God and Satan

Posted on December 13, 2002 in Myths & Mysticism

St. Teresa of Avila once said this in a prayer: “If this is how you treat your friends, it is no wonder that you have so few of them.”

Someone who chose to go nameless asked in a comment under my earlier rant about “Things I Have Survived“:

Satan never mentioned once?

Why not?

It’s not a bad question, even if the asker proves to be a blog roach. My rant at God was based on Biblical understandings derived from the Book of Job, Jonah, and a particular incident in the life of Christ. Except in the Book of Job where Satan or the “Adversary” is a good pal of God (they’re out for a walk when they make the bet), there’s not much mention of Satan causing disasters in peoples’ lives. Sodom and Gommorah? God. The Plagues of Egypt? God. The Walls of Jericho falling down? God. In the Book of Job, Satan is an employee of God: he’s the one who does all the disasters for the Mighty One. Why, I ask, pick on the little bureaucrat spirit who is only following orders? I go straight to the policymaker.

Some think it is blaphemous to tell God off. The Bible, on the other hand, shows many instances where prophets or ordinary people give God a piece of their mind and are not punished for it. Consider the story of the Samaritan woman who chided Jesus for not curing her daughter because she wasn’t Jewish: Jesus relented and cured the girl from a distance. After Job tells God off, old Jehovah doesn’t smite him down. He restores everything Job lost and then some.

It’s very clear, when you read the Bible, that God the Father is the source of disasters. To suggest that we should blame disaster on Satan means that we’ve allowed a Zoroastrian idea to corrupt our Christianity/Judaism/Islam. If you want that kind of struggle between Good and Evil, pour a lot of lighting fluid on a mound of charcoal, light it, and worship THAT.

In the meantime, using my mind shaped by Judeo/Christian/Islamic mythology, I’ll keep taking my complaints to the Top.