One day, as I drove the stretch of Nebraska road that leads to my acreage, I found myself wondering what it would be like to be angelic and fallen. Would I go around tempting people to covet, lust, envy… just for kicks? It seemed too shallow a motivation for any complex, spiritual creature. There had to be more to it.

Suddenly, I realized that being angelic and fallen must be very similar to being human and fallen – except for one major difference: the provision of a messiah.

I immediately wondered what it must feel like to be damned for a single, failing moment – and worse, to watch humans luxuriate in and take for granted the grace made available to them from a doting God. And I thought: why wouldn’t an angelic creature resent a human recipient of God’s grace? And why wouldn’t a demon want to prove that creature unworthy again and again as a result? Now I knew what it must feel like to be an angelic outsider looking in with jealous eyes and razored heart.

I re-read the story of God’s love affair with humans through this new lens and Demon: A Memoir was born.

One moment you were worshipping the Mighty God and Creator who brought you into existence . . . and the next you were damned for eternity?

You had never seen sin, you had no experience with death, you had never felt separation. But you turned your worship to the greatest being under God in an impulsive moment that seemed to make sense at the time.

Just one thing.

And what if that same God replaced you in his affections with a baser, uglier, mortal breed–a creature made of clay. And you watched in horror as he breathed into their mud bodies the essence of his own spirit–a gift you had never received?

What if you watched as God taught them laws so they could stay in relationship with him . . . and they continued to do the same things that had ruined their relationship with him in the first place–over and over again?

Remember: you only did one thing.

And what would you think if that same God decided, in a radical move, to become one of them, to take on that mud flesh forever, and to let them kill him, and to die for them, so they could be reconciled with him again . . . this time forever?

You were supposed to be with him forever.

And what if you watched as that same mud race took it all for granted, going so far, even, to walk away and refuse it?

Would you be jealous?

Would you hate them?

Would you want them to die?

Of course you would.

Tosca Lee is the critically-acclaimed author of Demon: A Memoir–Christy Award finalist and ForeWord Magazine Book of the Year Silver Award winner–and Havah: The Story of Eve, which received a starred review from Publishers Weekly and 4.5 stars from Romantic Times.

About Ariel Lawhon

Ariel Lawhon is the co-founder of She Reads, novelist, blogger, and life-long reader. She lives in Texas with her husband and four young sons (aka The Wild Rumpus). Ariel believes that Story is the shortest distance to the human heart.

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