Reader Question- Sympathy for the Devil

What's your view on the Devil? Do you think that he is real and that he rambles through the world looking for victims? And what about the story in which he was the most beautiful of angels until he rebelled, I have never found it in the Bible! When did the whole thing started? All in all, what's your view on the concept of "Evil"?

-Pippen

Fool of a Took! (Sorry, Pippen. Had to be done. You can't say otherwise.)

The Serpent. The Devil. Satan. Lucifer. Easily one (or more) of the most fascinating characters in the Bible, not least because there is so very little actually written about him (them?) in it. 

A lot of people, influenced by culture, have come to see the Christian Worldview as one where the forces of Good (God, angels, and the good gentile boys and girls) are locked in an age-old war with the forces of Evil, (Satan, the demons, and those kids who grew up playing D+D.) The Devil himself is often portrayed as some sort of puppetmaster, seizing control of people and forcing them to do horrible things, or else making deals for their souls that never turn out quite as they expected. Think either the Exorcist or Faust.

And then think again.

I once heard someone say that the original fans of Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories were the originators of fan fiction. Laughable. People have been writing Bible related fan fiction for centuries, (Some, like Paradise Lost, are now considered  and no character gets a more intensive treatment than Satan.There really isn't all that much there. Even the name Lucifer (Daystar) is used in Isaiah but is much more likely to be a metaphor to represent the downfall of a human king than an actual angel of light turned Evil One.

For a representation of an "Evil One" that is actually clearly characterized, we need to turn to Genesis and to Job. The serpent from the Garden of Eden is often conflated with Satan, and yet if you only had the Eden story to go by, you would have no reason to believe the snake was anything other than a talking snake. The all knowing narrator never gives us any hints like "The snake, who was actually the spirit of a fallen angel who hated humanity for being replaced them," to make us think anything other than the story that is told... wherein a talking snake with legs convinced Adam and Eve to disobey God.

Even saying convinced is a bit of a reach... the snake asks questions, and named possibilities. And humanity acted. Which leads me to the Satan found in the book of Job.

In Job, Satan arrives in God's court. Asked where he has been, Satan reports that he had been wandering the world, watching. His name actually means prosecutor, here, and so we are given a view that is very different from the Classical Satan... rather than an enemy, Satan is portrayed as a member of God's court, a member with a very important function: to look at the world, and show where it has gone wrong.

When God boasts to Satan about about how great Job is, Satan merely responds that it is easy to be a god-fearing man when life is served to you on a silver platter. Later, Satan mentions that wealth is fleeting, but so long as Job has his health, it is still easy to serve God stalwartly. Everything that happens to Job is done with God's full knowledge, indeed, with God's permission. 

Very different from what we see in Paradise Lost, eh? Or nearly any pop culture representation of Satan or demons. (Now I should probably brace for a rush of Supernatural fans. No spoilers, I haven't seen it.)

I think my thoughts on Satan (and evil) can be best conveyed through the words of master theologian Mick Jagger:

"Pleased to meet you, hope you guess my name,
But what's troubling you is the nature of my game.
I watched in glee while your Kings and Queens
Fought for ten decades for the Gods they'd made.
I shouted out who killed the Kennedys,
'Cause now after all... it was YOU and me."

and then later...

"Just as every cop is a criminal,
And all the sinners, saints.
As heads is tails just call me Lucifer
Like I'm in need of some restraint."

Taken from the song Sympathy for the Devil (which happens to be my Karaoke go to) "Lucifer" points out that countless atrocities that are laid at his feet were actually perpetuated by Humanity, that every great act of "evil" ever perpetuated by the Devil was done with Human assistance.

I think this fits perfectly with both the Genesis and Job portrayals of the Devil, a tempter, a prosecutor, someone who whispers in our ears the realities of the world and then steps back to see what we do.

I do believe in Evil, and I understand the desire to personify that evil in some kind of sinister outside force. But that just isn't backed up by scripture. Most of the actual evil you see in the scriptures is performed by human beings. The great mentions of the fall of "Lucifer" that occur in the books of Ezekiel and Isaiah actually talk about the fall of great kings, rulers of great promise who succumb to the temptation to misuse the power their rule has granted them. 

The temptation is very, very great to blame someone else, to claim that the "Devil made us do it." But the Devil doesn't make anyone do anything. Suppose that the classics got it partly right and the Devil's goal is to lure people to Hellfire. If the devil "made" you do it, then what have you done? That's not guilt, at best its entrapment.

We humans have enough potential for evil (or whatever you want to call Worldsuck) within ourselves, that any outside forces that do exist are a far off second place. That is the Biblical lesson of evil.