This is article #3 in a 10 part series that will appear each Sunday: Does God Have a Future?
Digest of past articles…
Link to article #1 here…Does God Have a Future? Part 1…An Introduction
Link to article #2 here…Does God Have a Future? Part 2…The Conundrum Between Spirituality, Religion, and God
Evangelicals and other spiritual leaders offer answers to the question of who we really are. We are told we need to engage in meaningful self examination, or take the spiritual journey inward so to speak, if we are to experience the nature of the Divine. In this way, each person is her/his own preacher, searching for inner good or in some cases, evil. However, the path of self actualization or more importantly, spiritual awakening is a perilous one.
If the Bible is anything to go by, Christians believe in God as all good, and satan as all evil.
Let’s assume for a moment this is the case.
If we were to examine the two, one must admit that God can be a bit irrational at times, destroying entire cities when their occupants did not worship him, flooding the earth and killing everyone, locusts, etc. It must also be taken into consideration that casting Satan from Heaven might have been a selfish action.
How convenient.
Now whenever something “evil” happens, just thrust it on Satan. He is painted as the scapegoat - the problem. Of course no one has ever heard Satan’s side of things, those who believe in the Christian God for instance, only by the Word of God, which seems a rather one-sided fight.
This biased account may be Satan’s best weapon.
Let us take into consideration the assumption that God is omnipotent, omniscient, and “has a plan” for us all. The Garden of Eden is an excellent first example all three points. First, he made Adam, but Adam needed a friend. So, according to ancient Hebrew legend, God made Lilith. There is some speculation as to whether or not she existed, but let us first explore the possibility that she was indeed the first woman created. Lilith refused to play second fiddle to Adam simply because he was a male, so God cast her out of the Garden and she wound up marrying Satan. Surely God, being omnipotent and omniscient, must have known this would happen.
Based on the fact that the Bible is highly male-centric, she was probably created as an example to future generations of women not to use their intellect or even think of considering themselves equal to men. The bible repeats this theme again and again. If Satan married Lilith, who clearly had a good head on her shoulders, then one must assume that Satan did not believe in suppressing women. From my perspective, I can see how twenty-first century women might see this as a “winning quality.”
Let us proceed.
Next came Eve. According to all Biblical accounts, Eve and Adam got along well and enjoyed living in the Garden, except that they were not allowed to eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Again, the mighty and omnipotent God must have created that tree and known what it did. He forbade them to eat from it, but being omniscient, he must have known what would happen. Christians claim that it was Satan that tempted Eve to eat that fruit, which again speaks to Satan wanting humans to use their brains and God being a proponent of “Do what I say.”
We know how it ended.
God knew what they had done and punished them both, again making an example of women by punishing them with birthing pains—every single one of them, all because of Eve being inquisitive. To reinforce the notion that Satan was the tempter, God punished all snakes as well, forcing them to travel on their bellies. How this would punish Satan as is good as anyone’s guess, but that is the logic of the omniscient God…
…and so the story goes.
Today, anything that goes wrong or deviates from the teachings of the Bible is accredited to Satan. This would mean that Satan, too, is omnipotent. It seems more likely that, based on Revelations as well as the Flood, God wreaks havoc so that he may gain more followers, per the expression “there are no Atheists in foxholes.” In Revelations, it was God who opened the seals and the angels who blew the trumpets that caused disaster on Earth. It is God who is the grand tester and trickster.
In the Bible, who always suffers? Followers of God.
God raped St. Mary, putting her at risk of being stoned to death.
God destroyed the Earth in the Great Flood.
God allowed the Jews to suffer in slavery.
If God asks you to do something, you had better do it, or he will punish you with eternal damnation, whatever that may entail, even killing your first born.
Jesus, sent to save our souls, was crucified by God’s will.
Why would the torture of his son be the only way human souls could be saved? If God is omnipotent, why would he decide on this method of redemption? Does modern society relate to this?
The ultimate question here is encapsulated in our comprehension of what is Heaven versus what is Hell.
Has Satan ever told the general population what Hell is really like? Only living people have, or God told them, I suppose. Based on God’s treatment of humans in the Bible, I suspect that Satan is much gentler. Hell is probably full of the intelligent masses that refused to accept God blindly.
Satan is not documented as asking for eternal worship and self-deprivation like God does. Hell is probably very comfortable if Satan is as powerful as everyone claims. Most likely, everyone engages in intelligent conversation and watches the world go on its merry way, kind of like the atheists. One never hears from Satan really except in Hollywood pictures. However, God is everywhere, writing an entire book about how powerful and important he is - if you ask a Christian. If a human being acted as God did, he would be labeled a dictator or self-absorbed psychopath and would be massively disliked, but it’s okay for God, as he is God, and “faith” is the answer.
In the end, if Satan was such a threat, why didn’t God kill him millenia ago?
More people are realizing, especially younger people, that the dogma of Christianity and other organized religions does not provide us with a solid spiritual foundation or knowledge, really. The ancients taught know yourself. We are of a divine consciousness and must grapple with good versus evil - God vs. Satan. The problem with the teachings of the Bible is, if any one critically analyses it, God looks as bad or worse than the supposed bad guy ‘Satan’, and this certainly does not work to promote future belief in God as the ultimate kind and merciful deity.
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