This is quite good. I hope you don’t mind, but I snipped a couple of things to comment on.
In Heinlein’s “Job: A Comedy of Justice” the devil and Yahweh are peers who have a boss, so there is precedent for the devil having to answer to someone higher up.
This I just wanted to quote because I love the idea of the devil conceding because he has low self-esteem. “Ah, who am I kidding, I’m only an immortal being in charge of tempting and torturing billions of souls, what chance did I ever have against some guy from rural Georgia. Oh well, I guess I better get back to work - Facebook isn’t going to invent itself.”
Raised Catholic my first 18 years, so I may or may not have learned/gleaned the following:
By accepting the Devil’s wager, Johnny already lost his soul, the prize of the golden fiddle just sealed the deal – what does the devil care for gold anyway? The Devil was just faking defeat in case someone wrote this down for the New Testament II: The Newer Testament.*
I don’t for one second believe the author of the song implied any of this. Just funnin’.
I figure the devil doesn’t really care about souls. As has been pointed out, he’s an immortal being verging on divinity; why would he care about humans?
What the devil cares about is the competition with God. And God won’t be fooled by any tricks. So if the devil cheated and simply declared he had won when he didn’t, God would know the truth. And the devil sees no point in scoring a victory that God doesn’t recognize.
I think that the Beatles She’s Leaving Home and Eleanor Rigby, and McCartney’s Another Day are all about the same person at three stages of her life.
Shall we call her Eleanor?
Eleanor leaves home to meet the man from the motor trade. But it doesn’t work out. She refuses to admit she was wrong and go back home, so she moves through life in an endless series of nothing relationships (And he comes, and he stays, but he leaves the next day. So sad.) Finally she dies alone, with no one but Fr Mackenzie to care.
Ah, look at all the lonely people. Where do they all come from?
It’s been awhile since I read it, but in the actual Old Testament Book of Job, God and the devil strangely come across as being equals who recognize and accept role the other plays. It kind of reminded me of the old Looney Tunes cartoon with the wolf and the sheep dog, where the lunch whistle goes off and they temporarily suspend their animosity, sit together and eat lunch while shooting the breeze.
God says “check out my faithful servant Job” and the devil says, “sure, it’s easy to be faithful when you have it as good as Job does”. So God says “give him your worst then, mess him up, and we’ll see if he renounces me”. The devil: “you’re on!” Old Testament God was a real dick.
Yeah, this has occurred to me as well while overanalyzing this silly novelty song. “The boy said 'my name’s Johnny, and it might be a sin, but I’ll take your bet, and you’re gonna regret it, 'cause I’m the best that’s ever been!” You’re damn right it’s a sin, Johnny! That’s the con that the devil’s pulling-- he gets Johnny to commit both the sins of pride and greed in accepting the bet-- at that point, it doesn’t matter who wins the fiddle playing contest-- Johnny is damned to hell either way.
Yes, the devil is in competition with God, but the nature of the competition is in how many humans he can corrupt and turn away from God. He doesn’t care whether God knows he tricked them, tricking humans is his go-to strategy in fact; what matters is another soul exiled from God for all eternity.
^ Oh, yeah, that’s them. I’d forgotten the accordion cartoon and figured I was lucky to escape with my life the banjoists wrath, but rules is rules; next time FS cartoons will be linked to.
The Devil Went Down to Georgia is merely Charlie Daniels pissed that he learned the fiddle rather than the guitar. The entire song, of course, is an allegory about the battle between rock (the Devil’s music) and country (Johnny).
I got more of the impression that the devil works for God, in a favoured capacity. If they were equals, Satan wouldn’t need God to give him power over Job.
Nice take, and it may very well be 100% true! And then Johnny of course is the “Mary Sue” to Charlie Daniels.
That’s true, the devil needed permission to start messing with Job. Still, I always found it crazy that an official book of the Bible acknowledged God and the devil being on semi-friendly speaking terms, like a couple of co-workers chatting by the water cooler.
God and Satan both are playing by a set of rules. God has the advantage because he invented the game and wrote the rules.
God agreed to play by these rules because he knows they favor him overall. Satan agreed to play by these rules because they put some restraints on what God will do.
Cher’s “The Way of Love” addresses an undefined “you.” “If you meet a boy/That you like a lot/And you fall in love/But he loves you not…” At this point it could be the general “you,” as in “If one meets a boy/That one likes…”
But the next lines are: “If a flame should start/As he holds you near/Better keep your heart/Out of danger, dear…” So she’s addressing the song to one specific person, someone she cares for. She continues in this vein, playing out the scenario to its tragic conclusion, posed as a question: “Then what will you do/When he sets you free?”
Finally: “Just the way that you/Said goodbye to me.” The dear one she’s been addressing is the former lover who has dumped her and gone looking for… a man.
