Selling your soul.

[abaris]

There's this idea about selling your soul that goes around. The devil tricks you into signing a contract because he wants your soul. The problem I see with this is that by default he already gets everyone's soul. You have to beg god not to send you to hell, during your lifetime, or you go to hell.

Kind of like Doctor Faustus. That moron didn't broker the right deal. But Goethe managed to paint Mephistopheles as an interesting and kind of likeable character. What I always ask myself is, what's in it for the devil. It's certainly not in his best interest to torture people for eternity, which is nonsensical anyway, since there's that bit about the second coming which predicts the ultimate defeat of Satan.