If You Seek A Devil…

…you’ll surely find one.

Dearest Rachel –

This isn’t the sort of letter I really enjoy writing, but it’s a frustrating situation I feel I have to share with you. You’ve heard me tell you plenty about Daniel, and the prophets and pundits he prefers to listen to over me or anyone else in his family. “You just aren’t open to the truth yet,” he tells me, and not just me, but anyone else who attempts to set him straight. Parent or pastor, it doesn’t matter – we haven’t been exposed to ‘the truth,’ or aren’t willing to accept it yet.

This morning found me dressed and ready for breakfast, only for Daniel to be there already with the internet running, and the crosstalk he was listening to was talking about the ‘666’ in Google’s logo. Having heard about this nearly half a century ago about Proctor & Gamble…

…I wasn’t particularly convinced. This isn’t my first rodeo with something that someone insists contains some sort of satanic symbolism. Besides, what’s the fuss about a mere capital letter ‘G’?

Of course, that’s not what he was talking about; it’s the Google Chrome logo that’s the true sign of evil, and it’s just as much of a ‘seek and ye shall find’ situation as with the P&G logo:

He’s also convinced that the World Economic Forum and CERN (you know, the place in Switzerland with the Large Hadron Collider) are also of the devil, because they, too, have three sixes in their logo, if you look for them.

And the thing is, there’s never a way to prove any of it to be false, because you can’t prove a negative. So he’s fully convinced, and there’s no shaking him of it.

I didn’t stick around for breakfast after that. I had no appetite left, whether for food or for arguing this matter – and I’d have both if I stayed. I bid him good day before heading out, but that was it.

But wait… if all of what he’s been told is true (and it all has to be true, since every use of something even remotely resembling a six has to be intentional – it’s never a case where the designer thought a trio of lines radiating from a center point just ‘looked cool,’ no, of course not), then why stop there? People can find the mark of the Beast literally everywhere!

And if you try to dismiss it as all rather silly, then someone will point out how ‘they’re just desensitizing you to its presence!’ You can’t win.

Personally, I think if someone wants to look for the devil in something – anything – they’ll be able to find him, given enough time and energy devoted to the task. Which, quite frankly, means they’re wasting time that could be so much better spent elsewhere.

The thing is, I’ve been in the designer’s shoes at least once, where a perfectly good image turned into a mild fiasco by my attempt at giving it a third dimensional aspect. So I’m much more inclined to give the designer a pass, especially when dealing with such common elements as these people are staring at until their eyes turn as red as the devil himself.

Then again, anyone can sneak anything past anyone; as proof of this, just read the title aloud, if you dare.

But hey, what do I know? I just ‘haven’t accepted the truth,’ now, have I?