To Start Things Off

In my youth I blindly accepted anything taught to me and believed whatever I was told to believe. When I opened my eyes I was astonished at all the contradicting beliefs I had in my head and decided it was time to sort them out.

Christianity is all around me, and most if not all of my friends are Christian, though I now struggle with it. There are so many things that Christians practice that I don’t agree with, I don’t believe are right, and I don’t partake in at all. Mostly because I feel that almost all Christians were as I once was.. they see a box that says Christian Beliefs, and they try to fit whatever they can into the box… but if it doesn’t fit then it’s demonic, satanic, and must be avoided at all costs and/or destroyed!

I have been doing a lot of searching lately and I cringe everytime I hear something blamed on Satan or “The Enemy” or whatever other term people may use to describe this devil who wants to kill, steal, and destroy. I decided to look further into the history of Satan, more specifically the Jewish outlook, since Christianity somewhat stemmed from that religion.

The Jews do not believe that Satan is a fallen angel. They believe he is an agent of God, THE angel who tests humans on God’s behalf, doing God’s will as all angels do. Thus, they do not believe that he is evil, or that he works against the will of God. He is, in a way, against us, but that is his job. He doesn’t do it out of spite, or malice, or hatred of humans. He does it because that is what his Lord commands of him.

So, taking the above paragraph into account I’d like to establish a couple things:

God does not have oversight. What he creates he creates perfectly as he intended it to be. We are sinners because God intended us to be sinners. If we were perfect then there would be no reason to exist as we do here.

God’s will be done no matter what. He’s the most powerful being in existence. He CREATED existence! So if our measly will is in opposition to His, then ours shall fail and His will undoubtedly succeed.

So taking everything into account now, the Jewish view of Satan makes so much more sense to me. Satan could not be a fallen angel because that would mean he was defective and God does not create things that are defective, unless he wills them to be so. The Bible can say whatever it wants about the evil of Satan and demons and whatnot, but when God created this world he created a tree. A tree that contained the knowledge of good and EVIL. Thus if evil had not existed prior to this point, it existed now. God created good and evil, and he governs both. He governs everything, so why do Christians have a problem understanding this?

When I hear my friends tell me that something is demonic, I look at them and wonder if they know that such is demonic or if that’s just what they’ve been taught to believe. When we look back into the mythology of cultures around the world, there is almost ALWAYS at least one adversary. The Norse mythology it’s Loki. In Egyptian mythology it’s Set and a few others. Greek mythology has more well-rounded deities but Ares and Hades took a lot of flack. People need someone else to blame for their problems, and they blame whatever is most convenient to blame according to their beliefs. Satan may be to blame. But if he is carrying out the will of God, then he is just a messenger really. So then you are blaming God for your problems, but if this is true then you are simply nieve and ignorant. Yes, I said that, and I’ll explain.

If you are one of those people who blame God (or Satan) for when things go wrong, then you do not understand why we are here in the first place. You do not understand that we are not here to have a breezy, carefree life.. because one gains no wisdom from nothingness. It’s when we are challenged, put under stress, made to do things that are hard that we gain wisdom. We are here to learn, to grow, and to be tested. We can hate our tester all we want, but that does not sway him from his duty.

If you don’t like what I’ve said, read it again before you comment, but I do want to hear what you have to say as long as it’s constructive.

FYI: I am no longer a Christian, at least not in the way we are taught by the church. I believe in God, perhaps even the divinity of Jesus Christ (still working on that) and I have great respect for the lessons taught in the Bible. But the way the system works right now disgusts me. It’s almost as corrupt as the government. So I have severed that link and I have turned to a direct relationship with God rather than using the church as a middle man. You CAN learn a lot of good things in church, but I cannot agree with many of it’s teachings (Satan, Hell, Demons, Condemnation of Non-Christians) because I KNOW that my God did not mess up and have to create a place to dump that mess. I know that my God would not condemn a man who saw how the church overall behaved and turned away but still strived to live as righteously as possible. My God is merciful, compassionate, and loving… he could not bear to toss even one of his creations into a fiery pit forever and watch them suffer like that. He is all-seeing, all-knowing, all-powerful and the fact that he doesn’t coming booming down from the heavens shows us his wisdom as a parent, as a teacher, as a friend. He wants us to learn, and it may be painful for us, but to close let me put it this way. You can tell a child “Don’t touch that, it’s hot” but they won’t get it until they burn their fingers.

Here’s a site that gives a little more explanation than I did about Judaism’s view of Satan:
http://www.outreachjudaism.org/satan.html