Worlds of Lies and Accusations

One thing that needs to be gotten by, in the study of Jesus' ministry and of the scriptures to which he draws our attention, is the role of Satan.  I say, "gotten by," because that physically-metaphorical description is appropriate about a striking number of references to Satan.  Satan is introduced in a story and he features in its conceptual set-up, and then he slinks away or disappears altogether.

Satan is given (as it is related) no chance to respond at the Fall, and apparently slithers away legless.  Of course, Satan's literal snake descendants don't actually feed on dust, and the quintessentially mobile Satan of Job scarcely draws up the image of a literal snake.  One is tempted to conclude that the Creation Stories are meant to be taken as stories.

In regard to Job itself, it cannot be missed that what starts out as a disputation between God and Satan turns out eventually to be a confrontation between God and Job's three friends, and then still further to be an amazing interaction between God and Job.

Satan makes a cameo appearance at the start of the census story of First Chronicles, and then disappears.

Satan appears, of course, in beginnings of the gospel stories, and then--bested by a Jesus who cites repeatedly scriptural references highlighting the irrelevance of Satan--withdraws his satanic presence until some unspecified opportune moment.  That this "opportune moment" appears to be the seducing of the traitor Judas Iscariot--when Satan had an existential interest in no one ever betraying Jesus--is beyond parody.

Indeed, the most menacing appearance of Satan in the Gospels is Jesus' "Get thee behind me, Satan" retort to Peter, who is trying to argue Jesus out of the Crucifixion.  Peter comes across as a better Satan than Satan himself, who is little more than a hapless literary device.  Even Jesus' exclamation of Satan's fall "like lightning" from heaven--divorced, like many of Jesus' conceptualizations, from time-and-space particulars--deigns not to specify if Satan's displacement, humiliation, or damnation is thereby described.

It remains to the non-Gospel New Testament, and especially the Book of Revelation, to make of Satan the arch-nemesis of Jesus and the "Church."  The most strident recitation of the role of Satan, as described by the popular denominations, is as the Accuser of humanity who will be frustrated in securing judgments against believers (even some hair-raisingly devilish believers) who have been "washed in the blood of the Lamb" or some such.

And it is true that Satan as "the Accuser" has had a role in the proto-Jewish heritage of the historical Jesus from time immemorial.  What has become prevalent among the followers of Jesus since his death, however, has been a sundering of the ancient attributes of Satan from the tapestry of that heritage.  As for the modern fixation on Satan the Accuser?  It is generally overblown.  One might be reminded of Einstein's storied response when told of a book titled something like One Hundred German Scientists Refute Einstein.  As it is told, Einstein responded that one such scientist would be sufficient.  One accuser of humanity is sufficient, and it is he who asked, "Where is Abel thy brother?"

God does not need to be told of what humanity might be accused.  Moreover, if any of humanity have been absolved of certain misdeeds, then Satan--who seems to have insight to the human heart--ought to know this, making such accusations effectual lies.  What we have in Satan, according to the Gospels, is the Father of Lies, and the Father of Accusations, and the Father of Temptations, and the Father of Murders.  I refer to our understanding of this horrid list as overblown because we mistakenly credit Satan as the architect of such things, when in function he is the mere catalyst--the evils are in ourselves, and always have been.

Satan tempted sin-tainted Eve, who was linked with sin-tainted Adam, as I have written before.  Eve was no different than we are.  At Satan's instigation, Eve entertained lies, and lies are effectual accusations that reality is not what its attributes and its inhabitants purport it to be, and accusations are temptations to assuming the role of enforcer of creaturely judgments, and the enforcing--even the voicing--of creaturely judgments is a violation, as Jesus tells us, of "Thou shall not murder."

Satan introduced Eve--and all of us--to the tangled messes we make of our worlds.  Lies are accusations are temptations are violent assaults.  We know this to be true.  Humanity has always known this to be true.  The way to go where we should be--the way to get to the kingdom of God--is not to idealize some state, but to see reality as it is, to have ears and hear, eyes and see.  As I have written before, Satan and Eve made a world together, a wretched realm in which God is a liar and in which a person can "see" that the fruit of a tree can give wisdom.  Such is the sort of world in which we all live, even as Jesus tells us that the kingdom of God is at hand.