What About Angels & Demons?
“Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one--the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts,...Your affectionate uncle, Screwtape." -C.S. Lewis The Screwtape Letters
In 2009, a study showed that 59% of Christian adults do not consider Satan to be a real figure in any way. You may have heard the saying, "The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist." It sounds so prophetic, and in many ways it's correct. But, I want to correct the statement just a bit so that it's more accurate. The greatest trick the devil ever played is convincing you he's not someone you'd want to be around at first.
When we talk about Satan we must understand the limited explanations and descriptions of him we get in Scripture. We are told of Satan's ways, how he, "prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking to devour" (1 Peter 5:8), that he communicates with God and must even have God's permission to do his work on earth (Job 1:6), and that Satan is a prominent figure in Revelation. But, there are so many facets of Satan that are the product of humans writing to fill in the gaps that Scripture does not answer. During the Middle Ages, roughly 900 AD to 1400 AD, we have a massive influx of church writings on and artistic depictions of Satan. In 1321, Dante Alighieri produced one of the most influential works on Satan, demons, and hell with his work The Divine Comedy, more specifically The Inferno in which the main character, Dante, is escorted through the various levels of hell and sees the torments that each layer holds. It's from this work especially that we get many of the common images of Satan and demons as grotesque beings better described as monsters.
Red-tinted skin, horns like a goat protruding from his head, a deadly pitchfork held in clawed hands, and a terrifying smile of razor-sharp teeth. I'm willing to bet that when you hear the name, Satan, these are the images that come to your mind. While these images may have scared many in the "dark ages" into believing and behaving right, it's far too easy for our enlightened, 21st-century minds to dismiss. As it should be! To an extent...
Far too often we allow these, quite literally, ancient perceptions of Satan to sway our understanding of evil and its place here on earth. To the point that it's no longer even spoken of in many churches of any denomination. We dismiss the mythology of Satan, as we should, but in the attempt to modernize our approach to faith, we throw the baby out with the bathwater and wind up rejecting nearly every notion of evil, period.
The last thing I ever want to do is use evil as a scare tactic to get people to believe or behave. If you have to be scared into believing, you're not really believing. If I were to take that approach, I've just reduced the powerful grace and love of Jesus Christ and what He did for you on the cross down to an insurance policy where you are more worried about possibly ending up in Dante's nightmarish hell, so you might as well cover yourself with a faith policy just in case it turns out to be true.
That being said, I cannot let you walk through this life in the kind of blissful ignorance that same evil hopes you find your way into. Spiritual warfare is very real, and you engage in it daily, even hourly. Not in some grandiose sword-and-shield battle just beyond human sight, but in the thoughts, the words, the struggles you deal with that are all too real. Satan is a masterful salesman, and he will never approach you with fanged teeth and a pitchfork. We are shown in Job how well Satan knew Job the man, his desires, his shortcomings, his insecurities, all of it. Like the masterful salesman he is, Satan, this evil that is present, knows you as well and will use whatever tools work best on you, and you alone.
Fear of the future, anxiety, depression and the self-loathing it creates, greed and the desire and drive to accumulate more and more, selfishness that refuses to empathize, holes in fulfillment that can be temporarily filled through drugs/alcohol or sex, comparison to your neighbor and the feeling that you're coming up short, there are so many avenues for evil to use that, of course, Satan wants our attention solely on the outrageous ones he'd never actually use, like the snarling monster under your bed.
I say all of this to bring you to the good news at last. Friends, we have nothing to be fearful of. The battle is already decided, the victory is already won! Satan has been defeated by Christ and we as Children of God reborn through the love of Christ are victorious as well! Does this mean we will not struggle? Of course not. It is because his time is short and his outcome already sealed that as Christians we can expect even more attacks. We must educate ourselves on the tactics of evil and the ways in which it truly works in this world.
Ephesians 6 tells us to put on the whole armor of God each and every day so that we can withstand these attacks in all the ways they come. Whether through mental health, our bank accounts, our insecurities at work or with friends and families, any of the ways in which we are convinced that we are not enough and beyond redemption or not worth the grace already extended to us. These are the slow-burn tactics of our enemy that slowly but surely drive us from a place alongside the victory of Jesus Christ who claimed us, into someone who feels worth less than the timber that Christ was nailed to.
Over and over again I have people tell me these lies about themselves and the heartbreaking part is how strongly they've come to believe them. That is Satan at work, and that is what must be called out and cast out. You, yes you reading this now, are a claimed and cherished child of God. You were on Christs' mind as he uttered with his last breath, "It is finished." When the evil in this world comes into your mind and tries to convince you otherwise, call it out for what it is; a bad sales tactic from someone who has already lost. Turn to this peddler of lies and call him out just as Jesus did, "Get thee behind me, Satan!" (Matt. 16:23).
You are victorious, not because of anything you did, but because you are loved and there is nothing you can do about it. Go win your battles today in the name of Jesus Christ who leaves the flock to find YOU.
If you're interested in learning more on this topic Pastor JB suggests reading any of the following:
-The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis
-Spiritual Warfare in the Storyline of Scripture: A Biblical, Theological, and Practical Approach by William F Cook. and Chuck Lawless
- Simply Jesus: A New Vision of Who He Was, What He Did, and Why He Matters, by N.T. Wright
