Now, the devil.

This is a tricky subject to approach, because there are so many misconceptions about what the bible has to say about the character; Christian leaders have for a long time been coming up with some very creative ideas about this character in order to make him a more effective boogieman. But more about this later.

For the time being, let’s focus on the central themes of the character as they are popularly understood, and see how they compare with what’s said in the bible.

Paring it down to its essence, the popular Christian idea of the devil is this: He started off as an angel named Lucifer (sometimes redundantly called Lucifer Morningstar; redundant because Lucifer MEANS Morningstar. You might as well call him Morningstar Morningstar or Lucifer Lucifer), who was among god’s tip-top angels, and who, at some indeterminate point in the past (usually at the point where god decided to create humans), led a rebellion against god, only to be cast down from heaven along with all of his angelic co-conspirators, only to land in hell, where they became the devil and all of the demons in hell, respectively. From this point onwards, the malevolent “Satan” (as he was now called) plotted and schemed from within his firey kingdom (making occasional forays out of hell, such as when he took the form of the serpent in Genesis, or when he tempted Jesus to take over the world in the desert), to lure humans into committing sins so that they would be consigned to hell upon death, where he and his demons would torture them for all time.

Man, where do I even begin?

Okay. Search the bible for references to “Lucifer” (in some versions, it will have been translated into “Morning Star” or “Morningstar”, so if your version has no references to “Lucifer”, this might be why). If your bible has any references, it will only be one. Check it out:

Isaiah 14

3 On the day the LORD gives you relief from suffering and turmoil and cruel bondage,

4 you will take up this taunt against the king of Babylon: How the oppressor has come to an end! How his fury has ended!
5 The LORD has broken the rod of the wicked, the scepter of the rulers,
6 which in anger struck down peoples with unceasing blows,
and in fury subdued nations with relentless aggression.
7 All the lands are at rest and at peace; they break into singing.
8 Even the pine trees and the cedars of Lebanon exult over you and say,
"Now that you have been laid low, no woodsman comes to cut us down."

9 The grave below is all astir to meet you at your coming; it rouses the spirits of the departed to greet you all those who were leaders in the world;
it makes them rise from their thrones - all those who were kings over the nations.
10 They will all respond, they will say to you, "You also have become weak, as we are; you have become like us."
11 All your pomp has been brought down to the grave, along with the noise of your harps; maggots are spread out beneath you and worms cover you.

"12 How you have fallen from heaven, O morning star, son of the dawn!
You have been cast down to the earth, you who once laid low the nations!
13 You said in your heart, "I will ascend to heaven;
I will raise my throne above the stars of God;
I will sit enthroned on the mount of assembly, on the utmost heights of the sacred mountain.
14 I will ascend above the tops of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High."
15 But you are brought down to the grave, to the depths of the pit.

16 Those who see you stare at you, they ponder your fate:
"Is this the man who shook the earth and made kingdoms tremble,
17 the man who made the world a desert, who overthrew its cities
and would not let his captives go home?"

18 All the kings of the nations lie in state, each in his own tomb.
19 But you are cast out of your tomb like a rejected branch;
you are covered with the slain, with those pierced by the sword,
those who descend to the stones of the pit. Like a corpse trampled underfoot,
20 you will not join them in burial, for you have destroyed your land
and killed your people. The offspring of the wicked will never be mentioned again.
21 Prepare a place to slaughter his sons for the sins of their forefathers;
they are not to rise to inherit the land and cover the earth with their cities".

 

So, in this section, Lucifer (called the Morning Star, obviously) is described as just some guy. King of Babylon, yes, but still just a guy. It makes explicit reference to him having sons, and then dying and rotting in his grave. His fall, as it were, was a fall from the loughty position of kingship. Not a fall from heaven. No reference to him having been an angel. Just some dude who had a bad day. And that’s it! No other references to “Lucifer” in any version of the bible! There is, however, one reference to “Morning Star” which I found mighty incongruous at the time:

Revelation 22
16 I Jesus have sent mine angel to testify unto you these things in the churches. I am the root and the offspring of David, and the bright and morning star.

Here, Jesus is calling himself “The Morning Star”. Is he saying that he is the devil? Unlikely (though it would make the bible a tad more interesting if this were the case). No, this just stands as more proof that Lucifer/Morning Star have no connection to the devil/Satan whatsoever. So, let’s move on.

Okay. Satan’s rebellion against god. This is in the bible. I found it. You know where I found it? In the book of Revelations:

Revelation 12

3Then another sign appeared in heaven: an enormous red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns on his heads. 4His tail swept a third of the stars out of the sky and flung them to the earth. The dragon stood in front of the woman who was about to give birth, so that he might devour her child the moment it was born. 5She gave birth to a son, a male child, who will rule all the nations with an iron scepter. And her child was snatched up to God and to his throne. 6The woman fled into the desert to a place prepared for her by God, where she might be taken care of for 1,260 days.
7And there was war in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back. 8But he was not strong enough, and they lost their place in heaven. 9The great dragon was hurled down--that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him.

Seems pretty cut and dry, no? Just like the Christians tend to describe it. But wait! Let’s have a look at the context, shall we? The section of the book of revelations in which Satan’s rebellion and subsequent fall are described is a section of prophecy of things to come. Specifically, things which are supposed to happen right near the end of the world. A couple of things which are supposed to have happened before Satan falls? All of the grass on Earth is destroyed, and all of the fish die. You know. Apocalyptic stuff. Now, I want you to ask yourself a question: Are there fish or grasses left on earth? Chances are, the answer is “yes”. Therefore, according to the timeline explicitly spelled out in the bible, Satan cannot have fallen from heaven yet. So I guess he’s still bumming around up there. Like in the story of Job.

Oh, and as a special bonus, we get a physical description of Satan here: He’s a seven headed dragon with ten horns! Isn’t that nice to know? Now you know how to envision him. None of this angelic or goat-beast crap. Dragon.

Okay, so, next: Satan falls from heaven down to hell, where he takes over. I challenge you to find this passage for me. Seriously. In Revelation, Satan falls to Earth. And there he rallies the forces of the cruel and oppressive god who is steadily ruining the world, making one last stand against their common foe. And what happens next?

Revelation 20

1And I saw an angel coming down out of heaven, having the key to the Abyss and holding in his hand a great chain. 2He seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the devil, or Satan, and bound him for a thousand years. 3He threw him into the Abyss, and locked and sealed it over him, to keep him from deceiving the nations anymore until the thousand years were ended. After that, he must be set free for a short time.

Well! So Satan is cast down into the Abyss! Now, I can hear you already saying “The Abyss is just another name for hell!”. I say you’re making excuses. In this book, “hell” (as in the firey realm where damned humans [nearly everybody] are sent to suffer eternally) is referred to as “The Lake of Fire”. Call me pedantic if you will, but to my way of thinking, there’s a large-ish difference between a bottomless pit (which is what “Abyss” means) and a lake full of fire. I put it to you that they are in fact different locations. If you want further elaboration upon this (and even if you don’t), I continue on by pointing out that at no point while the “Lake of Fire” is being described, is the suffering of the people there said to have been brought about by Satan or his fallen angels. It’s just that fire, you know, hurts (and if you don’t know, then go ahead and check it out for yourself. Far be it for me to discourage you in the pursuit of knowledge!).

Okay, what’s left? The Serpent thing? Well, that’s not the devil. That’s Ashera. Check out Study #5 for details there.

And Satan tempting humans to sin? Well, basically what we’ve got in support of this is as follows:

Satan tempts Jesus to take over the world. Is megalomania a sin? Maybe it should be, but I never saw anything about that when I read the bible. Nah, he’s just testing Jesus. Don’t forget that the devil is still chummy with god at this point. More than likely Big J sent the devil down to test Little J to make sure he was still on the up-and-up.

And that other thing? About Satan rallying humans to fight against god in the final battle of the apocalypse? In fairness, these are people who’ve already been pre-selected for damnation, so they’re really not being led AWAY from god or anything; they’re already there. Besides which, this “temptation” phase still begins long after all the fish and the grass is gone, so no bible-loving Christian ought to be saying it’s begun just yet.

An interesting aside: The Jehovah’s Witnesses are reviled far and wide by Christians and non-christians alike for their freaky beliefs, and people are right to do so. Their beliefs are freaky. However, they’re also a lot closer to the bible in most places than what most Christian sects preach, so Christians by and large are in no position to criticize. Case in point: They say the devil fell from heaven in 1917. Most Christians would hear that and call them mad. They’d be right, but for the wrong reasons.

See, the Jehovah’s Witnesses had this whole apocalypse timeline laid out in the 19th century. Certain things were supposed to happen at certain times, and culminate in the end of the world at a specific date. It didn’t, obviously, as this date has long since come and gone. In fact, after that date came and went, the poor JW’s had to push the date forward a few years in order to try to accommodate their prophecy. When it failed to come on that date either, they tried again and again. Eventually, they were forced, just out of pragmatism, to stop naming specific dates, since obviously, they just weren’t very good at predicting this sort of thing.

The thing is, as the first apocalypse deadline approached, the leadership of the JW’s announced that certain things had happened, as the prophecy predicted. Their timeline called for Satan to fall from heaven in 1917, so when the date came, it was duly announced that Satan was now stalking the earth. But when the apocalypse failed to come, they couldn’t very well un-do the fall, right? So ever since then their official party line is that he fell in 1917. Ask any one of them. Seriously.

But here’s the thing Christians should take note of: Up UNTIL 1917, the JW’s were closer to scripture than any other faith, in that they were preaching that the devil had yet to fall. That still places them in a more scripturally sound camp than most Christians today, on this specific count.

Okay, so this having been said, there’s one obvious question you should be asking yourself: “What the fuck?!? Why is the popular idea of the devil so different than what’s said in the bible?”

Well, Billy, I’m glad you asked. Here’s my take on it.

The Old Testament of the bible is full of threats against people by god, but no real promises of anything good. The reason this could fly is because god had already done his part by escorting the Hebrews out of slavery. But when you try to convert non-hebrews, this presents a problem: They’ve got nothing out of the deal, and all they have to look forwards to if they join is fear and intimidation. This is what we call a “bad bargain”. Clearly, something had to be done. God was coming off as the villain of the story, when the Christian authorities really really wanted people to be attracted to Big J. So it was necessary to create a new villain for the story for god to stand opposed to in order to cast him in a more favourable light Thus, the re-modeled devil. He became the boogieman who was responsible for paganism and witchcraft, he became the father of lies and prince of darkness. He had all sorts of things attributed to him which have no scriptural basis whatsoever.

Adding to the confusion are three other books which distorted things even further. Milton’s Paradise Lost expounded the Lucifer-as-Satan story so eloquently and at such great length that many people believe that his story of the fall is actually part of scripture. Likewise, Dante’s Inferno gives such a detailed vision of hell that most people aren’t aware of the fact that it flies in the face of what the bible has to say. Lastly, and interestingly, the Muslim Quaran has had an effect on popular culture which most people aren’t aware of : The image of an angel standing on one shoulder and a devil on the other, offering a person their respective advice, comes directly from Islam, though it has become so ubiquitous that I doubt many north Americans are aware of it.

So, in the end, is the devil such a bad guy, according to the bible? Well, I guess so, but according to the bible, almost everyone is a pretty bad guy, so let’s take it in context. More relevant, I suppose, is whether or not he’s scarier or less scary than god is. All I can say is, the devil never tells anyone to kill babies. Take that as you will.