Satan
Mood:
chatty
Topic: General Religion
We know remarkably little about Satan. In fact, most of what we know about him comes from Milton's book,
Paradise Lost. Anyone who's donte a study on Christianity and its stories (for lack of a better term) knows that Satan was once Lucifer, an archangel of God. His sole purpose was to simply reflect God's glory. He was the most beautiful of the angels and pretty high on the hierarchy. Then one day he has a revolution against God and gets 1/3 of the angels of heaven to join him. They promptly lose and are expelled from heaven. Then he decides that as revenge against God he'll ruin stuff with us humans beginning with the temptation in the garden.
I knew that story from a young age even though I only recently read Milton's book. Why? Because it is actually held as a true story circulated throughout the church. So, about 6 years ago I challenged my youth pastors to show me the passage in the Bible that described these events. I'd read a great deal of it and I hadn't come across the story. The index of stories at the end of the Bible didn't have it listed which I thought was weird. This is a big event. And I believe that I did it in a respectful way, not a true challenge but more of a request for knowledge.
Yet, all they did was dodge my question. It was in there they reassured me. Where?, I asked. Somewhere in there they replied. When I persisted they said that it was in some form that was indirect, some vision that had to be interpreted to mean that. But this wasn't a satisfactory answer because they still hadn't even pointed me to this passage.
However, we know that every being created has a function. Every being has some reason for existing. This includes angels. For example, I'm bad with names, but one of the angels is the messenger. Every time an angel appeared to humans (eg the one the tells Mary she's a virgin mother or the one who tells Joseph, her wife, to flee to Egypt to escape Herod's wrath) it's supposedly the same one. There's one who's the captain of the armies of heaven. And so on and so forth.
So I put this together with something that was mentioned in passing in
The Gospel Reloaded and a book that I know very well, I began to see a new function for Satan. I'll be building up to this as the essay continues. For you see, I already knew prior to these revelations that Satan is not God's opposite. For Satan is not as strong nor as powerful as God. He is a creation of God, not
a god. So now I don't even see him a diametrically opposed to God. I see him as a created being with a purpose from God.
Ready to have your foundations and assumptions about Satan rocked? Ready or not, here it comes. I think that everything that we think we know about Satan is completely wrong. I don't think that he rebelled from God at all. I think that God created him with the purpose of being The Chief Temptor. That's right, God created him to try and get us to sin. Why would he do this? We'll get to that momentarily, but first let's look at my "proof".
First of all, there's the temptation in the garden. But that's too easy and doesn't prove much. It could still fall under the revenge against God category. So I'm going to the book of Job.
Job 1:6-12 - One day the angels came to present themselves before the Lord, and The Accusor (Satan the notes inform me) also came with them. (And now I paraphrase)
Lord: Yo Satan where have you been?
Satan: checkin' out the world.
Lord: Have use seen Job? That guy is the perfect follower of mine. He does nothing wrong and always praises my name.
Satan: Well,
of course he follows you and praises you. You've given him everything. He's rich and has a lot of kids who are doing well in life. Who
wouldn't praise you under those circumstances? If you were to take away his stuff he wouldn't praise you anymore.
Lord: Fine then, you can do whatever you want to him except kill him.
So Satan went off to tempt him.
So, first off, if Satan has been expelled from heaven then why is he able to go back and talk to God? Second, why is he called The Accuser? Third, why does God make a bet with him? That seems so unlike God. So if you look at this story it seems as though it is Satan's job to test people. His function is to try and make people sin.
So, we come to the question of why God would create such a being. Well, I think that God can't or won't tempt us. It's just outside of his function as who he is. However, he does use temptations to get us to grow. Afterall, anyone can say that they never cheat on their wives if they are never tempted with someone who wants to make them have an affair. So being tempted allows one to grow. However, if God can't do that then he needs a being to do it. Thus the creation of Satan.
What do you think?
Posted by Eric
at 12:47 AM EST