And finally the final book of the trilogy, “The Devil and Miss Prym” is the most interesting of all. In this novel about temptation is a thought provoking parable of a community devoured by greed, cowardice and fear as it struggles with the choice between good and evil.
A stranger arrives at the remote village of Viscos, carrying with him a backpack containing a notebook and eleven gold bars. He comes searching for the answer to a question that torments him. Are human beings, in essence good or evil? In his sophisticated plot, he shows Chantal Prym, a young, simple girl in the village, where he buried his eleven bars of gold. After showing her the gold bars, he shared his plot to proof his theory that the nature of human beings when confronted with temptation, will always fall.
He explained to Chantal, “Everybody in this village is honest, starting with you. I showed you the gold bar, which would give you the necessary financial independence to get out of the village, to travel the world. The gold is going to stay there; you know it’s mine but you could steal it if you wanted. And then you would be breaking one of the commandments: ‘Thou shalt not steal'.
“As for the ten gold bars, they are worth enough to mean that none of the villagers need to work again. I didn’t ask you to rebury the gold bars because I am going to move them to a place only I will know about. When you go back to the village, I want you to say that you saw them and that I am willing to hand them over to the villagers on condition that they do something they would never dream of doing. To break the commandment ‘Thou shalt not kill'.
“I’m giving them a week. If at the end of the seven days, someone in the village is found dead, then the money will go to the villagers, and I will conclude that we are all evil. If you steal the gold bar but the village resists the temptation, or vice versa, I will conclude that there are good people and evil people – which puts me in a difficult position because it would mean that there’s a spiritual struggle going on that could be won by either side.”
For five days, Chantal struggled whether to present the crazy plot to the villagers or to steal the gold bar and run away from the village. There was once she got so close as to dig out the buried gold bar and as she stared at the gold bar, contemplating whether to take it. Then she discovered that she couldn’t go through with it; this inability, however, had nothing to do with honesty or dishonesty, but with sheer terror she was feeling. She had just realized there were two things that prevent us from achieving our dreams: believing them to be impossible or seeing those dreams made possible by some sudden turn of the wheel of fortune, when you least expected it. For at that moment, all our fears suddenly surface: the fear of setting off along a road heading who knows where, the fear of a life full of new challenges, the fear of losing forever everything that is familiar. People want to change everything and, at the same time want it all to remain the same.
Finally the villagers were presented with the tempting offer and they decided to take the bait and get rid of the old widow who could see and speak to spirits. And as we see the battle between the devil and the angel of Chantal and the stranger, Chantal finally takes control and tries to convince the villagers why they should not commit this atrocious act. Did she succeed? Well…read the book to find out!
This story reminds me so much of the “Screwtape Letters” by C.S.Lewis where we could see how the battle with the unseen world of spirits can affect our lives. And I liked the short story which was told at the end to kinda “sum things up”. This story was about a saint and a sinner. The saint wanted to spend the night at the sinner’s place knowing full well that the sinner has planned to murder him while he sleeps in the middle of the night. But before they went to sleep, the two of them talked together for awhile. The sinner decided to challenge the saint with 3 questions:
1. If tonight, the most beautiful prostitute in the village came in here, would you be able to see her as neither beautiful or seductive?
2. If I offered you a pile of gold coins to leave your home in the mountain and come and join us, would you be able to look at that gold and see only pebbles?
3. If you were sought by two brothers, one of whom hated you, and the other who saw you as a saint, would you be able to feel the same towards them both?
To all the 3 questions, this was what the saint answered: “ No, it would be very hard but I would be able to control myself.”
The moral of the story? Both the saint and the sinner had the same instincts-Good and Evil struggled in both of them, just as they did in every soul on earth. When the sinner realized that the saint was the same as he, the sinner realized too that he was the same as the saint. It was all a matter of control. And choice. God gave us all a free will. A choice to do good or to do bad. Use it wisely…but the best thing is God gives us grace. In the song below by Steven Curtis Chapman, it talks about the privilege we humans have to have experienced the "grace of God and the redemption of sin” that angels only wish they knew.
Angels Wish
~ 1 Peter 1: 12 ~
Was God smiling
When He spoke the words
That made the world
And did He cry about the flood
What does God’s voice sound like
When He sings, when He’s angry
These are just a few things
That the angels have on me
Well, I can’t fly
At least not yet
I’ve got no halo on my head
And I can’t even start to picture Heaven’s beauty
But I’ve been shown the Saviour’s love
The grace of God has raised me up
To show me things the angels long to look into
And I know things
The angels only wish they knew
I have seen the dark and desperate place
Where sin will take you
I’ve felt loneliness and shame
And I have watched the blinding light of grace
Come breaking through with a sweetness
Only tasted by the forgiven and redeemed
And someday I’ll sit down with my angel friends
Up in Heaven
They’ll tell me about creation
And I’ll tell them a story of grace
Comments