I’ve read the bible a couple of times and spent a fair few Sundays in church in my life, and was always kind of fascinated by the story of Lucifer, as the most beautiful and esteemed angel, turning against God. The way it was taught to me is that Lucifer believed he could be greater than God, and so formed an army of rebel angels and declared war, which he lost. As punishment, God sent them all to hell and Lucifer effectively became Satan, King of the Underworld, where he now spends his time trying to acquire as many souls as possible, thereby denying God his own creation (us).
I had a little discussion with Kriswest over whether God sending Satan to hell was a punishment or a reward. My argument (speaking from a Christian pov for the sake of the argument) was that the only true (eternal) punishment God can inflict is to deny us himself, which he did by banishing Satan. Kris argued that to give someone their own domain to run isn’t exactly a punishment. This really got me thinking, and I’m inclined to agree with her somewhat. What the church teaches about Satan is that he’s evil the core. He wants no good for the world or mankind, and is downright afraid of the power of Christ. A being THAT evil would surely have no interest in being close to God, the source of all good, the only perfect being there ever was (following the idea that the divine trinity is three IN one). How, then, is it a punishment to be cast away from that?
Upon pondering this question and trying to somehow make it fit with what I’ve been taught of Christianity, I had an altogether blasphemous string of thoughts. Stay with me here, I’m not sure of how coherent this will be –
God, the Supreme Being, created all things, even his angels. Now, one might assume that if God created the angels and some of them rebelled, he must’ve given them the same power over their own fate as he gave us - free will. But what if, rather than Lucifer being an entity apart from God who turned against his maker, he was a part OF God? Here’s the scenario: God was wrestling with his own will, a part of himself that would cause him to think sinful thoughts and do petty, selfish things, a part of himself that was just downright bad. Being all-knowing and all-powerful, and able to get a better grasp on this internal struggle than we could ever understand, he decided to rid himself of this bad part, the way you cut the spots out of a potato before you boil it. By splitting himself this way he created two gods, one good, one evil, and they separated, the evil one running off to make his own kingdom elsewhere, leaving the good god to live peacefully in his heaven and sit in righteous judgment of mankind. However, both being a part of the whole, these two are still constantly at war with one another, what the Christians call the “spiritual war.”
Assuming mankind was created before the split, our capacity to do harm to ourselves and others begins to make more sense. God created us in his image, and gave us free will. If God was 100% holy and perfect when he created us, and he fashioned us after himself, wouldn’t we just kind of always make the right decision by default? Of course there is the option to do wrong, but we would/should only have the desire to do what is right at all times. If, however, we were created in the image of a god who was flawed, we would naturally share these flaws and therefore be susceptible to Satan’s temptations.
