Regarding the Darkness Within

Things go wrong in life. Accidents and mistakes permeate our days way-laying our plans. But sometimes there is no mistake; sometimes we find a battle inside ourselves of diverse desires and in the end a choice to frustrate some for the sake of others.

Of late my own choices, to go to college, to train in jujitsu, to write a blog, have come at the cost of my relationship with sleep. My choice, no accident, but I wish I could have it both ways. However, some problems we have are out of our control, or so nearly out of our control, that it hardly seems fair that they are our problems.

No one is dealt a perfect hand in life, and even then none of us makes it through without a bevy of mishaps. The worst, though, can be a bad choice. Not a, “I was confused,” or a, “I miss-calculated,” but those haunting decisions made when listening to the darker impulses of our nature.

There is an amazing book with quiet possibly the corniest title in existence, Werewolf Cop: A Novel, by Andrew Klavan. Part of the terror a werewolf story holds is the concept that those darker impulses would be brought out un-suppressed, uncontrolled, and their consequences irreversible.

The analogy seems perfect, for what drives the werewolf if not hunger, and what do those real dark aspects of ourselves demand if not to be fed? Perhaps I need some sleep, but it seems to me there is a little werewolf in all of us; a dark hunger that only grows when indulged. Is there no silver bullet to lay this beast finally to rest? Would we survive such a medicine?

We could not, and our position seemed hopeless. For, not only would that beast not perish without our own destruction, it very often wins the battle of our wills.

“The depravity of man is at once the most empirically verifiable reality but at the same time the most intellectually resisted fact.”
~Malcolm Muggeridge

It seemed assured that man would live in darkness, but then light entered the world. Jesus came and offered Himself a sacrifice to take away our sins, and rose again to give us life.

Buy Klavan’s book at Amazon here: https://www.amazon.com/Werewolf-Cop-Novel-Andrew-Klavan/dp/1605989738