“How do we do this?” The Devil sits in his finely upholstered leather chair and sifts through his cigar, breathing out the smoke from his nostrils.
“How do we topple the wisest man in the world?”
A younger, but well trained devil wearing a white suit with a striped blue tie raises his hand.
“How about we use his wisdom against him?”
The Devil looks his way, breathes another smoke and smoothly says, “It’s not like any wisdom you idiot. This wisdom is from God. We can’t mess with it.”
There was an odd silence in the conference room. The other demons were merely looking down, some even tapping their fingers on the maple-colored conference table.
“How about women?”
An elder demon with funny looking circular eyeglasses breaks the deaf noise.
“That’s a start.” The Devil looks at him. Still the most glorious looking fallen-angel of them all with his clean-shaven face and finely braided hair.
“What do you propose?”
The elder demon takes off his eyeglasses and gets his handkerchief to wipe it. “Well, we’ve seen his appetite for these beautiful young virgins…” Then he clears his throat as he put his glasses back on. “So I thought there must be something we could work out from there.”
The Devil puffs another whiff from his cigar. “You do know he wrote a lot of proverbs about women, don’t you?”
The elder demon responds, “Oh yes, he wrote a lot about promiscuous and unfaithful women. That’s not the type of women he keeps.”
The Devil rearranges himself from his seat and points to the elder demon, cigar in hand, “Exactly! And that’s why it is an uphill climb to try and topple him from there.”
The elder demon shuffles the paper works in front of him. “Well, it says here that the quantity of his women is way out of hand.” He shoots a strong look at the Devil. “But best of all, it says that the types of women he takes are those who are from foreign lands.”
The Devils eyes widened as he began to stand up, “That’s it! That’s it! That’s how we created doubt in the early Israelite leaders! That’s how we gouged out Samson’s eyes! Yes, it’s brilliant!”
Then the younger demon again raised his hand, “But how about his wisdom from God?”
The Devil, stunned, sat back down slowly, “Hmmm… Yes… How about that?”
The deafening silence again filled the room. Albeit this time, shortly so.
“Tell him it’s safe EXACTLY BECAUSE of his wisdom.” The elder demon suggested. “Pride. Just like old times.”
The Devil simply looked at him. “Go on.”
The elder demon, seeing that his advice was taking momentum, went to the whiteboard at the end of the conference table, took out a black marker and started to write. “Solomon is an overly confident man because of God’s promises to him and to his wretched father, David.” He drew two stick figures portraying two men.
“If we could leverage on this confidence – in his wisdom and in God’s promises, and NOT in God Himself, then we could penetrate his heart and soul to go beyond God’s commands.” He drew what seemed like a disfigured Torah.
“It would seem to him that his wisdom will never leave him even if he is, in fact, already doing foolish things.” He smiled a devilish smile – showcasing his gold-enameled front teeth
“Utter disobedience.”
The Devil jumped up, “GENIUS! Pure genius!” He points to the whiteboard, cigar in hand.
“You,” The Devil points to the younger demon, “Gather the troops. We need to get a message across to king Solomon who is heavily guarded by God’s angels.”
He takes another whiff from his cigar. “Tell the troops we need to get in just one word. It’s going to be an in and out mission. We’re going to need to box God’s troops out of the way.”
The younger demon stands up, salutes, and leaves.
The Devil walks up to the elder demon and pats him at his back, “You will lead the charge.”
Then he tightens his grip on the elder demon’s shoulder, “Do not disappoint me.”
At that, the Devil starts to leave the room.
“Oh I surely won’t, master,” The elder demon murmurs to himself as he wipes the whiteboard,
“I surely won’t.”
—–
Webmaster’s Back Story
I have always been fond of the Lord’s gift of wisdom to king Solomon – and one perplexing thing in my life is how Solomon, with all his wisdom and splendor has been put down by the Devil to worship other gods.
Here is a man who has had a first-hand experience with God through a dream, has experienced a direct promise in his life, and yet has gone off to pursue the unthinkable!
Didn’t his wisdom tell him that these other gods were made of stone, wood and clay?
Didn’t his wisdom tell him that he was offending the God of his father? His ancestors? His wisdom?
These are the questions that have been bothering me up until today. I could not put it to any other perspective so I wrote this flash story about how the Devil conquered Solomon. It is not entirely biblical of course. It is a work of fiction based on the Bible.
It is actually how I brought myself to think of ways in which king Solomon fell.
And perhaps it is a question we share.
I hope you enjoyed this. But more than that, I hope that you put your trust not in wisdom, or power, or riches, or even God’s promises – rather, put your trust in God alone.
