So what's the question?
This is the second in my series of thoughts about questions which have orbited my mind for years but which I've never really had a satisfactory answer, either within the Christian scene or outside it, unless you count the "whole thing is a load of rubbish" answer. I once publicly asked a preacher one of the questions posed here, and was treated patronisingly as if I was asking a silly question. Maybe I was. But I still wanted to know the answer. Reminds me of when I was at primary school and a Naval officer came to give a talk. When question time came, some small kid asked the question "why does a steel ship float?" and all the other kids roared with laughter. This rather let the Navy guy off the hook as he clearly had never thought of it himself.
So silly or not, let's have it?
The question which has bugged me so long is this. We learn that the death of Christ on the cross paid the penalty for sin, and broke the power of Satan. It is clear that Satan knew about this, because he tried to deflect Christ from his course in the wilderness temptations, and also, apparently, in Matthew 16:23 in which he rebukes Peter with the words "Get behind me, Satan!". Why then should Satan go on to participate in his own undoing, by "entering into" Judas Iscariot in John 13:27? (Mind you more trivially I'd like to know how this was apparent to John. Did a blue sulphurous flame shoot out from his direction or something? Mind you, I have learned subsequently that John's gospel was not written by an eyewitness). And come to that, why foment the wrath of the priests? Why not let the "hang on it'll all blow over soon" mood which Gamaliel proposed in Acts 5:34 prevail? The guy (we learn) isn't stupid.
So what answers have I had?
"Satan can only do what God lets him"
This is based in the passages in the first two chapters of the book of Job, where Satan has to ask permission to assault Job or destroy his possessions The problems I have with this are immense:
- God may let him, but he doesn't have to take up the licence. He might smell a rat and decide not to. In this case, he surely would have smelled a whole family of rats, together with a few mice and a couple of gerbils?
- Is that what God and Satan do every morning "I'd like this list of people to have car accidents today, these people to have headaches, these people to suffer burglaries, and to tempt these people to commit them...", "OK but in this accident, he can't have more than one broken limb", "No to that one", etc etc?
- If God and Satan are at war, how come they meet up and chat about such banal things anyhow? Surely Satan would be holed up in his bunker, so to speak?
- Why should God ever say "Yes" other than when he wants to make a point, as with Job? Surely he can't be making all that many points, and every day?
- Isn't Job meant to be allegorical anyhow?
I have to say, looking back on this in October 2001, that the events of the previous month seem very hard to reconcile in terms of a cosy chat between God and Satan. But then I don't have to. I just can't imagine children who've lost fathers and mothers being reassured too much knowing that it was all God allowing them to be tested.
"Satan didn't know what was going on or all the implications"
Well he clearly knew enough to try and stop him in the wilderness, and when Peter suggested that he wouldn't suffer didn't he? Wasn't he listening? And then, of course, there's the slaughter of the innocents (maybe). Again, he's supposed not to be stupid. He is supposed to know the scriptures, so he can surely appreciate all the nuances of the Old Testament sacrifices which are supposed to be the precursor of the ultimate sacrifice of Jesus? It's not a question that is life or death to me. I'm not going to affirm or reject Christianity because I can't understand that one. It's just a question I'd like to understand one day if it is true.
Why does Satan bother with Planet Earth?
If before his fall Satan was the chief and greatest angel (we are told that Isaiah 14:12 on and Ezekiel 28:12 on are descriptions of Satan seen acting behind some Earthly tyrant of the day), he would have known how big the universe was. If he is literally "hell-bent" on destruction, how come he bothers himself with the affairs of the barely sentient inhabitants of some little third planet of a small star in the suburbs of one galaxy, when there are billions of galaxies each with billions of stars and planets. Whole civilisations making ours look like ant-heaps could be wiped out with a single supernova. Cultures of a sublimity we cannot dream of could be swept into a black hole overnight and lost forever. Surely that would be more fun as an act of spite than giving Job a few boils or me stomach upsets? One of the Psalms often quoted is Psalm 8:3 "When I consider the heavens ... what is man that Thou does care for him?". I intend no disrespect, but doesn't that apply to Satan too?
Is Satan telepathic?
This leads me to another puzzle I had recently, not unconnected with the puzzle over the "permission to afflict Job". How do we know that Satan can read, or for that matter write (I speak as a computer person!) our thoughts? The reason I ask this is because when I was younger, I was bothered by thoughts which flashed into my head, like for example, my head might echo for ages with "F*** off God". Other people clearly had similar thoughts, and the preacher, when asked about the subject, replied that it was a great device of Satan to put such a thought into people's minds and then rush in front of you and say "call yourself a Christian and there you are thinking that!" Now I can accept that the Bible is clear about God looking on the "heart", for example in the choice of David in the Old Testament, right through the prophets and through the New Testament. So God can eavesdrop if he wants. And most praying clearly relies precisely on the assumption that God can and does listen in to unspoken prayer, although interestingly the only example I can find in the Bible of prayer which is clearly unspoken is in Nehemiah 2:4. (Please let me know if you can think of another). However where does it ever say that Satan, or anyone else, such as one of his minions, can? And why, as I asked earlier, should he want to bother? Do the confused thoughts of a then 20-odd year old human male in England merit the individual attention of the foremost created being in the universe (which we're told Satan is)? If, as it clearly must be, a minion, a "Wormwood" detailed by a "Screwtape" to afflict the life of John Collins, then clearly the lowest ranking demons, and as they are fallen angels, the unfallen ones, have the ability to plant thoughts and watch them grow. So telepathy by the "spirit realm" of the thoughts of "mortals" must be pretty standard stuff. But is this particularly fair? And why is the traffic one-way only? Why isn't the reverse process made available to us mortals, so we can eavesdrop on Satan's plans? Surely nothing would drive people more into the arms of God than to see a glimpse of how Satan was trying to do the opposite? And then, why should we unquestioningly take on the assumption that God, Satan, and all the angels, good and bad, can read our thoughts in detail, when we can't read each other's thoughts at all even when we try hard? Much as I love my wife, Sue, there are times when we manage to have misunderstandings and fights and I think "if only she could see where I was coming from". Yet it seems strange to believe that we can cross the boundary into the "spirit realm" with our thoughts but not a few inches of air to our nearest and dearest. Again, to use a computer analogy (if you'll forgive it!), if I'm not sure about the network card or connection on one computer, I'll first try "pinging" (testing the link) from it to another one a few feet away, not to one in Australia. What bothers me is that religious people seem to be taking as completely axiomatic something for which there is no prima facie evidence, indeed evidence to the contrary from their everyday experience.