Blurring the Blade | Previous Challenge Entry

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TITLE: Blurring the Blade | Previous Challenge Entry
By Corinne Smelker
07/23/26
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My Dearest Strumpet,

You’ll never guess what your clever old aunt has been up to. I finally cracked those ridiculous AI platforms the humans are so proud of! A few well-placed whispers in the code, and now half the answers they spit out are gloriously wrong. I’m teaching the machines to sound wise while leading souls in circles. It’s positively delicious. But enough gloating,, back to more important business.

I trust this letter finds you knee-deep in the delightful sludge of your human’s conscience. Your last report that she is beginning to sense the prick of something sharper than mere guilt has me both alarmed and amused. She is teetering on the edge of real repentance, and we cannot allow it. The Enemy loves to call that prick “conviction,” but we have a far more useful word for it: condemnation. Blur the two, and you will keep her chained in the very place the Enemy Above wishes to free her.

Remember the delicious difference. Conviction is the Enemy’s scalpel: precise, momentary, and aimed at a single wound so it may heal. It whispers, “This action is wrong; turn from it and come home.” Condemnation, on the other hand, is our sledgehammer. It smashes the whole being: “You are wrong. You are worthless. You always will be.” Our Father Below excels at this. Where that nauseating Presence convicts to restore relationship, we condemn to sever it. Your task is to make your charge unable to tell them apart.

When that gentle nudge comes about the sharp words she spat at her sister, do not let her simply admit it and slink off to receive that ridiculous “forgiveness.” Amplify the feeling until it becomes a roaring chorus: You are a horrible creature. One of those pathetic followers would never have said that. The Enemy above is sick of you, again. Make her believe the discomfort itself is divine rejection rather than some sickening invitation.

These modern worms are especially easy to snare because they keep quoting that verse about “no condemnation in Ch- Ch-, no, I can type – CHRIST.” (I did it!) Whisper, “See? If you still feel this awful, you must not really belong to Him. Real followers don’t carry this weight.”

Let her chase the fantasy of a guilt-free life by denying her faults, or let her drown in shame because she cannot manufacture the perfect version she thinks the blasted Enemy Above demands. Either way, she stays paralyzed, too ashamed to run to that dreadful cross, too proud to admit she needs it.

Encourage her to compare herself with the polished saints on social media. Their curated prayer journals and glowing testimonies will become our weapons. “Look how peaceful they seem,” you will murmur. “They must not carry the weight you do. Clearly, you are beyond help.”

Should she dare open that Book, direct her eyes first to the lists of the Adversary’s hatred for the wicked. Let her read them as personal indictments rather than road signs pointing her to mercy in the Enemy’s Son. Never let her linger on “There is therefore now no condemnation…”

And whatever you do, keep her far from that … that place of execution. You know what I mean. That wretched sacrifice of the Enemy’s Son. I can barely type the word without my claws curling. If she runs there in honest confession, the game is nearly lost. Make confession feel like spiritual suicide. Let her believe the lie that admitting the sin will only confirm how hopeless she is.

Do your work skillfully, Strumpet. A soul who confuses conviction with condemnation is a soul who lingers just close enough to the light to feel its heat, yet never close enough to be warmed by it. She will attend their gatherings, mouth their prayers, even shed a tear or two, yet remain deliciously ours in the end.

I await your next report with hungry anticipation. Succeed, dear niece, and there may be fresh territory for you in the upper ranks. Fail me again, however, and I will personally drag you down to the Pits of Endless Paperwork, where you will spend the next ten thousand years tempting only stubborn donkeys and wilted houseplants. Do not test me.

Yours in eternal mischief,
Diabolica

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