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The Devil and Love

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I was recently stopped in my tracks while watching television.  A relatively sophomoric comedy series that I had been watching, called Reaper, managed to make a statement within that caused me a great deal of pause.  I had hoped to be able to find a clip of it on the internet, but, well, apparently not too many other people were struck as deeply by it as I was. . . Perhaps because not too many people were actually watching the show during it’s run.

The show follows Sam, a 21 year old who finds out on his 21st birthday that his parents had sold his soul to the devil.  Now he’s become a bounty hunter for the devil, rounding up the souls that have escaped from hell in order to get them back down to their eternity of torture.  Yeah, some real deep stuff.  However, Sam spends a lot of time with the devil, and as such, gets to have some rather intimate (and silly) conversations with him.  One of them, the one that sparked my interest, was regarding a girl that Sam was interested in.

When the devil was offering his advice, Sam interjects and asks him, “I thought you didn’t believe in love?”  Here’s the rest of the conversation:

Devil: I don’t believe that humans can feel true pure love. But I know that it exists. I’ve experienced it myself. I’m not human, remember?
Sam: You actually loved somebody? Who? [Devil looks up] You mean God? Didn’t you try to overthrow him or something.
Devil: Well, let’s just say we had a little fight. I may have been a tad impetuous.
Sam: But you loved him.
Devil: With everything that I was, I loved him. And he loved all of us, too

Now, although I tend to consider the idea of Satan being a fallen angel to be somewhat questionable, based on the lack of direct Scriptural support of the idea, Satan must come from somewhere, and seeing as we are unaware of there being anything that God has not created, well, Satan must come from God.  He and God have interacted directly several times in the Scriptures, most notably in the account of Job.  Satan knows God, he knows the Scriptures, he has been in the presence of God and therefore must know the True Love that radiates from the Creator.  As such, whether or not Satan was at one time an angel, he knows that love, and to be separated from it must be complete torture.

Obviously this brings so much to question about the nature of who Satan is.  But for the ease of discussion, let’s consider him a fallen angel.

For whatever reason, Satan and God had a disagreement of sorts, which caused Satan to be expelled from God’s presence.  I can’t even imagine how he would have been able to do such a thing considering the idea that God radiates true love, which would, in theory, bring about complete allegiance, wouldn’t it?

But think, for example, about Judas.  Judas was one of the men Jesus requested to be at his side as one of the apostles.  He needed Judas to betray him so his plan could be completed.  Although standard Christian doctrine does demonize Judas, he was a necessary fixture for Christ’s work, and, well, Jesus brought him to his side to put him in the position to fall to the temptation of betrayal.

Judas’s act was, in many ways, unavoidable.  Could Satan’s have been as well?  Is there some greater master plan in effect that we have not completely understood yet?  Although God saw his creation as good, is it possible that we need to go through some sort of purification process here on earth in order to complete his plan?

Looking at Satan in this light changes the picture slightly.  Just as we see images of the Christ in earlier Scriptural accounts (such as Moses leading the Israelites to the Promised Land), is it possible that we see such images of Satan?  Could Judas be one of those?

The Bible story really is the account of the battle between Satan and God.  We start right at the beginning with how Satan tarnished God’s creation, and we see at the end in Revelation, the destruction of Satan with God’s tarnished creation.

But is God’s love incapable of also reaching Satan himself?  If Satan had known God’s love, he must surely want nothing more than to return to it, right?  If Satan is the creation of God, then he too must be viewed as the Prodigal Son, off on his own to make his own way, only to find out that he is stuck in depravity and wishes to return.  What if the story of the Bible really does come down to God’s intended salvation of the devil?  That might be pushing it a tad, but just random questions based on a random thought coming off of a rather non-philosophical TV show.

There’s a relationship between God and Satan that we’ve never fully been able to understand.  The conversation that occurs in Job makes that all too clear.  If it weren’t for Satan’s existence, would we even require our Father?  Our focus definitely wouldn’t be on salvation.

My gears have been turning on this for almost a month now, and I’m still not really all that much further yet.  But, I couldn’t help but put the question out here and see anyone else’s thoughts on the matter.  Where does Satan truly fit within the picture of Christianity?  Right now I think the basic thought of him doesn’t extend much further than that of Hades, the ancient Greek god of the Underworld.  But there must be more to him, right?  He’s not God’s brother (assuming that Zeus is the Greek equivalent to the Father).  He is God’s creation (by all probable reasoning).  If God has a purpose, a plan, for all of his creation, surely he didn’t create Satan to be condemned, did he?

I’m Beginning to Think it’s all Bullshit.

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Image obtained from flickr.com

The title is a tad over-dramatic, I know.  I feel okay using it due to it being an exact quote that was spoken to me a few days ago.  A good friend of mine, someone I’ve known for as long as I can remember, said this as a direct result of his frustration with Christianity.

 

He, like me, grew up in the church.  He, like me, went to private schools his entire life so that he would grow up receiving a strong Christian education.  He, like me, had spent his entire childhood spent in the community of the church.  The one main difference between us right now is that he is still a member of the church we grew up in.  I’m not.

Let’s step back slightly for a second.  I first want to admit that I have not been dedicating as much time to this site for the past month or so as I would generally like to.  I’ve been working on some personal projects and dealing with real life in general.  That’s not an excuse, just a statement that some higher priority items in my life needed more attention than usual, and, well, I had to place them first.  So, my articles these past few weeks have been very sparse. . . mostly just links to things on the internet.

I, however, did have a purpose with those, and it was just a stroke of coincidence that I heard the titular quote at the exact same time I was able to finally write this article.

You see, for the past few weeks, I’ve been highlighting how the world views Christianity.  And one of the more overt views that occurs is that Christianity (or religion in general) is much more like a circus than any form of meaningful spiritual event.  So, amidst the funeral picketing, the rapture announcements, the public condemnation of sinners, the hatred toward homosexuals, the protests, the crying, the political bullshit, the millions of people saying the same thing while stating that they completely disagree with each other, and millions of other things going on with Christianity today, how can anyone look at Christianity today and not come to the same conclusion.

“I’m beginning to think it’s all bullshit.”

This exact thought crosses my mind all too often.  I’m ashamed to admit it, but I feel it’s important to express it.  I grew up in a church that claimed that the Bible was laid out clearly and that there could be no question as to it should be understood.  There was no ‘interpretation’, only reading it and knowing.  There was no need to understand basic issues as how Noah would be able to fit all of the earth’s animals onto his boat.  Speciation would have been labeled as heresy, if they even thought they needed to understand the concept.

I’m a fan of faith.  I think blind faith is one of the most beautiful things that can occur, even if it’s highly dangerous.  But when  you’re talking about the faith that we’re talking about with regards to God, you’re talking about a deep reverence, not just straight up complacency.  Can God really expect you to hear stories, such as that of the Great Flood, and not wonder about the logistics of such a concept?  He made us to be very curious beings, not to merely strike it all up to the ‘mystery of God’.

But therein lies the problem, doesn’t it?  If the Bible is shown to be false, as per our understanding of the text, then we have a giant issue, especially since we’ve already stated that the Bible is “super-easy to understand and no one should have question as to the meaning of the texts”.  If one piece is wrong, what other pieces are wrong?  How far does the crack lead, before Jesus falls out?

So, it’s easy to see then, when the church pronounces hate (judgement) upon all the sinners of the world, and very basic knowledge of Christ states that he pronounced love for all, we have already begun with a crack in the foundation of Christianity.  And the louder and more obnoxious Christianity gets, the bigger that crack gets until each and every one of us finally gets to the point where we say, “I’m beginning to think it’s all bullshit.”

And why shouldn’t we think that?  In today’s world, it feels as though we are constantly being lied to.  We have been placed into a situation today where we are always on guard against Nigerian princes, shady politicians, pedophile priests, and whatever else.  We have lost our trust in each other because of how much our trust has been abused.  Our trust has been misplaced so many times that it’s almost impossible to use it for anything ever again.  And trust is the most integral part of faith.  We have to be able to trust our convictions in order to actually believe that what we believe is true.

So, what’s the point here?

I don’t know.

This struggle is one that I still have on a daily basis.  The Christian education that I grew up with only serves to make things more difficult, as the knowledge of the Scriptures are there, but knowledge behind the interpretation is not.   As I’ve gotten older and searched the Scriptures on a much more personal level, I find that crack growing for myself.  I find myself wondering to myself more and more, “How much of this is bullshit?”

I don’t have an easy answer.  I’ve racked my brain for years now on what can be done to make this easier, and I’m not sure that there is a way.  I know that one part of it is that we need to bring honesty back into the world.  The church is one of the greatest liars of all time.  Whenever I see a pastor declaring condemnation on anyone, I get pissed, because their condemnation is nothing more than them lying and claiming that they themselves are without blame.  We learn that idea pretty quickly in John 8:7.

Pastors need to go the other route.  I believe that they should be open about their sins.  I think that they should openly confess their sins every week at church.  I think everyone should.  That’s the first step to getting us all on the same level.

The next step is to openly admit that we have absolutely no clue what’s going on.  Our current interpretation of the Bible creates more gaps than it fills.  We need to acknowledge that if we want to keep from continuing to look like we’re full of shit.  The church has spent so much time lying about how certain it is, in order to gain authority, that its footing is quickly coming out from under it as those ‘facts’ are appearing to be much less factual.

And we need to admit that.  Because if we don’t, then the things that we are sure of, such as Christ, will be thrown out with the rest of the “bullshit”.

And then, of course, the next step is to make a movement toward enlightenment.  The church has spent so much time afraid of enlightenment.  That same fear is one of the main reasons why the Bible was not produced in the people’s language until the time of Luther.  “If people are allowed to read the Bible themselves and come to their own conclusions, what’s to say that they will stay in the truth?”

What is the truth?

Well, discounting the idea of universal salvation, the only knowledge that would be needed for salvation would be knowledge of that salvation.  No where have I seen in my searching of the Scriptures does it require us to understand any portion of the Bible correctly.  In fact, knowledge of the Bible itself is not mentioned as being necessary for salvation.  Just Christ.

If the Scriptures are, indeed, the infallible Word of God, then why should we fear interpretation of them outside of what the church has already declared to be the ‘true’ interpretation?  If God placed these words together and fashioned our Scriptures for us, then shouldn’t we trust that he did so in a way that would allow for those who read it to gain a better knowledge and/or appreciation for him?

Which has the better chance of pushing people away from Christ?  The inspired Word of God, or the words of men who have come to the Bible with their own pre-conceived notions?

I think the answer is pretty simple.

The church is afraid of honesty, and that is causing many to fall away from not only the church, but also the Church.  If the churches of the world today don’t change their methods soon, they will have become the Anti-Christ, the ones who place on the armor of Christ, only to attack him and his followers.

This is a very uncertain time all around, why must we make God uncertain through lies and hiding from the issues that are there with the church’s current interpretation?  Why can’t we all just get together under the shared faith of Christ’s saving work, and preach that knowledge as one, understanding that we might disagree on the other details.