G.K. Chesterton wrote that a man who did not regard the devil as real, would forever picture reality on too drab a canvas. Artists describe tone or value as the shades and tints of colors—how bright is the brightest and how dark is the darkest. A “high key” painting employs a full range of tones and it affects how all the colors (hues) interact.
If our understanding of reality includes the full cast of characters – the whole dramatis personae from the eternal triune God to the fallen angelic creature Lucifer – then we will need a full tonal palette of emotions to respond to these beings. Our love should always dominate and surpass our hatred. God deserves a much deeper emotion than His adversary.
If we have no hatred for the devil in our emotional palette, then we are not apprehending and responding properly to Reality. If we lack this hatred, two very different pathologies can ensue. This deficit tends to dull a particular set of emotions: anger at injustice, aversion to evil, and fear of Hell. This is the tonal error of the American bishops.
On the other hand, hatred without its proper object may run amuck and consume us in hatred of our father or President; or some past personal malefactor; or a perceived racial or class enemy. That is the emotional tonality of the sexual Left. Man cannot disengage from the basic truths of reality—not in his comprehension and not in his emotional response. He must employ all tonal values of his emotions because the picture of revelation has been drawn in high key.
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