The Origin Of Satan

Who do you blame?
Who do you blame for what happened?
Who do you blame for what is wrong?

We begin with a story:

The little village at the edge of the desert had seen many half-dead people.  They would stumble out of the wasteland towards the deep well, desperate for water.  So, when the emaciated prophet dragged himself past the stones that marked the boundary of the village, no one seemed to notice.  They didn’t realize who the prophet was, and what he was coming to do.  Except for the woman who was blind. 

The prophet, covered in dust and sweat, heard the woman’s piercing cry: “Son of man, make me see!”  Despite his own exhaustion, despite the voices in his own troubled mind, the prophet stopped.  “Son of man, make me see!” the woman shouted again.  “Don’t go near her, Satan has stolen her sight,” someone whispered.  The prophet from Nazareth knew well of this Satan.  That same Satan, that evil force, that searing sense of separation had literally forced the prophet out into the desert.  For forty days and forty nights this Dark Lord had driven him almost mad with a terrible trembling torment.

And now, as the prophet stepped out of the desert, out of the mystery that waits at all our edges, someone also tormented called out to him.  “Make me see!”  And the prophet knew who was to blame.  The prophet knew what he must do.  He had to destroy the evil that had struck at this woman, destroy the power that would claim her, the power that could destroy the world. The prophet reached out his sun-scorched hand.  “Be gone Satan,” Jesus commanded, “Be gone and trouble us no more!”

I wish I could believe in the devil, a masterfully malevolent force that lurks in the shadows of my life.  I wish I could believe that a satanic source was the cause of all that was wrong in me and in the world.   It would be easy if the battle lines were so clearly drawn, drawn against something out there, something supernatural.  It would be easy if it all was a great cosmic battle, fought by the forces of the light against the legions of the night, with the earth as the last great battle ground, and the soul of humanity as the victor’s prize.  It would be easy because then we would have someone to blame, someone to blame for our disappointment and failure and heartbreak and depression and unskillful choices and illness and death.  We would have something certain to blame for sudden attacks from the sky, for Improvised Explosive Devices, for terror, for tragedy, for destruction.

But those of us who are religious liberals, those of us who honor questions and doubts and psychology and science and rational thinking, we should not be so quick to dismiss this horned harbinger of hate.  Satan is more than an imaginary being engaged in cosmic soul wars. Satan is more than an excuse for ignorance. Satan is the result of our need to know ourselves.  Satan is the result of our need to define who we are, and who we are not.  Satan is self-our awareness gone awry. 

Elaine Pagels, in her wonderful book, The Origin of Satan, writes: “I invite you to consider Satan as a reflection of how we perceive ourselves and those we call “others.”” (p. xviii)  Let’s look at that for a second.  Anthropologist Robert Redfield believes that most people have a worldview limited to two different ways of dividing up things.  This worldview comes in two pairs:  “human” and nonhuman,” “we” and “they.”  Further, Redfield says, we combine these two pairs so that  “we” equals “human” and “they” equals “not human.” (Pagels, p. xviii)  Making this distinction between “us” as ok and human and “them” as not ok and not human seems to be a basic human trait.  The earliest known writings of the human race, those coming out of Sumaria and other ancient cities already make that division, claiming dignity and worth for some kinds of people and cutting off certain other kinds of people. (Pagels, p. xviii)  We see it later in the Jewish tradition.  When Yahweh, the Jewish God, calls Moses out of the desert to lead the chosen people, he is, at the same time, calling a lot of other people the not-so-chosen people.  Now, I could live with not being one of the chosen people, but when that outsider status also marks me as one in league with Satan, I get a little nervous.  That is what happens early in the Christian tradition.  And that is what is happening today in this country.

A Gallup Poll found that Americans are more than twice as likely to believe in the devil as in evolution.  Only 28% of Americans believe that Darwinian evolution is a real and active force in the universe, while 68% believe that Satan is real and active in the world.  I might add that our President denies evolution, and believes in the devil, as do some of the Administration’s advisors and policy makers.  And this has implications for our country and for our world.  (Nicholas D. Kristof, “God, Satan, and The Media,” The New York Times, March 4, 03, p. A27)

When the idea of Satan first emerged in the Jewish world, it was very different from the red caped doer of dastardly deeds that we picture today.  First, Satan wasn’t even the name of a particular being.  Rather, the satan was a role, a Jewish legal term that means “one who opposes or obstructs.”   The satan was an obedient member of God’s heavenly court who simply challenged human beings.  His role was to be a kind of authenticity checker, creating tests to make sure that a person holds to their faith and good behavior.  This early form of satan was kind of like an aggressive Santa Claus, a “special being of superior intelligence” (Pagels, p. 39) who makes a list and checks it twice and finds out if you’re being naughty or nice.  Evil is not one of its qualities, but it is checking to see if evil is one of yours.  But that role of the satan begins to slowly change through the history of the Jewish religion.   As Israel is conquered again and again by outside forces, it must fight internally to keep its racial and religious purity from being diluted by the other cultures and religions around them.  It does so by drawing a tighter and tighter circle around itself, deepening the separation between “us” and “them.”  As ancient Israel secures its boundaries and borders, the satan slowly evolves into Satan, an angel figure who challenges the power of Yahweh.  For questioning the boundaries of Yahweh’s law, Satan is cast out of the heavenly court, cast out of the inner circle. The message is clear: if you challenge the norm, if you break with professed tradition, if you question authority, you will be cast out.

And so, Satan is tossed down to earth, where he makes his Kingdom and begins his rule, inflicting all kinds of pains and terrors on hapless humans.

Then along comes Jesus, a Jew, who inherits this tradition of Satan.  But he takes it to war-like extremes.  One understanding of Jesus, as portrayed in the Gospels, is that he is a cosmic crusader.  At age 30, he has some extraordinary, horrible experience of an evil power at work on earth. The Gospel of Mark says he is literally driven into the desert to wrestle with the wrath of Satan.  Forty days later, he returns to his hometown convinced that his mission is to declare war on the forces of the devil.  For three years, he traverses the countryside, performing amazing healings and casting out demons from those possessed.  He is a traveling exorcist (minus Linda Blair and the spinning head).  His Good News (or Gospel) is that Satan’s power over the world is coming to an end, and a new Kingdom of Freedom and Goodness has begun.  And he sends forth a band of brothers to cast out demons in his name.

But the early Christians take this battle between Jesus and Satan, and distort it.  Over the course of one hundred years, they turn it into a battle between Jesus and anyone who doesn’t embrace his ideas.  The early Christians literally create a battle between Jesus and the Jews, who they gradually equate as being in league with Satan.  In the earliest story of Jesus, the Gospel of Mark, Jesus’ mission is simply challenging the powers of evil  (Pagels, p. 110).  Twenty years later, another version is written, the Gospel of Matthew. It suddenly names the Jews as connected to these powers of evil, calling them “sons of Hell.”  Another version is written some years later, and this Gospel of John has Satan now embodied in the Jews: “You are of your father, the devil, and you want to accomplish your fathers desires,” (John 8:44) says Jesus in that version.  In the early story of Jesus, the Romans crucify him as an insurrectionist.  In the later versions, the Romans are shown, in the end, handing Jesus back over to the Jews.  It is now the Jews themselves who crucify Jesus. This mirrors the experience of Jesus’ followers in the first years after his death.  They begin as devout Jews and want to remain as Jews, but they are forced out of the Jewish community for their radical beliefs.  So, these castaways begin to define themselves, not as Jews, but as something entirely different.  And in claiming their new identity, they begin to demonize the people they see as rejecting their version of truth.  It is not enough that they have differences; they must turn them into Satanic enemies.

This is just the beginning of a long and bloody history of conservative Christianity naming the ‘other’ as Satanic.  For Jesus, Satan was cause of blindness, leprosy, poverty, death.  For early Christians, Satan was the cause of their expulsion from the Jewish temple, the fall of Jerusalem, and their later persecution by the Romans. Moving forward to today, evangelical Christians believe Satan is the cause of all kinds of evil. 

For many evangelical Christians today, Satan is the cause of a Constitution that protects the rights of all people. For many evangelical Christians, Satan is the cause of the campaign for marriage equality and the equal rights of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender peoples.  Satan is the cause of the Ten Commandments being moved from the lobbies of Southern statehouses.  Satan is the cause of a liberal political agenda that says a government should do more than flex its muscle for the rich and powerful. Satan is the cause of the separation of church and state.  Satan in the cause of prayer being forbidden in public schools.  Satan is the cause of evolution being taught in textbooks.  Satan is the cause of NPR.  Satan is the cause of our country’s growing respect for Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism, and other faiths.  And, for many evangelical Christians, Satan is the source of our own Unitarian Universalist faith.

Forty-six percent of Americans describe themselves as evangelical or born again Christians (Kristof, The New York Times).  And with that designation, comes a set of beliefs about the nature of the world and our mission within it.

And so, when our country stumbles out of the wasteland of September 11th and declares—with sword in hand—that we will lead a worldwide battle to vanquish the forces of Darkness, I tremble.  When—in speech after speech—the President calls upon the powers of a Christian God to protect our country, I tremble.  When we name Iraq, Iran, and North Korea as part of a new Axis of Evil, I tremble.  When the Commander in Chief sends forth a band of brothers to cast out the demon in Baghdad, I tremble.   When we say: “You’re either for us or against us,” I tremble.    When we attempt to inaugurate a new Kingdom of Freedom and Goodness in the Middle East, I tremble.  When we exorcise those who would speak out against the erosion of civil liberties, I tremble.  When Congress debates aggressive measures to seal off our borders and boundaries, I tremble.  I tremble, because there is a religious worldview that is in part driving these actions, and it is a religious worldview that is saturated in superstition, ignorance, and the need to conquer a cosmic Satanic force.  I tremble because I believe this is part of what is driving the new American Empire and our militarization of the world.  

I used to think it didn’t matter what people believed, that religious beliefs were personal and we must honor and respect them all.  But it is dangerous to say “it doesn’t matter what we believe,” for many, many things are done in the name of what people believe.  Our Unitarian Universalist faith, which works hard to welcome questions and doubts and uncertainties; our Unitarian Universalist faith, which acknowledges that belief is deeply personal and transforms over time; our Unitarian Universalist faith, which attempts to build bridges between people; our Unitarian Universalist faith, which acknowledges that the mysteries of life cannot be reduced and contained in a single creed; our Unitarian Universalist faith, which celebrates the interdependent web of life of which we are all part; our Unitarian Universalist faith cannot afford to be silent in the face of a religious agenda that is damaging our country and our world.

Sophia Fahs, a great Unitarian Universalist thinker and religious educator once said:

Some beliefs are like walled gardens.  They encourage exclusiveness, and the feeling of being especially privileged.  Other beliefs are expansive and lead the way into wider and deeper sympathies. 

Some beliefs are like shadows, clouding children’s days with fears of unknown calamities.  Other beliefs are like sunshine, blessing children with the warmth of happiness. 

Some beliefs are divisive, separating the saved from the unsaved, friends from enemies.  Other beliefs are bonds in a world community, where sincere differences beautify the pattern. 

Some beliefs are rigid, like the body of death, impotent in a changing world.  Other beliefs are pliable, like the young sapling, ever growing with the upward thrust of life.

What do we believe?  And what will we do with those beliefs?

Blessed Be.  Amen.

© Copyright 2007 Tim Kutzmark