We return again
to the important ideas of God and Satan and the coming season in which faith in
the goodness of mankind is renewed.
The Questions:
1
What
is GOD?
2
What
is Satan?
They are both
personifications of an identifiable aspect of consciousness and by natural
extension to the universal consciousness we have described as the Ubermind that
appears to coalesce around humanity at least.
A personification by definition is symbolic but the reality it labels is
anything but.
We have a long a
deep experience with Godly individuals and we are all confronted by their
challenge to bring compassion to the world and benevolence to nature
itself. Just as surely we also have
faced those who literally grasp evil and live it. Some may be excused by external reasons but
that never holds true for those who truly walk in evil. They all had clear choices and again and
again turned away and turned events to evil.
We have met and studied these people and it is not pretty. They are just as real and dedicated as Mother
Theresa and Albert Sweitzer.
The depth of
such evil must be personified because it cannot be understood in human terms
but it can be symbolized. Thus Hitler as
merely evil degrades the depth of his crime, Hitler as Satanic encompasses it
all.
I do not
understand what it takes to enslave a young boy or girl for sexual needs for
years. Yet calling it Satanic separates
the crime from our own hard won humanity and perhaps that is healthy. Perhaps that we cannot understand is all that
separates us from Evil. Recall that the
death squads did understand what they were doing and believed they were doing
the right thing.
The judge is
right. Society must distance itself from great evil or it might accept it as
the Romans accepted slavery and death in the Arena as sport.
What's with all
the devil talk?
5:59 p.m. EST November 24, 2013
Thanks to Scalia and C.S. Lewis, Satan is casting a
larger shadow on our culture.
The devil has been getting his due. Amid multiple
mentions by Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and milestone-anniversary
re-releases of an iconic book and movie examining the devil's work and wiles,
people are talking this fall about a being called Satan.
With the devil casting a larger shadow over the
culture, some age-old questions are sparking debate. Who or what is the devil?
Is he real? And is Satan still relevant in an increasingly post-Christian and
post-modern American culture?
If you answered "no" to those last two
questions, C.S. Lewis might say the devil made you do it. A British literary
giant who died 50
years ago, Lewis is
revered by millions of American Christians for books such as The Chronicles of Narnia, Mere Christianity and The Screwtape Letters. That last one explores the ways of the devil, and
it's the book Scalia mentioned when
he stunned his New York magazine interviewer last month with comments
that have since gone viral.
After informing journalist Jennifer Senior that he
believes in the devil, Scalia said,
"You're looking at me as though I'm weird. My God! Are you so out of touch
with most of America, most of which believes in the devil? ... Have you
read The Screwtape Letters?"
57% of americans
believe
Screwtape has been re-released in a special annotated edition this fall to mark the anniversary of the
author's death (a death that occurred on the same day as the Kennedy
assassination), and a stage adaptation is touring the country. The book imagines a senior demon schooling a
neophyte through a series of instructional letters. As the mentor advises, a
key to infiltrating people's thoughts, turning them away from God and getting
them absorbed with themselves is to convince them of the non-existence of Satan
and all he stands for.
The devil must be disappointed, then, by data
showing a great many of us are convinced he's real. A survey released in September
by the market research firm YouGov finds 57% of Americans believe
the devil exists. Other evidence shows that many, many of us are fascinated by
Satan, too. Perhaps no cultural work demonstrates that better than the enduring
popularity of the devil-possession movieThe Exorcist, which was a box-office
sensation when it came out in 1973. New this fall: a special 40th anniversary re-release of The Exorcist for Blu-ray.
As happens with so many conversations about religion
in today's polarized culture, renewed talk about the devil reveals some gaping
divides and misunderstandings. Consider the response of one well-known atheist
to the New York magazine comments by Scalia (who raised the devil
again earlier this month during Supreme Court oral arguments about prayer at
government meetings, asking, "What about devil worshipers?").
What did Scalia
mean?
Hemant Mehta, who goes by the handle "Friendly
Atheist" and who generally eschews flame-throwing, could not contain his
disgust that a Supreme Court justice would call the devil "a real person,"
as Scalia did. As Mehta wrote,
"Scalia believing in the devil? Not as a metaphor, but as a physical being?
Seriously?! It's frightening to me that anyone would believe that."
Scalia, however, probably did not mean what Mehta
thought he meant. When serious-minded religious people say they believe the
devil is a "real person," they don't mean a physical being that
prowls the planet sporting horns and a tail. In the Christian vernacular,
"person" can mean an unembodied being that interacts with people and
plays a role in the cosmic scheme. In a more liberal theological vein, it could
be thought of as a force or pattern.
Secular evil
In this sense, is it really such a stretch to
acknowledge the reality of the devil? Even those of us in the growing legions
who live and speak in secular ways, and who would never be caught dead saying
we "believe in the devil," might admit that a bit of the devil lives
and works in us. This we see when we do something cruel and selfish, or when we
dehumanize other people on the basis of their belonging to some category
different from our own.
There's an old saying that when you speak of the
devil, he is bound to appear. In that case, he has been showing up a lot
lately. But, come to think of it, when hasn't he?
Tom Krattenmaker is a Portland-based writer
specializing in religion in public life and a member of USA TODAY's Board of
Contributors. He is author of the book The Evangelicals You Don't Know.
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