When my oldest daughter was five, like any God-fearing father, I attempted to lay out a basic theological foundation for her. I wasn’t covering the Council of Nicaea or anything. Just the basics because, as she was starting to pick up on some notions of Christianity at church, I thought it would be helpful to provide a Cliff’s Notes version of the theology she was absorbing.

To say it was generalized is an understatement. To say it was nuanced is an outright lie. But she was five. I kept it simple and aimed for the billboard aspects of Christianity.

I explained sin by pointing to her habit of slapping her older brother any time he got in her way. Also, the muttered “big doopies1” she used for Ashley and me whenever we made decisions she didn’t agree with.

For God and Jesus, I called them the good guys and skipped the trinity entirely. The trinity gets more confusing the more you try to explain it; the holy ghost in particular tends to derail the conversation. Instead, I made a vague comparison to Mickey Mouse and Toodles from Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, though I didn’t specify which one was God and which one was Jesus, and she didn’t ask. In truth, Mickey comes across more as a Jesus figure, whereas Toodles seems more akin to the Holy Spirit, but luckily, she didn’t seem interested in drilling down on the specificities of my analogy.

And as we all know, if we identify the good guys, we also have to identify the bad guy, which I did when I filled her in on Satan. It was here where I erred semantically, given that I gave Satan an AKA in the form of “the Devil.”

ME: …and the bad guy that we should avoid is Satan, or the Devil.

DAUGHTER: There are two bad guys to avoid?

ME: No, just one. He just has different names.

DAUGHTER: The more names you have, do that mean you are more bad?

ME: Not really.

(he pauses before continuing, not able to leave well enough alone.)

Unless you assassinate a President or something. They always seem to have three names.

DAUGHTER: What do “ass ass in eight” mean?

In retrospect, I should have held back on the AKAs. But she integrated the knowledge seamlessly once I explained that “Satan and “the Devil” were the same entity, a lot like “Clifford” and “the Big Red Dog.” Unfortunately, the appositive stuck and from that point on, she referred to him exclusively as “SayTAN the Debil,” her five-year-old syllabic emphasis colliding with a limited capacity for the letter V.

This wouldn’t have mattered if Satan, the Devil, hadn’t started coming up constantly. Once I’d described his appearance, his vibe, and the thumbnail on his theological deal (steal, kill, destroy, etc.), her curiosity was activated.

(In the car listening to a Taylor Swift song)

DAUGHTER: (singing along to Shake It Off, then pausing) Do Taylor Swift know SayTAN the Debil?

ME: I don’t think so. But, there are some people on the internet who might think she does.

DAUGHTER: (gasps) Wait! Do she really know SayTAN the Debil?

ME: I mean, she is extremely rich, famous, and successful.

DAUGHTER: Do all rich, famous, and suckfesful people know SayTAN the Debil?

ME: It’s possible.

DAUGHTER: That good for you then.

ME: Ha, yeah, thanks.

DAUGHTER: (gilding the lily) Because you are NOT rich, famous, or suckfesful!

ME: Right, thanks for clarifying that.

DAUGHTER: You welcome.

Her interest grew intense enough that friends and relatives started asking if it worried us. Was this normal? Was it a sign of some dark developmental path?

We weren’t worried. Villains are more interesting than heroes.

In The Dark Knight, are we watching for Christian Bale’s Bruce Wayne or Heath Ledger’s Joker? That version of Bruce Wayne couldn’t hold Maggie Gyllenhaal’s attention. How was he supposed to hold ours?

Luke Skywalker or Darth Vader? Same answer.

Caillou or whoever the protagonist of Caillou was supposed to be?

Antagonists are more interesting because they force everyone else into reaction. Without them, we cannot tell who people are and what they stand for, but antagonists are what bring out everyone’s true nature. My daughter didn’t know that. She was just chasing the most interesting character in a theological melodrama that happened to be her birthright.

But the appeal of the antagonist isn’t just because they are inherently interesting; it’s the action they provoke just by existing and symbolizing an opposite side of the coin of behavior and conduct. Even more, because of who they are, they force a reaction from the protagonist and the audience in ways that reveal who they really are and what they really value. Without the antagonist, it’s difficult to pin any of this down. My daughter didn’t understand any of this. She was responding to the momentum of her interest, chasing a character in a theological melodrama that was also her religious birthright.

But what I didn’t realize at the time was that I wasn’t just giving her a basic theological foundation; I was handing her a set of blueprints for how to think about morality. Good guys and bad guys. Rewards and punishments. God, Jesus, vs SayTAN the Debil.

Her fixation faded, as kid fixations do. But the question underneath it didn’t: What was SayTAN, the Debil actually for? Why did Christianity need a villain this vivid?

The best answer I’ve found came from Flannery O’Connor.

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There’s a billboard on I-65 in Alabama that features the classic Judeo-Christian devil: horns, tail, red skin, and a scythe, because even the Prince of Lies needs an accessory to complete the fit.

If you’re able to get a closer look, you’ll notice that the devil on the sign is actually not a graphic on the billboard itself but rather a metallic creation layered onto it. You’ll also notice that there’s significantly more detail in the devil than you can pick up from the interstate.

That fiery red visage actually has a jawline that would make Jacob Elordi jealous. There’s also a Guy Fieri-esque puff of diabolical chin hair, and, most importantly of all, this iteration of the Devil is absolutely shredded. We’re talking a full-on six pack and tons of oblique definition, making me think that this iteration of Satan knows just as much about ketosis as he does about annihilation.

What message the devil’s 1% body fat is meant to send, I have no idea. Either he’s proof that even the forces of evil make time for the gym, or that gym bro culture is inherently satanic. But that’s beside the point. The real message is what’s actually spelled out on the billboard for every driver on I-65: Go to Church Or The Devil Will Get You!

I know this sign well because we lived in Alabama for a few years, and every drive to the Gulf meant another pass beneath its warning. The first time I saw it, we were driving south on I-65 in that stretch of Alabama just before the backroads turn into a series of boiled peanuts or pecan stands and Baptist churches, and it took me back immediately. Not to a specific memory per se, but to a feeling. Of being a kid and being told that the devil was real in the same tone of voice adults used to tell you that the stove was hot.

The devil of my childhood wasn’t a metaphor or a theological abstraction. He was an active agent with a defined directive: steal, kill, and destroy. Pastor Bell spoke of him in somber whispers on Sunday nights, his voice dropping the way it only did for the devil and for prayer requests involving cancer. My Aunt Renita would say “Don’t speak it!” anytime anyone at Sunday lunch even joked about him, swatting the air like she was clearing smoke that could lead him to us.

And yet sometimes, he was also discussed with a matter-of-factness more befitting a polarizing coworker than a figure of supernatural myth, which confused me because, on the one hand, I was asked to believe that the devil was a singular villain focused on my individual demise in the form of eternal torment. But, on the other hand, he was relegated mostly to a background concern.

The only analogous figure I could access at that particular point in time was Saddam Hussein, a man who was portrayed to me as similarly evil and similarly intent on my personal destruction, despite also being overmatched.

The difference was that everyone seemed a LOT more concerned with Saddam than with this Satan fellow. I never saw anyone duct-tape their windows against the devil. No one stockpiled canned goods for the rapture with the same urgency they brought to a possible chemical attack. The devil was the more dangerous enemy in theory, but Saddam was the one who moved the needle on adult anxiety, which, if you’re a kid trying to build a working threat matrix, sends a confusing message.

Over time, I learned to file the devil where everyone else seemed to keep him. An organizing principle, but less an everyday fixation and more a final boss. He was out there, sure. But the daily game was about smaller stuff.

Seeing that billboard for the first time brought me back to this original idea of the devil, so specific and significant before undergoing that subtle relegation. And now here he was again, but repurposed. The devil that made Pastor Bell lower his voice and Aunt Renita swat the air had flattened somehow into a roadside attraction of a shredded lawn ornament who looked like he’d just PR’d his deadlift. The sign was asking me to take him seriously, but it had also given him the body of a Marvel villain and the facial hair of a Food Network host. It was, in the truest sense, an image problem for both him and me.

--

Throughout the South, billboards like this one are a minor genre unto themselves, purchased or erected on highly trafficked land by individuals so compelled by their truth that they feel it necessary to advertise it at seventy miles per hour. Along I-75 In Dalton, Georgia, a billboard communicates to travelers that “Every Tongue Will Confess That Jesus Is Lord.” Then, another line of the billboard says, “Even the Democrats,” with Democrats in red and a pitchfork next to it in case the message is too subtle.

Maybe this happens in Vermont or the Dakotas, but proselytizing via billboard feels distinctly Southern - like a mint julep or a college football coach trying to hide his bad hair with a visor. And I say that as someone who’s always called the South home and loves it the same way you love a wayward cousin or a prickly aunt. The theatricality of a billboard with no room for debate is quintessentially Southern: brief, resolute, and final. You can almost picture the messenger sitting in a front porch rocker, fanning themselves against the late-afternoon humidity.

Part of this is the collision between two defining features of Southern culture: we are relentlessly social and unshakably dogmatic, and these two impulses coexist in a state of productive tension that outsiders routinely underestimate.

The distance of meaning between sentiment in saying someone is “a blessing” versus saying “bless their heart” about them is, to any native, roughly the width and depth of the Mariana Trench.

AUTHOR’S NOTE: A Good Devil Is Hard To Find is a paid series, which means it only exists because readers decided it was worth investing in. If you want access to this series AND want to help fund other essays that are curious and slightly unruly in their thinking, consider supporting Binge Thinking at the monthly or yearly level.

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As a kid of the 90s, like all the other kids, I was presented with certain inexorable truths conveyed with the same institutional certainty as gravity or the necessity of flossing. Truths including, but not limited to…

• Cursive writing was a prerequisite to functioning in the real world.

• Killer bees would be the second-most-prevalent existential threat of our time.

• I would have to learn even the most unrealistic math skills because (AND I QUOTE) “it’s not like you’ll ever be able to carry around a calculator in your pocket.”

• Quicksand was omnipresent around almost every corner and ready to snuff out my life if I wasn’t careful.

• The preservation of the ozone layer would be the first-most-prevalent existential threat of our time.

• According to my middle school D.A.R.E. program officer, I would be repeatedly and exhaustively offered drugs throughout my entire high school existence.

• How our reality would be one where people constantly caught fire, thus the emphasis on “Stop, Drop, and Roll” as a countermeasure against fiery combustion.

But beyond all these truths existed a more transcendent one involving the devil, a figure who was so vivid and active that he1 caused cultural panic in his efforts to steal, kill, and destroy. Though belonging more to the religious realm, the devil was presented with the same definitiveness as all those other anxiety princelings.

These fears had a purpose: they simplified the world. Quicksand, the devil, advanced math, and the ozone layer, while terrifying, were strangely comforting in their certainty. They gave the world a sense of order and boundaries. A strange thing normalized becomes just another domesticated terror, filed alongside touching hot stoves and talking to strangers in vans, both harrowing and helpful.

But over time, some of these definitive truths were revealed to be overblown. I’ve never seen quicksand or lost a loved one to it, and no one talks about the ozone layer anymore.2

Drugs are real, but Officer Kevin’s promise that I’d be offered lines of coke before graduation turned out to be wildly optimistic about my high school social life.

And I’ve only used “stop, drop, and roll” once; the night my parents finally trusted my sister and me without a babysitter. After they left, my sister put on Mom’s favorite bathrobe and waved her hand through the flames of our gas fireplace. When she turned around, one of the sleeves had caught fire. We both started screaming, at which point my training kicked in, and I started screaming STOP, DROP, AND ROLL at death metal volume. It worked because, again, fear can sometimes be useful.

None of these underwhelming realities surprises me now. Things evolve. They get more nuanced and complex as we accumulate context. Maturity, supposedly, is the ability to handle ambiguity, and hopefully, as we age, we acquire the recognition that the vivid binaries we begin with are meant to fade into a sort of grayishness.

The ozone layer became climate change: broader, more complex, less fixable. D.A.R.E. was revealed to be just another pyramid scheme, and quicksand just vanished.

But the devil is still here.

Not in the fire-and-brimstone way my childhood church presented him. But not gone either. Now he shows up in conspiracy theories about child-trafficking cabals or in the language we use for people we find monstrous.

To this point, belief in the devil is fading, down double digits from 2001.

Part of this fading is the figure itself becoming murky. We all have a general sense of what he wants: to create chaos, accumulate souls, and oppose God. It’s all the standard portfolio of cosmic villainy, none of it examined with much specificity. He's less a character now and more an outline; recognizable, but empty enough to fill with whatever we need.

If your job involves consuming stories across different formats, you start noticing patterns in the good ones. Chief among them: a strongly identified antagonist. Not just someone who opposes the hero, but someone whose opposition clarifies what the hero stands for. The villain defines the stakes.

But in an age of specificity and of attentiveness to the most granular granularity of thought, belief, and fact, is the simple fact of opposition enough to define the devil?

It’s not that we’ve stopped needing him. Quite the contrary, actually. But rather because in this vacuum of specificity, we’ve begun finding new costumes for him to wear.

And maybe that’s what the devil has always been. Less a character with motives and more a vessel for whatever we need to oppose. A projection screen. A way of making our fears legible and fightable.

Which is why I wanted to write this series. Not to figure out what the devil looks like, or parse his theology, or settle debates about his scriptural accuracy. What I’m after is the function: What does the devil do for us? Has that changed? And what happens to a culture that still needs a devil but can no longer quite believe in one?

A good devil, it turns out, is hard to find. But that’s never stopped us from looking.

Next time, we begin our search for the devil on a billboard in Alabama.

AUTHOR’S NOTE: A Good Devil Is Hard To Find is a paid series, which means it only exists because readers decided it was worth investing in. If you want access to every essay AND want to help fund curious, slightly unruly thinking, consider supporting Binge Thinking at the monthly or yearly level.

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