Is Satan a bad guy? Well, sure. But why? If he punishes evil, why is he the bad guy? Certainly that should make him the good guy, right?

Well, it isn't a matter of him punishing evil. In fact, he doesn't punish evil at all. Satan is awaiting his punishment and is trying to drag down as many people with him as possible. He doesn't sit on a fiery throne in Hell dealing out punishment: no, no, no. It is a common misconception (and a frequent misrepresentation) for that to be the case. But it is not the case.

Satan woke up one day and challenged God's authority. He was outcast for trying and wanting to usurp God's throne, and he was doomed to be punished eternally in Hell. He now temps everyone and tries to keep people away from God, that way he can drag as many people down to Hell with him as possible. If he can't have it, why should you be able to? He tries to get Christians to stop following so closely: to become more complacent and content with where they are at in their faith, that way they never reach out to others. Believers and unbelievers get tempted all the same. If he tempts unbelievers, he can keep them away from God. If he tempts believers, the unbeliever will never be witnessed to. The Word will never reach his ears.

Some day soon, Satan will be in Hell with the unbelievers being punished, not dealing out punishment.

Now, if you want to talk about a Satan that is misunderstood, let's talk about Hades.

Hades was a chill dude. He was loyal. He stayed true to his wife (mostly). He wasn't nearly as screwed up as the other Greek gods. He was nice. He was a good father... and yet he has such a bad rap. Not to mention, he has a cute doggo named Cerberus. Now that's how you know he is a good man: he has a good pup.

The devil made me do it" was a popular catch phrase used by comedian Flip Wilson and his alter ego "Geraldine" in the 1970s. No matter what the situation - the devil was responsible for it. We often see good and evil depicted wrestling on one's shoulders - one in red urging someone to go ahead and do whatever while the one in white sitting certainly and squarely on the right shoulder working their conscience over.

When you say "Satan" most people tend to think angry ugly looking red guy sporting horns, hooves, bad teeth, long tail and jabbing at us with his pitchfork. Sin is ugly....ah but it's also so attractive and addictive. That's his jam. Greed, lust, jealousy, just one more drink, gamble some money you don't have - he's your man. In actuality the result of sin is ugly but what tempts one is attractive bait or else there would be no power in temptation...Bruce Springsteen sings in Pink Cadillac:

"There's always somebody tempting somebody into doing something they know is wrong

Well they tempt you, man with silver

And, they tempt you, sir with gold

And, they tempt you with the pleasures

That the flesh does surely hold"

Lucifer was a beautiful and favored angel. He wasn't content...he wanted more...He wanted to be God...after a revolt he was cast from Heaven as a fallen angel...Satan. The battle of good and evil. The ultimate rumble. Let's recap...a vain, greedy, unappreciative, pretentious narcissist with a God complex. Sounds like a bad guy to me.

We are given free will....we choose and being human we often make the wrong choice ... Did the devil make us do it? Nah...remember, we have free will. There is a constant spiritual battle raging around us. Again, is Satan a bad guy? Absolutely....he is the prince of darkness. Those souls lost to eternal damnation...he reigns over them without mercy, for he has no capacity for it. He is the ultimate bad guy.

When I think of the war for mankind's soul that has been raging since the beginning of time....how does it play out? I have to agree with Reverend Billy Graham, "I have

read the last page of the Bible. It is all going to turn out all right."

Something I don't like about christianity is how... all or nothing it is. God is just good and perfect in every way, the Devil is completely evil.

There's just no way I can honestly believe in that, because I've experienced the world and that's not how anything is. I connect much more with ideas of balance, of everything being a little bit of everything.

Nothing is ever good or bad. Everything is everything.

Now that I think about it, God must have counted on mankind’s ability to suspend disbelief. Here’s an example.

God is all powerful and all knowing.

Satan is evil.

God knows this because he created everything, including Satan and evil.

Satan wants humans to be evil.

God knows this because he knows everything that has or is ever going to happen.

Satan then punishes those who do what he wanted them to do by torturing them for eternity.

God knows this is going to happen to many of his children that he loves unconditionally but despite being all powerful and all knowing, he allows it to happen.

What loving parent would knowingly put their children through that if they had the power to stop or even prevent it? That’s why he needs suspension of disbelief.

I do not believe in a Satan character, per se.

I believe he is a symbolic image of a person(s) who history has chosen to glorify and amplify.

A flawed individual such as those we see running for Prime Minister, President, or King/Queen.

As humans, we are capable of great things: empathy, compassion, enterprise, conservation, etc. But so often, we act contrary to our nature. We know what the right thing to do is, but we just don't do it.

The Satan character reflects this idea. Why do you think anti-heroes now permeate most action movies these days? Heroes. True heroes. People who are willing to live and die by a code of pure morality and ethics--are few and far between. Anti-hero, a person who can fall in either direction--depending on which direction the wind is blowing--is more likely to resonate with most people. For example, HellBoy. A demon who functions as an anti-hero because the world at large will never see him as a true hero because of his background.

This is who we are (humans). This is who we have always been. We don't need Satan or demons. There are over 7.8 billion humans on this Earth. I would say that is enough capacity for evil (and also good--angels) without inventing more.

Katryese Austin (3/27/2022)

Poor Satan-

so misunderstood.

A lost boy, undermined by his brother,

he boasts into his adult life to feel important.

Day by day,

he surrounds himself in darkness.

His Underworld-

his cave, where he finds solace

“aiding in mortality.”

One day a woman, lively and colorful,

surpassed the hexes meant to exile the rest of the world

and explored his realm.

Recognizing the possibility of magic,

the Devil Himself invited her to stay,

but he was still… himself

and could not resist loving her demise.

After all, he had only ever known betrayal-

punishments were his chosen protection.

As time passed with his lover,

he grew to realize the goddess of spring

could never bloom entangled in his darkness.

Satan, consumed with hopelessness,

released his muse, his last chance at mortality,

back into the world.

Is The Devil truly a monster

or essential in one’s soul purpose?

If you really think of it he’s a child of a father thaleddidn’t want to do the hard job. God himself didn’t want to be ”the bad guy” he sent his son who he didn’t know what to do with down to hell as a punishment. God takes all the glory and let’s Lucife, an Angel to be villainised for doing a dirty job. He punishes the bad people in their afterlife the way the bad people messed up when they were alive. Luci punishes the guilty. Remember, he's an angel. Someone has to do the dirty work of his father's creations. If he didn't the guilty would be set free upon the innocent once again. So no, he's not the “bad guy” he's just someone to blame. The worshipers who kill for him or do wrong for him will be punished by him because that is not what he wants or is about. The same for the ones that give hate, hurt others mentally as well as physically and killing in the name of God will be going to hell to get punished for their crimes. God wants nothing to do with them. That's why he threw his son down to hell so he didn't have to deal with it.

A psychosis based in uncontrolled narcissism, inflated arrogance and a perceived need to subjugate and/or ridicule other individuals deemed to be inferior or unworthy.

That is a description of a person who has a God complex.

Yes there is a devil complex but that is based off of the image of him being this evil monster when he's not.

Some villains are proud of the fact they're villains, fully admitting they're evil and boasting about it. But some go even further, by claiming to be who many consider the ultimate villain, the Devil himself. Or a God of Evil, or a high ranking demon or demon king. In short, they have a Devil Complex.

That's not who he is at all. He's doing what he was forced to do because his father disowned him and threw him away. A fallen angel. A child of neglect of not ever being forgiven but sees his very father giving everyone else the chance to get forgiven.

Lucifer is not a bad person. He just has a shit job.

He drew the short straw for sure, unless thinking about him and God as enemies is an over simplification. There are so many diferent ways that we can explain the relationship between the two of them that it is possible to make plenty of fictional stories to have a career spanning 40 years writing them out.

For one thing, think about the importance of opposites in our world. The opposite of always is never; the opposite of up is down. Fast is the opposite of slow while rich is the opposite of poor. It also used to be that masculine was the opposite of feminine, in some cultures, but it appears that this might be changing. The concept of opposites is very important in religous teachings and myth. In the christian faiths, God is made out to be the most perfect, good, all-knowing, and all-powerful person in the world, while Satan is the opposite, except he is not an exact opposite. Opposites like 100 and -100, when added together, are cancelled out. You get zero. However, this is not the case with Satan and God in the typical christian view. Satan is the opposite in evilness and vileness, but God is the strongest. It is not the case of a two gods of equal and opposite powers, but of one all powerful god and his underling. Satan is used by God for his own benefit.

However, you can still look at the relationship between God and Satan in many different ways, due to how twisted around nearly every christian's faith is from each other. Of particular interest is that of the Mormon's church's ideas behind Satan.

In the Mormon church, agency, or the ability to choose one's own fate, is held very dear. However, two major figures in biblical history(fiction?) appear to not get this ability to choose for themselves. Satan and Judas. According to the Mormon faith, there a life before we all came to earth, the pre-mortal life, here everyone, including Satan, were spirit children of God. We appeared as God in spirit, I am thinking something like ghostly apparitions, but we did not have bodies. The entire reason we are here on earth is to get a body, learn and grow. This was God's plan, but Satan, one of the more significant spirit children, had another plan. There was a war in heaven concerning these to different plans and Satan was cast out. Then God preceded to create the whole world and then we had Adam and Eve and so on. Because of Satan's diference of opinion, he did not care for agency, he was only ever a tool in God's plan from then on.

Here we have a problem. What would have happened if Satan just went along with God's plan? God's plan required different choices and in the current context, this required evil or Satan to already exist. However, God's original plan would not have worked unless he had someone else, preferably weaker, to act as the bad guy. Someone to offer the sinful choices and put temptations everywhere. What would have happened if Satan sided with God's plan? As it is now formated, some other unlucky person would have had to take the fall in order for everything to work. Maybe I was next in line for the job position. Maybe it was you.