, Chapter 3. He is in the form of a serpent. Encountering the serpent, Eve is not repulsed, frightened or even intimidated. She simply enters into conversation. Subtle… isn’t it?
This is how evil comes into my life. Not to disregard the heinous evil that many fall victim to in violent crime or betrayal. But the vast majority of us experience evil in seemingly benign means. Perhaps it’s the simply our own justification of a want or desire. Small, sometimes well-meant occurrences that fester into vices and lifestyles beyond our control: A white lie to deflect an argument, judgment, or make ourselves look better in the mind of others escalates into perjury; a quick lustful glimpse at a beauty on the street wrings into a dark pornographic sex addiction; a toke on a joint hurricanes to a heroin overdose; a compromise of values in a moment 
of desperation explodes to habitual crime. (i hope hyperbole is not lost here.)
Whatever the situation, evil usually starts with a selfish desire. We all like to think we are important. And you are!! God thinks you are. But it’s when we think we are more important than someone else, our needs and desires come before others, this is where the lie begins.
In our Western culture our desires are catered and manipulated every day. Any salesperson on the planet worth his salt will tell you that the art of selling is to appeal to your emotions and desires, convince you that you need this product/service more than life itself. The common television viewer observes well over 70 of these appeals daily. Add to this print, radio, internet, and other advertising media, the average American is exposed to roughly 3000 appeals daily. WOW! In a recent study, education scientist Dr. Norman Herr noted that the average American child observes 20,000 30-second TV commercials. UNBELIEVABLE!!
Like the serpent who baited Eve with half-truths, telling her what she wanted to hear, appealing to her desire… so go our own hearts. We don’t need the devil in snakeskin… we’re bombarded 
countless times a day with fancy indulgence since we could turn the channel from Sesame Street. It’s not just advertisers. Every one of us puts on our salesman persona now and again to placate our friend, neighbor, co-worker, spiritual leader, counselor, supervisor, parent, significant other, child, and …yes, even God.
With a society that caters to our every whim of self-importance and entitlement, it’s no wonder we feel deserving and indulgent and that, “I am the most important person on the planet.” So if you’re wait is more than five minutes in the fast food drive through you pitch a fit. “Where’s my damn burger?!” How ridiculous is that?? It wasn’t long ago that you would have had to milk the cow, age the cheese, slaughter and butcher another cow, grind the wheat, make the dough, build the fire, bake the buns, flame broil the beef… you haven’t even had time to think about condiments because you’ve starved to death making a cheeseburger (with all due respect to my vegetarian/vegan friends–you gotta love the cheeseburger). But today you can’t wait five minutes, so you scream at the poor teenage girl making $1.07 an hour, who did little more than take your cash in trade for a meal. Is that evil?! Not to some… but selfishness manifested as anger that seeks only self-satisfaction is as ugly as the proverbial satanic visage. Just remember that then next time a well dressed person tells you what you want to hear.
~End antler~
lifeVertical 