Satan: A Devilish Dichotomy of Divine Dogma
It’s likely everyone knows that Satan, in his guise as Lucifer, is supposed to have been created as a good creature, an angel - his original name, after all, means “shining light” or “light bearer” and identifies him as the “morning star.” But as the Church held that God’s plan and will were inviolable, and that anyone who spoke out against, tried to change or disagreed with it was inherently evil, heretic, and as Lucifer, daring to equate himself with or even overthrow God (this is never made quite clear, more to follow) had been the archetypal rebel against his Creator, he was seen, by about the fourth century, by the Church as being the leader of all unbelievers, the principle opponent of God, and in time, the Antichrist.
Like I say. I’ve read Milton (the good bit about the battle, not the boring, arse-licking bit in the Garden of Eden where Adam does everything but suck off Michael, it’s fu
cking nauseating and I stopped there) and he seems to propose a very mild reason for Satan’s rebellion and Fall. He says that God announced that from this point on, his son Jesus was to be worshipped as he was. I suppose you could say fair enough, given that, according to doctrine, they’re the one being, though how the Church has ever managed to hoodwink its followers into accepting that a being could somehow split part of himself off and have that part lead a separate life for thirty human years - and yet, not claim this - has always baffled me. It’s literally not explained. It’s like the diagram above, supposedly explaining or outlining the precepts of the Holy Trinity. What does it prove? Nothing. As for Saint Patrick, he can stick that shamrock where the sun don’t shine. That proves nothing either and is total bollocks.
Nobody has ever been able to make me understand what the Trinity is, and I don’t even understand why it has to be. Why not have God three people, God himself, the Don, then Jesus his right hand man and son, and the Holy Ghost as his spiritual enforcer? I could understand that (though I’d never believe in it) a lot more easily than somehow three being one but not really one where one can leave three and so can two and yet they’re still one. Oh come on. Give us a chance here, huh? Anyway, the point is that if God said Jesus is my boy, you gonna give him some respect, Satan, I’m not really sure why he wouldn’t do that. I’m certainly not sure why he would go to war against God, especially as he must have known he was going to lose. I mean, this is, after all, God. You’re beaten before you start.
But other stories about Satan’s pride making him want to overthrow God and take his place? Now that makes sense. As will happen in any autocracy, eventually someone will resent your power and think you’ve grown too old and soft, and maybe the creation of humanity pushed Satan over the edge. Novelist Anne Rice does a good job (while still taking a lot of artistic licence and making sure we understand this is fiction) of painting a picture of a frustrated Satan, who sees God as someone who won’t change, won’t accept that his creation has grown even beyond his wildest expectations, and eventually gets so pissed off that he says the wrong thing and gets kicked out of the house. It’s like the Judas thing, Why do they expect us to believe he just betrayed Jesus for money? There had to be more to it than that. But the Church expects you to take everything they say on, well, faith, and no dissenting opinion is listened to. In fact, a few hundred years ago if you even expressed such doubts they’d make sure you were never cold again....
Saint Augustine (354 - 430) believed that even the Devil’s Fall was part of God’s divine plan. He postulated that the cosmos was divided into two parts, one good and one evil, one ruled by God (the Kingdom of Heaven) and one ruled by Satan (Earth). He said God had control of Satan but had set him over the Earth as part of his eternal struggle against the Devil. Part of human free will, then, allowed humans to make a conscious (or unconscious) decision whether they chose to follow the paths of righteousness or turned to the ways of evil. With free will being established, I suppose, it would have been easy to condemn those who fell under Satan’s influence, berating them that it was their own fault, their own choice. The Devil would come to be blamed for many of the evils in the world as time went on, as people conveniently forgot the idea of free will, and that even he, as the Prince of Darkness, had not the power to force people into evil against their will. Like a person hypnotised can’t be made do something that is contrary to their nature, so evil had to be acquiesced to, accepted, agreed to. This may have accounted for the beginnings of the tales of deals with the Devil.
As for his being the Father of Lies? For that we have to thank the apostle John:
'He was a murderer from the beginning and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own; for he is a liar and the father of it.' (John 8:44). Satan was seen to be the one turning all concepts upside down (would it be sacrilegious and flippant to call him Mister Topsy-Turvy? Yes. Yes it would), making evil good and light darkness, telling man he is the author of his own destiny, not God, and that the needs and wants of the mortal flesh can supplant the spiritual needs of the soul, in direct contravention to God’s purpose. Not in the official Bible, but explained in the Gnostic Acts of Peter, is this lesson he tries to teach even as he is sentenced to be crucified. Got to admire his perseverance!
I beseech you, the executioners, crucify me thus, with the head downward and not otherwise: and the reason wherefore I will tell unto them that hear. . . . Learn ye the mystery of all nature, and the beginning of all things, what it was. For the first man, of the race of whom I bear the likeness, fell head downwards and showed forth a manner of birth such as was not heretofore: for it was dead, having no motion. He, then, being pulled down . . . established this whole disposition of all things, being hanged up an image of the creation, wherein he made the things of the right hand into left hand and the left hand into right hand, and changed about all the marks of their nature, so that he thought those things that were not fair to be fair, and those things that were in truth evil, to be good . . .. And the figure wherein ye now see me hanging is the representation of that man that first came unto birth. ('Acts of Peter' 37)
What we’re told in the Bible I believe is merely that Peter did not believe himself worthy of being put to death in the same manner as Jesus, and so asked to be crucified upside-down. The passage above does a better job explaining his thinking behind that. Mind you, you can just imagine the lads waiting to crucify him, can't you: "Doesn't this guy ever shut up? Let's get him nailed up quick - if I have to hear him explain the nature of man one more time I swear I'll be ready for the cross myself!"
The more I read about the early creation and formation of Christianity and Judaism - the Abrahamic religions, let’s say, and include Islam in that, though I have yet to read enough about that to have an opinion on it or be able to speak with any sort of mild authority on it - the more ludicrous it seems, both the people who “invented” it and the people who follow it. It’s a mass of contradictions, one of the most fundamental seeming to me to be the concept of the Holy Trinity, another being that even though God is supposed to be omnipotent he allows evil, in the form of the Devil, to oppose him. We’re never told that the Devil is part of his Plan, that he basically operates under his sufferance, so we assume, as we would, that Satan upset God’s machinations and became a nuisance and then his Adversary, threatening his creation in a way God had perhaps not foreseen.
Not foreseen? But isn’t God all-powerful? How could he not have foreseen such an event, any event? How could anything be a mystery, a surprise, a spanner in his works? And as per usual, the Bible and the Church don’t attempt to explain this major dichotomy in their teachings, just urge you believe what they tell you and not question it. But if you examine any of these religions in even the most cursory way, cracks begin to appear almost at once and your head starts to shake and you say to yourself, how can people fall for this? It’s a good question, and the only real answer I can come up with is that people want to fall for it. It’s likely a good percentage of Christians, Jews or Muslims know the religion they follow is bunkum, could never be - fairy tale stuff. Rising from the dead? Come on. Living after death up in the clouds? Pull the other one. Bread and wine that transmute into human flesh and blood? What have you been drinking?
But though these questions are easily batted aside with the most simple and basic logic, such a thing is not welcome in religions. Utilise logic and you can only come to the conclusion that this is a load of made-up malarky created to try to first, explain the world in terms men could understand but more importantly, second, establish control over the weak-minded. It’s telling that a religion like Buddhism doesn’t seem to have a Devil, or if it does (I freely admit I know as much about Buddhism as I do about Islam; both could be written on the back of a postage stamp) the idea is not to fear it. Wait, yes, of course there is a Devil: Mara. we mentioned him before didn’t we, when he tempted the Buddha? So yeah, he’s there, but to my knowledge Buddhists are not taught to fear the devil and sin. By its very nature (I believe) Buddhism requires its adherents to give up all worldly goods and all concerns pertaining to the world, and to dedicate their lives exclusively to the pursuit of enlightenment. I could be wrong, but I don’t think Buddhism has a God, as such, just the attainment of knowledge and what is known as Nirvana, a grunge band from Seattle, but also a state of rapturous self-awareness, peace and contentment. Doesn’t sound like Cobain’s crowd to me!
Any religion, in my opinion, that has to force its followers to obey by means of a bogeyman thrown up to frighten them into behaving has no right to exist. It must be one of the most insecure religions in history, forever terrified of its adherents being corrupted by what are seen as “false beliefs” or even “false gods” - even God himself pouts that his people shall not worship false gods; hardly the words of a confident, self-assured deity. All though its history, almost up to modern times, anyone who did not conform or toe the line was disinherited from the Kingdom of Heaven, called a heretic and often helped on to Hell by way of a dress rehearsal, as it were, for the real thing. Priests, bishops and inquisitors all pontificated that they were endeavouring to save the heretic’s soul, when in fact all they were doing was ensuring that disobedience to or disbelief in the Church was punished so severely and so mercilessly that others would fear to follow the example of those who had spouted heresy. All about maintaining control, keeping their world order going, telling the faithful everything was all right, even as their own inadequacies, lust for power and hypocrisy was staring the faithful in the face. One is certainly reminded of Leslie Nielsen, standing before the aftermath of an explosion, calmly exhorting everyone to “go home, nothing to see here.”
So the term “necessary evil” has to apply to the invention of the Devil. People are, as Nick Cave once sang, no good, basically, and all that keeps most of us from raping our next door neighbour or looting the local electronics store or robbing a bank is the fear of reprisal from the authorities. Well, that’s not true of course: our own moral compass, instilled in us both by our parents and society (and to some extent perhaps, our faith, if we have one) prevents us from doing the really bad stuff. But even the best of us has, I’m sure, gone into a shop and wondered what it would be like to grab something, stuff it under our jacket and leg it out of the store. Of course, driving that desire is an almost harmless adrenalin rush, but we do dream of being able to break the law for our own purposes (while still expecting the law to be there and in operation when someone breaks it and it affects us, of course) and if we’re honest, the only thing that holds us back is the fear of punishment.
So too with our faith. If there were no consequences to bad actions, we’d all be bad. If you were told to pray and go to church and fast and be nice to people, and the question was asked, what if we don’t, and the answer was a shrug, nobody would take such edicts seriously. But if you’re told well, if you don’t do that, then the Devil will get you and drag you down to Hell (and you’re sufficiently ignorant, impressionable or gullible to believe this could actually happen) then you sit up and take notice. If I’m not nice to my friends the Devil will get me. I’d better be nice to my friends. If I take this computer - even if nobody sees me do it and I get away with it - God will know and will send the Devil to take me. And so on. It’s quite as ludicrous as it seems, and really, other than among fundamentalist Christians and Jews, and children, nobody really thinks that way any more. But back when Christianity, and even Judaism was new, as Zoroaster created his own religion in Persia, the idea of a ravening beast-man pursuing you through the streets or coming into your room to eat your soul because you said a bad word to your mother was very real. It was taken literally, not as a metaphor, and no doubt many a child - and adult - who believed they had sinned trembled in their bed at night or looked furtively behind them, expecting the dark shadow to eclipse theirs and a clawed hand to reach out for them.
The Devil, therefore, fulfils a useful purpose for the Church. He is the enforcer, if you will, though he doesn’t make sure you do God’s bidding or else; he offers you an alternative whereby you don’t have to do what God says, but there is a price. And the Church tells you that humans have free will, nobody can make you be good, but if you’re not then what happens is on your own head. Why take the risk? Be good, follow scriptures, honour your father and your mother et cetera and you needn’t worry about the Devil, because God will protect you and the Devil can’t stand up to God. He needs people like you to help him disobey and cause problems for God, and if you don’t, and Abraham in the next street doesn’t, and Ishamel down the road doesn’t, and that boy you sit next to at school, what’s his name, Jacob? If he doesn’t, and then nobody does, Satan will be on his own and all he can do is sulk in Hell.
So the Church may have railed at, denounced and raged over the existence of the Devil, but they needed him, and they knew it. He was what kept everyone in line. He was the dark shadow waiting in the corner, the hand that reached out when you strayed from the path, the whispering hiss in the darkness that tempted you onto forbidden paths, and you needed God’s strength to steer clear of him. Hey, we’re God’s agents on Earth. You know what? We’ll help you. We’ll keep you safe, keep you from falling into Satan’s hands, and all we ask in return is blind, stupid, stubborn and unquestioning obedience and dibs on your immortal soul when you snuff it. What do you say, huh?
Not only that, but the Church and Satan need puny humans. Satan certainly does. Powerful as he may be said to be, he is unable (so far as the Church is concerned anyway) to manifest in his own form on the Earth, and must work through the agency of humans. So he can possess people with his spirit, but that’s a little extreme and he doesn’t often tend to do that. What he does is far more subtle. He enters the hearts of men, touching them with his black fingers, twisting and warping and shrivelling them up, corrupting them and turning them to his evil purposes, and making them do his bidding, or we should say, encouraging or allowing them to do so, for as we’ve already pointed out, man has free will and therefore cannot be forced to do anything he does not want to do. So Satan can’t force someone to, say, burn down a church, but he can put in their mind reasons for doing so, a desire to carry out the deed, assurances that it is the right thing to do and that they will not be caught, and so on.
We end up then with a sort of three-way symbiotic relationship: God and the Church need mortals, for what is God (and more to the point, what is the Church) without worshippers? Satan needs mortals to be the tools by which he works his mischief in the world and thwarts and warps God’s plan, and mortals need both God and Satan, the one to grant them everlasting life and salvation from sin, the other to allow them to express their baser desires and rebel against God if they wish to.
An unholy trinity, indeed.
And all created in the mind of man.