True Light

Here is something odd that I’ve been thinking about lately, born out of some personal experiences I’ve been having. How real exactly is Satan? I know most people seem to think he is a living, breathing thing, which orthodoxy holds to be a fallen angel. While I think this is probably an accurate read of the Bible (seeing as I am not a great Biblical scholar, and most great ones seem to agree with this view), I wonder if people attribute too much to Satan. As I was saying, this came from a personal experience, in which a particular situation kept arising. Just as I thought I had a handle on things, a new aspect would be introduced that would just mess me up completely.

When I was talking with a friend about this, I told him how I was feeling like God was bringing these new aspects up, because I had failed horribly in this area in the past, and He was going to keep hitting me with it until I got it right. My friend instead replied that, with this new aspect always being brought up to cause a troublesome situation, it seemed a lot more like Satan’s doing than God’s. It sounds like good reasoning to me. Satan is always attributed with the evil things that come into our lives. Whenever something bad happens, it is Satan’s doing. My first thought in response to my friend however was, “yes, but God is letting it happen, knowing just how much trouble it’s going to cause me.” Basically it is the problem of evil. How can a perfectly good God, who loves us enough to sacrifice His only son begotten son for us, let Satan influence us in ways that will potentially lead us away from Him permanently?

There are a vast number of non-Christians in the world, and a good many of them are atheists as well. Obviously, the temptings of Satan have some considerable effect, and God must be allowing it to happen. Are these “allowances” merely our tests and trials in the world, which we must overcome with faith in order to be saved? In a universe and religion where the sovereignty of God is held to such a high regard, then anything that He allows to happen is ultimately His own responsibility. He created us to be susceptible to Satan, He created Satan as he is, and He allows him to tempt us so persuasively when it would be an infinitesimally small thing for God to stop him forever. The problem of evil is one that has plaqued Christianity for a very long time, and no answer I have heard yet seems to give me a completely satisfactory answer.

That problem is a bit too long to answer here though, I want to turn the focus instead to our natural inclinations to blame Satan for everything wrong that happens in our lives. While I’m sure he probably does have some hand in the negative aspects of our world, I think we are shifting the blame horribly unfairly. After all, if we are to be held accountable for our sins, then it seems only right that we must have some hand in our own downfall. While Satan may tempt us, it is us who make the final decissions that bring sin into our lives. Satan may be the instigator of temptation, but we are the ones that follow through. It’s just like a friend that convinces another person to rob a bank. Both parties are held responsible for their actions, and the theif is punished just as severely, if not moreso than the person who convinced him to do it.

Satan is being held trial for his own sins, and is trying his best to rally God’s coveted creation (man) away from Him. However, we are just as responsible for our sins which he tempts as if we had performed them without being prodded. It’s hard to know why God allows Satan to continue to tempt us, but He allows the consequences of that temptation in order to protect the freedom of choice that He gave us all. We can choose to obey God, or to follow the treacherous tongue of the Devil. There really is no third option, because to not be for God, is to be against Him. So this really wasn’t a fantastically philosophical post, because as of now I don’t really have any answers for this problem. I don’t know why God allows Satan (if it is him) to bring up these new situations just as soon as I begin to figure the old ones out. I know there must be some reason, but as of right now, I can’t find an explanation that I would be completely satisfied with. I’ll think about it for a while, and maybe another post will be coming up soon.

-Demo

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