I love church signs. Sometimes they are unintentionally funny, other times I find myself agreeing – wisdom is pretty universal, after all. Yet whenever the word “Satan” occurs in a church sign, I find myself cringing. There’s one near where I live even now; it reads “Satan doesn’t care who you worship, as long as it isn’t God.” For a spiritual pluralist such as myself, such a sign just leaves me shaking my head in disgust.
It reminds me of another popular catch phrase among Christians: “The greatest trick the devil ever pulled on the world was convincing us he didn’t exist.” I’d actually like to turn that quote on its head; The greatest trick Satan ever pulled on the world was convincing us that he does exist. I know that doesn’t make much sense on its face, so let me explain.
The character of “Satan” first appears in polytheistic religions – in fact, I would go so far as to say that all polytheistic religions have their own prince of darkness. In the ancient Egyptian religion, this was Set, the ass headed God who slew Osiris and did battle with his son, Horus. This deity had also been called Set-Tan or Shet-Tan, to emphases the fact that the adversary (Set literally means adversary) is of darkness (Tan is an Egyptian God of the Moon). This is most likely where the Hebrews picked up on the word Satan, spelled Shin-Teth-Nun, which means “adversary” in their language as well.
The fact that each polytheistic religion has its own prince of darkness been used to argue that polytheistic religions are inherently evil. This, of course, is not taking into account the fact that one evil deity among many good deities is substantially less evil percentage-wise than the fifty-fifty split between Satan and God that occurs in the great monotheistic religions. In polytheistic religions, there is the battle between Light and Darkness, and there is a greater force that remains indifferent to this struggle above the deities of light and darkness and acts as a referee between the two. In monotheistic religions, there are no indifferent referees – all entities are either on the side of good or evil.
Originally, Judaism wasn’t like this. Satan was more of a title. Satan was the Attorney General for God, prosecuting sinners – trying argue in God’s court against the admittance of a human into heaven. This can still be seen most clearly in the Book of Job, in which God and Satan are discussing the fate of God’s most faithful servant. Satan is trying to prove to God that Job isn’t pious – he just hasn’t had a reason to question is faith. With God’s permission, Satan goes about putting Job through trial after trial trying to prove his point, but ultimately fails.
In this paradigm, the battle between light and darkness is a battle between Humanity and Satan, and God remains as an indifferent referee. At some point in Jewish history, this paradigm changed into the more familiar God vs. Satan dichotomy. I think this most likely happened during the Jewish exile in Babylon after the fall of the first temple. Within the Empire of Babylon was another monotheistic, Zoroastrianism, which did have a strong good vs. evil dichotomy. Despite claiming to be the one true religion, Judaism is just as susceptible to religious syncretism as any other religion.
Christianity and Islam inherited this paradigm, which has one serious flaw; once you recognize Satan as the opposite and adversary of God, you place Satan on the same level as God. While it can be argued that two things can be opposite of each other and not be equal in standing, this isn’t at all how the human mind works. It is very easy to slip into thinking that God and Satan are equal but opposite, making the Abrahamic religions duo-theistic rather than a monotheistic.
As I’ve noted earlier, Satan is Hebrew for ‘adversary,’ and the surest way to find an adversary is to go looking for one. In the absence of any true threat, even minor disagreements become reason to demonize individuals as agents of a non-specific enemy. By perpetuating the myth of Satan, we empower and legitimize paranoia and authoritarianism within our own society, causing good men and women to do horrible things to each other and becoming the very wickedness we seek to combat.
That’s why I say that the greatest trick Satan ever pulled was to convince the world of his own existence. When we choose to believe in this delusion, we become idolaters by placing Satan opposite of God and sow seeds of discord within our own society. Satan is only apart of the Abrahamic religions because of religious syncretism, and is originally a polytheistic concept. If the owners of that Church sign really wanted to emphasizes the worship of the One True God, they would have done better by leaving Satan out of the discussion all together. That’s just my opinion – but then again, I’m a willful heretic.
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If Satan didn’t exist who else would people blame their inadequacies, faults, mistakes, and “sins” on? (said sarcastically) He’s a convenient answer. I agree with you, the trick was making people believe he actually existed.
Hello Sly,
Thank you for your comment. Convenient answers are what most humans want in a religion. I guess the trick is to never become satisfied with someone else’s convenient answer, belly up to the bar, and take responsibility for their own actions. But then again, you know as well as I do that isn’t an easy path to take.
Namaste