I always thought that Satan was rather misunderstood. I'm not, of course, referring to The Devil, in the traditional sense - all that mediaeval propaganda strikes me as negativity for the sake of negativity, and all the stuff about the devil tempting humans into doing evil... well that's just an excuse! I think it only takes one newspaper article about snipers in Sarajevo who shoot five year old kids who are being evacuated from the city, for any reasonable person to conclude that a devil is either quite unnecessary for the human being to bring forth evil, or that he's just an excuse, a convenient baddie to pin the wickednesses of the morally responsible human being onto when the whole moral responsibility thing seems a bit too much like hard work.
With this in mind, I know that if I was the devil I'd probably be rather disgusted at some of the things that he gets blamed for. Especially when you consider that the Devil is probably not such a bad guy, really. No, really. For a start, he's a rebel - the Patron Saint of Rebels, dare I say. And we like Rebels, don't we? James Dean. Luke Skywalker. The Founding Fathers, for those of you in the US. Okay, there's that whole treachery thing, but I'm sure we can get past that. I mean, after all, 'treason never prospers', not because it's innately unsuccessful, but because if it IS successful, 'none dare call it treason'.
I mean, I dare say - rather blasphemously, I'm sure - that we have absolutely no guarantee that the god of the New Testament is the same one as in the Old Testament. He certainly seems to have chilled out somewhat. How do we know that Satan's Rebellion wasn't, in fact, successful and that once he got the top job and assumed his old boss's title, he turned out to be a lot more relaxed and benevolent than his predecessor?
Okay, not very likely, I agree. Even so, let's not forget that Satan was Lucifer, the light-bringer - the brightest and best, until the boss brought his itinerant hippy son into the firm, anyway. I always thought it was rather interesting to consider that in the whole King Arthur thing, the brightest and best of the knights is the wayward but thoroughly peerless Sir Launcelot - it's Arthur's son who is the treacherous, rebellious, usurping little squit.
(Milton actually considered writing an Arthurian epic but wrote Paradise Lost instead, if that Arthurian digression seems a bit left-field)
The striking thing about this is that in this case, as in a number of other mythologies, the figures we would equate with Lucifer and The Devil are not necessarily the same. For example, in Ancient Greece it's Prometheus who angers the greatest of the gods by giving forbidden knowledge to humanity, and is sent to a rather nasty kind of hell involving vultures and liver. If you're looking for a Devil in Ancient Greece, it's probably Tiphon The Terrible. Or maybe Cronos, especially in that Goya painting. Intriguingly, in Ancient Greek myth, the chief God Zeus did in fact start off as the rebellious son of the tyrannical, child-devouring Cronos, and only became top god when the old one had been defeated. So Zeus spent some time in the role of rebellious Satan, too - and he was successful.
Anyway, my point is, the concepts embodied by The Devil (evil, sin) may in fact be quite distinct from those embodied by Lucifer and Satan (pride, excellence, folly, rebellion). Prometheus is absolutely a Lucifer, but absolutely not The Devil. Or, to use a more contemporary mythology, The Emperor is The Devil, the source and personification of greed, sin, and corrupting evil - while Darth Vader is Lucifer, the greatest warrior ever produced by an order of righteous warriors... an Archangel, pretty much... but corrupted by pride and arrogance, and fallen into darkness. Of course - and once again, intriguingly - Darth Vader is also the messiah, virgin birth and all. Or at least it seems this way until The Emperor drops his hints about Anakin's true status as the antichrist, conceived by demonic intervention.
So, if we can drive these two notions apart, and seperate the rebellious archangel from the cancerous source of human moral corruption... and if we feel that it's both unnecessary, and a bit of a cop-out to subscribe to the existence of a Devil when it's very clear that the human being needs no such influence in order to be vile... then we can scratch the Devil out of the equation altogether. The Devil is Us, so let's not fob it off on a mythological personification.
So, this leaves us with poor old Satan, the universal manifestation of The Wrong 'Un. Except, I believe we can argue that not only is Satan misunderstood, but that it's very, very clear on available evidence that Satan may in fact be a good deal nicer than is accepted. In fact (and this is the bit I really like) I feel it's possible to say that if Satan is NOT a benevolent figure, then that undermines the faith in a loving God that Christianity insists upon. So, hold tight, and indulge me:
God is a loving god. This is very clear, and is an inarguable point if we subscribe to Christian theology. And if this is indeed the case then we must accept that his love for mankind is like that of a parent - stern but caring. Children sometimes have to be punished of course, sometimes they incur their parents' anger, but this doesn't stop the parent from loving them. Jesus was making this pretty clear, I feel, with all that prodigal son stuff.
Well, with this in mind, consider the notion of Hell. Traditionally Hell is depicted as a torture chamber, which we have to reject if we believe in a loving god. Not because of the idea that god would never send anybody to hell, but because it is generally established that Hell exists as part of god's plan. It's easy to accept that God may feel punishment necessary, that God may feel a form of spiritual exile to be warranted... but do we believe that he would commission a torture chamber as a means of punishing sinners? Not if he's a loving God, surely?
Some people seem to think so, but compare god to a head of state. Generally speaking if a head of state uses torture and mutilation against his own citizens - even for crimes they HAVE committed - then we regard that head of state as a dictator or as a monster - a force for evil. And clearly, any parent who indulges a wicked sadistic devil and all his demons, commissioning them to carry out unholy punishment on his own children is no parent at all. And we are clearly told that god is a loving god.
Therefore, we have to assume that a loving god would mete out a more progressive form of punishment. Incarceration, exile, perhaps hard labour, perhaps simple imprisonment - but none of the mediaeval excesses of the torture chamber. In fact, look at it like it was a prison or something. Imagine you were president of a country and you had to appoint a minister of prisons. Would you appoint Derek The Sadistic Butcher, a former war criminal and renowned sadist who advocates torture and capital punishment..? Or would you appoint Hard But Fair Harry, the morally righteous but strict and thoroughly decent? If you want a decent prison system, you put a GOOD person in charge - albeit somebody capable of being hard and strict, as any punishment regime requires. You certainly don't put somebody in charge who would abuse the prisoners. In fact, to prevent it you would have to put somebody completely trustworthy and decent in charge - or your own claim to being good and decent would be undermined by the horrible conditions you allow to exist in your prisons.
Therefore - can it really be a coincidence that Lucifer, the best and brightest of the angels, got the job? Especially when we recall again the Greek Myth about a lesser god called Prometheus. Prometheus incurs the wrath of Zeus by giving Knowledge to mankind, to help them survive the coming punishments of Zeus. In his case, the knowledge was how to make fire. The interesting thing is that in the Greek story this is unquestionably an act of benevolence, since Prometheus had originally been made caretaker of mankind and wanted to help them. Consider that motivation and then look at the acts of the Serpent in Eden, giving knowledge to Adam & Eve - supposedly from jealousy. Except everything we call good in our human culture, every advance of medical science, every cure for the ravages of a disease, every legless person who can walk, every astonishing benefit gained by the progressive accumulation of self-awareness and wisdom - music, literature, art - ALL of it is founded in the simple act of succumbing to the serpent's temptation and changing from a mere beast of the field, to a being capable of recognising Good and Evil, and making the choice between the two. Are we generally of the opinion that all human civilisation is thoroughly and irredeemably evil, founded on the single sin of our ancestor, and that God created us to be simplistic animals..? Jaze, if that's how he saw us, it's hardly a wonder that he ended up populating Oceania with comedy giant hopping mice and a billion different forms of dealy poisonous animal. I'd need a laugh too. I'm just saying - is human consciousness really down to the actions of a small lizard? Wouldn't that be rather like buying a PC in the mistaken belief that it's a piece of modern art until your cat teaches you to plug it in and turn it on?
So we are faced with the logical conclusion that Lucifer has been unfairly misrepresented, and that his position as Bloke In Charge Of Hell is actually evidence of his upright moral character. After all, if God is a loving god, then how could he put anybody but his best in charge? Since Lucifer is in charge we must assume that this is an indication of his own capacity for love and compassion, making him the perfect steward of a punishment system intended to purge people of their sins.
And for my next trick, I will explain how The Matrix is pro-terrorism.
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