Delivered on July 31, 2005, Melana

speaks on Satan.  This is the fifth in a series

dealing with topics requested by the congregation.

What About Satan?                                                                       Job 1:6-13 & Matt. 4:1-11

I want to share a joke with you that someone told me yesterday morning as we picked up our Angel Food orders.

      There was a woman who was addicted to buying things at the mall.  She was literally unable to stop herself from buying something if she went into the mall.  So, for a while, she didn't go and tried to fight the urge.  One day she decided to give it another try and she promised her husband, gave him her solemn word that she would not buy anything.  She did pretty well for the first hour, but then she saw a dress she knew she had to have and despite her promises, she bought it.  When she got home, her husband confronted her with her broken promise.  To which she replied, "I couldn't help it, the devil made me do it."  The husband said, "You should have said, 'Get behind me, Satan.'"  The woman said, "I did, but he told me the dress looked even better from behind."

Before I begin this sermon, I must make a few disclaimers.

      First of all, what you are about to hear is my own interpretation, based on study of Scripture and theology.  There is plenty of current belief and some biblical evidence to say that what I am about to say is wrong.  However, someone asked me to tell you what I believe about Satan, so that is what I will attempt to do.

      I will also try to give you some of the other side of the argument, but by and large I am going to tell you what I believe.  This is one of the joys of being Presbyterian, we can have different opinions and still worship together and learn from each other.

      Please do not be offended by anything I say, it is only my interpretation - and you are free to have your own interpretation.

All that being said, let me begin.

      When I was seven years old, in second grade, a child in my class told me that I was going to hell because of where I went to church.  He also told me the devil would come to get me.  I remember not being able to sleep that night.  My mother came and asked me what the problem was and I told her I was afraid of the devil.  She put me on her lap in our big rocking chair and told me that we didn't believe in the devil - we believed in God and I should quit worrying.

So, the best place for me to begin this sermon  is with this affirmation:

      I believe in God, Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer.

      I also believe that humanity often tries to be like god - that is the crux of the original sin - that we are capable of everything on our own.  Trying to be like god leads human beings to do things that are evil.  I believe in the goodness of God and in the sinfulness of humanity - I do not believe in a personification of evil, often called Satan or the devil.  In fact, I think that this personification of evil tends to encourage people to shirk responsibility for their own actions.  Remember Flip Wilson used to do a skit where he would say, "The devil made me do it."

      The devil made me do it means that I didn't have a choice - and don't have to take responsibility for my actions.  In today's age when people are reluctant to take responsibility for their actions anyway, we don't need any more help in that regard.  We are capable of propagating enough evil through our own actions, without needing Satan to do it for us.

      The second problem I have with Satan is the question of where he came from.  Last week when we talked about creation, we read the first story of creation in the       book of Genesis.  Everything that God made, and that was everything that is, God pronounced good.  I do not believe that God would, or even could, choose to make something that was not good, let alone make something that was evil.  That is a radical statement, that God could not do something - but that is what I believe about the nature of God - God is good, and so is incapable of doing or creating evil.  So God did not create Satan as an evil being - I cannot comprehend that.  Now, perhaps God created Satan as an angel and Satan chose to disobey God.  There is one Old Testament verse, in the 14th chapter of Isaiah, that suggests this fallen angel idea. 

      There are a great many myths that go along with that idea - none more comprehensive that Milton's Paradise Lost.  The word Satan only occurs in the Old Testament 19 times - 14 of those in the book of Job, where Satan is part of God's divine council and is acting as one who would accuse someone of wrong doing.  Satan tells God that Job only worship God because of all that God has given him - if Job didn't have so much, Job would curse God.  God tells Satan to go ahead and test Job, but not to hurt him.  In this story, Satan is not an evil being, nearly equal in power to God - the only power he has is what God gives him.

      The Hebrews did not have any understanding of a dual nature of the universe - God was the creator and while people broke the commandments, they did it on their own, not because of some power of evil lurking in the world.

Only under other cultural influences does the duality of the universe come to play in the Bible - the war of good against evil came from Zororaster and the Greco-Roman influence.  It is easy to see that there is evil in the world - and it was easy to see that 2000 years ago - so the idea of a duality existing is fairly easy to fall into.

      The word Satan, or devil, occurs in the New Testament 34 times, 7 of those in the book of Revelation.  Here we begin to see some of that duality brought forth with the death and resurrection of Christ played against the powers of evil.  We see Jesus tempted in the wilderness after his baptism - my interpretation of this passage is that Jesus was faced with his own desire to be in charge of his destiny - rather than following God. Jesus had the opportunity to be like God, just as Adam and Eve did, but Jesus remained true to God, unlike Adam and Eve.  I see the devil or Satan in this story as a strong literary tool, but the real temptation came from within Jesus himself, not from some outside evil power.

      Sometimes by reading the Bible too literally, we miss the point of what God is trying to say.  Most of what people believe about Satan comes not from the Bible, but from Dante's Inferno, Milton's Paradise Lost, and other such stories and myths.  It is such stories that let us know what Satan looks like, that hell will be hot and smelly - these are stories designed to make us want to follow good.

      What the culture and to a certain degree, the church, has done is make Satan into a demi-god - almost equal with God, but not quite.  When we do that, we no longer have Christianity, but something else entirely.  Churches that focus on Satan and evil and sin, miss the truth of the gospel, which is about the grace and love of God shown us in Jesus Christ.  To a certain degree, they also miss their part in the fight against evil, which does exist in the world.  By personifying evil, we move it away from our realm - it becomes a power outside our ability to change - we can stay away from it, but we can't lessen its effects.

      I believe that evil exists in the world because people turn away from God's way - if evil is our doing, then we can also change the evil that exists by working against it in our own realm.  My father-in-law told me he read a book a few years ago that defined evil as discreativity - evil is that which tries to undo what God has done.  In my understanding it is, particularly, what people do to undo what God has done.  That is a great image to me and the flip side is also great - if we work against the evil that exists in the world, we are working to be part of God's creativity.  I believe there is plenty of evil in the world, because there are plenty of people thinking they know better than God.  I believe in God and in the power of Christ's resurrection to forgive us from our evil ways, over and over and over.

I believe in grace.

 

© Melana Scruggs 2005

 

 

  

     

    

 

Questions? Comments? Email us!