Satanic Panic
Or To Hell With Sympathy for the Devil
A friend recently asked me how I would describe Satan, the Devil, etc. I gave him a response which I will get to later in this essay. But first, I think it is good to figure out the wider who, what, and why of depictions, assumptions, and ideas about the figure who is labelled with names that mean the accuser, the adversary, and other concepts in scripture. However, it is not scripture which shapes most language used for the adversary. The language we use and think when we hear the Devil or Satan is shaped much more by the depiction of Satan in Milton’s Paradise Lost. Milton shapes Satan as the grand opponent of God in such a way that we transfer the anti-heroic depiction into a modern superhero vs supervillain dynamic. Pop culture shapes our image of Satan much more than scripture because the cultural pictures are more interesting and obvious than are the scriptural ones.
Tyler Huckabee recently wrote an excellent article in the magazine Sojourners in which he also deals with the popular culture view of Satan. In his article, he makes the observation that “[t]he Devil of the Bible isn’t like Die Hard’s Hans Gruber; a malevolent genius whose sinister plots have contingency plans. He’s more like Grima Wormtongue, an petty twerp who whines whenever he doesn’t get his way.” (Huckabee) This is an incredibly insightful analogy. If you are familiar with the character Gríma Wormtongue, you will most likely see the character as portrayed in the Peter Jackson films based on The Lord of the Rings or the written description of Tolkien in the books or Gandalf’s statement to Wormtongue as he reveals himself before Theodin, “The wise speak only of what they know, Gríma son of Gálmód. A witless worm have you become. Therefore be silent, and keep your forked tongue behind your teeth. I have not passed through fire and death to bandy crooked words with a serving-man till the lightning falls.” (Tolkien)
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The picture of Satan as a witless worm follows scripture much more closely than the idea of a grand opponent of God. The earliest explicit mention of Satan in the Hebrew scriptures is the book of Job. “But wait a minute! What about Genesis?” you may be asking. The mention of the serpent in Genesis has no explicit connection to the character of Satan until later mentions. In fact, the text itself describes the serpent as an animal within the Garden. “Now the serpent was more crafty than any other wild animal that the LORD God had made.” (Gen 3:1 NRSV) Even if we go to Genesis, the vision of what we call Satan will be like Wormtongue. But let’s look at Job first. The book of Job is theodicy in which the writer is explaining the place of evil in the world. We can view Job in many ways, but it is most likely a type of parable based on the language style. The picture of the heavenly beings (sons of God) coming before Yahweh in a presentation is a picture of a heavenly council. Into this enters a being named The Satan (ha-satan - The Accuser). It is important for us to understand that The Satan uses a definite article which is a specific use of Satan as The Accuser like a title not a nature. In Job, The Satan is a character who is tasked with reporting on the goings on upon Earth. The character seems to have little belief that a human could remain faithful through hardship and evil and makes a wager with Yahweh, which ultimately fails for the Satan. The picture of The Satan is of a schemer who ultimately fails. This is also the idea of the Trickster in many First Nations cosmologies and the demigod Loki.
Sometimes culture gets the idea of Satan down better than Christianity. For good examples of a feckless, but alluring schemer, see Robert A. Heinlein’s Job: A Comedy of Justice in which Satan/Loki cannot capture a human he wants to control. Or the Terry Prachett and Neil Gaiman novel Good Omens in which the line between angels and demons is blurred and Satan also cannot bring about Armageddon and is foiled by an angel and demon who really enjoy living on earth. The subtle visions of Satan are also good and show the side by which Paul sees the enemy as one prowling around like a lion. The Exorcist is one example Huckabee gives for the idea that Satan inhabits those we love. Huckabee links this to the encounter between Jesus and Peter in Matthew 16 when Jesus reacts to Peter’s claim that Jesus should not suffer by telling Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.” (Matt 16:23 NRSV) This encounter comes almost directly after Jesus calling Simon Peter and recognizing the confession of Jesus as the Christ and the rock of the Church. Huckabee mentions we had no idea Satan was in the room, so this catches us off guard.
Another excellent picture is the DC character in comics and the Fox/Netflix series Lucifer in which the titular character aids the LAPD with murder investigations. The character of Lucifer in this work of fiction paints a slick influencer rather than an overtly evil presence. One key feature of Lucifer in the series and comics is that he never lies. He may hide the truth, but his evil is usually worked out in giving people what they really want and manipulating events. Even Lucifer’s realm of Hell in this work is a more existential reliving of one’s worst day or moment in life. This is a subtle nod to Sartre’s No Exit in my opinion. The character Lucifer and many other depictions have connections to both scripture and Milton. Our task is to discern when the subtly evil is the manifestation of the satanic. We may be surprised at what turns out to be satanic versus what we may popularly ascribe to the satanic.
If you are old enough, you may remember the last period of “satanic panic” in the 1980’s U.S. The hysteria that rose over what turned out to be claims about satanic influence and action were, at best, exaggerations. I would argue that many of the things that Christians were warning about had a better handle on The Satan than the worried caricatures of an incredibly powerful being who could thwart God. Many popular songs have shown a truer picture of a subtle and not quite powerful vision. Often the picture of the adversary is about making a god in our own image, or at least the results of what can happen when we pursue the “things of this world.” Van Halen’s “Running With the Devil” is an example. The opening lines show us what it is like to run with “the devil.”
I live my life like there’s no tomorrow
And all I’ve got I had to steal
Least I don’t need to beg or borrow
Yes, I’m livin’ at a pace that kills
Ooh, yeah (Van Halen)
Then we have Motley Crue’s truth hidden in the song “Shout at the Devil” which ultimately exposes the false promises of the devil.
He’s the wolf screaming lonely in the night
He’s the blood stain on the stage
He’s the tear in your eye
Been tempted by his lie
He’s the knife in your back, he’s rage
He’s the razor to the knife
Oh, lonely is our lives (Motley Crue)
The Rolling Stones show how we become the Devil through violence in “Sympathy for the Devil.”
Please allow me to introduce myself
I’m a man of wealth and taste
I’ve been around for a long, long years
Stole many a man’s soul and faith
…
I shouted out
Who killed the Kennedys?
When after all
It was you and me (who who, who who) (Rolling Stones)
Then we have the classic and contemporary visions of the affects of addiction as work of the devil.
Ran into the devil, babe, he loaned me twenty bills
Spent the night in Utah in a cave up in the hills
…
I ran down to the levee but the devil caught me there
He took my twenty dollar bill and he vanished in the air (The Grateful Dead - “Friend of the Devil”)
I’m just a long-haired son of a sinner
Searching for new ways I can get gone
I’m a pedal to the highway
If you ever wonder why we write these songs
‘Cause I’m only one drink away from the devil
I’m only one call away from home (Jelly Roll - “Son of a Sinner”)
The mistake we often make with depictions of Satan within Christianity is the one of giving The Satan personhood like God. The text almost always implies an impersonal or less than person when speaking of the Satan. Which brings me to the answer I gave my friend.
“Satan (the Satan, the accuser, etc) appears to be a sub-person being. Because we are not dualists, Satan cannot be a person with power similar to God, but influence and maybe even the human penchant for violence and rebellion is ‘personified’ in Satan. Paul calls Satan the god of this world, but I wonder if he is being hyperbolic in terms of the god we make in our image.”
It is in being the god of this world that the idea of Satan gets the most power. This is also ironically the most subtle expression of the satanic, because we may even feel that it is good and right. This is the fear Paul had when he talked about powers and principalities. Paul wrote of twin concerns of the spiritual and the physical manifestations of the powers. These powers work to convince us we need them to be safe. That if we follow them, we will receive the privileges we feel are due us. Or we listen to the lie that the Church needs a savior other than the Christ. Too often we exude a vision of the Church cowering before the might of the god of this world. Instead, we should be projecting the vision of a people working with God to storm the gates of hell, throwing them open, and releasing the captives therein.
Tolkien, J.R.R.. The Lord Of The Rings: One Volume (p. 514). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.