The
Bible tells us that God created a good world, but that there is a dark side to
it. There is an extra element to
this world, a hidden dimension which is hard to describe and which is hard to
see and hard to explain but is nevertheless real.
This hidden dimension is comprised of a force or forces which work to
undermine everything that God has done and is doing.
In particular it seeks to bring about the death of creation and of human
beings in particular.
In
fact the entire Bible is the story of what God has done, is doing and will to
remove these forces of evil. Notice
this passage.
“The
Son of God came to destroy the works of the devil” I
John 3:8
A
hundred years ago no scientist would believe in black holes, but having surveyed
all that we have come know, they are the only way to account for all the data.
Similarly some Christians have refused to believe in Satan and demonic
powers, but when it comes down to explaining the enormity and many faceted
nature of evil, accepting the biblical worldview that there is a quasi-personal
spiritual force at work in the world beyond the evil that humans accomplish
their own is really the best way to
fully account for all the data we have regarding enormity and complexity of
evil.
Yet
Satan and evil are not things in themselves.
They are quasi-personal forces contingent on the existence of good.
Without good to feed off of evil cannot exist.
Satan and evil and even sin are parasites.
Thus Satan and demonic powers are pictured in the bible as angels gone
bad, just as Darth Vader could not exist were he not once good.
Evil,
sin and rebellion are only spoiled goodness, parasites, not original things.
In and of itself evil is nothing:
but nothing can be dangerous just as a
pot hole (the absence of asphalt where it is needed) is
dangerous for a car or a missing rung on a ladder is dangerous to the climber.
On
the other hand, sin is my rebellion against God.
It is this sin within me, when acted upon, which Satan uses as one of His
tools to put me under his grip and his spell.
When I sin I come under the spell of a power greater than myself and
greater than my ability to resist. Thus sinning is its own form of doing evil,
but sinning is also being trapped by and controlled by the spiritual forces of
evil which are extant in our world.
Of
course Satan is most dangerous when functioning as an “angel of light”,
something that looks really good at first, but indulgence in which leads us down
a path of destruction. It is
when evil appears as something delicious (recall “Turkish delight” in the
Lion, Witch, and Wardrobe when Edmund meets the white witch in Narnia) that
I am deceived and of course when I’m deceived I don’t know it and no one can
talk me out of it.
For
more:
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