Satan is your accuser. He has all the dirt on you. He knows what you did. And what if he told your church or your friends what you’ve done? That little secret you try to keep hidden from everyone, even from God. Satan knows about it. Satan has a dirt-file on you, and he will not let you forget the fact.
— Tony Reinke, Desiring God, Satan Wants to Blackmail You, February 22, 2017
This is what I always was afraid of. Not by Satan though but by God. You see when the final judgement is given and all your sins of your entire life are shown before you – not to make you feel bad, but to make you love Jesus even more – I always imagined this being projecting on a large cinema screen with everybody watching along. The very thought turned my stomach, that’s for sure.
I hated the thought of dying and standing before God’s throne. Hell was far worse, but this prospect wasn’t fun either.
I can understand why we invented gods, every culture throughout history has done it as a way of explaining everything that can’t readily be understood. The psychological reasons for inventing satan are, however, much more complicated. Ironically I think they substantially detract from any small amount of evidence there may be for god. After all, how can a god be all powerful and yet unable to be able to be rid of satan? The best apologetists can do is give pretty bad reasons for why he (or she) is tolerated.
Satan developed as a way of explaining why there is evil in the world. In the early works of the Hebrew bible satan is a member of God’s council (Job) and not gods enemy. Genesis 3 is about a snake not satan.
The prototype for the prince of darkness comes from fallen angels in apocryphal books (e.g enoch). Satan as God’s cosmic enemy developed at a time when righteous jews were suffering. They needed to understand why evil things happened to good people. In the past bad things were happening to the Jews at God’s command because of their disobedience (e.g the exile of Israel / Judah) but now righteous jews were still suffering despite their obedience. I believe that ideas of a divine struggle – good vs evil developed to ex plain this. Older ideas that Yahweh was all powerful still persisted hence the bizarre belief that an all powerful god permits a omniscient rebel to cause havoc!
What good on earth is a superhero without a villain? And when both the boys are omniscient, then the real fun begins. What’s that noise under the bed? Did you hear that?
So God isn’t the only one who’s watching when I take a poop? Satan is, too?
Kinky.
The Holy Trifecta–God, Satan, and Santa. 🙂
Lmfao
Hahahahahahahaaa!!
Wow, I really lucked out growing up Catholic. Confession to a priest was a frequent ritual, and a comforting one to a child. You could tell the priest anything, and he was bound by the confidentiality of the confessional; he could NOT tell your mother. You would confess your horrible sins (like lying about taking that last piece of candy), the priest would sternly tell you not to do it again, and give you some prayers to pray as penance. Those sins were then forgiven, God had dismissed them from His mind, and they would not pile up on you and condemn you to Hell.
As far as I can tell, the real Hell for many people was growing up Evangelical.
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