Since Satan cannot actually create, he must be a kind of pure reactionary, such that he simply wants for man the opposite of what God wishes; if God has a plan, Satan has an anti-plan; if God knows what's good for us, then Satan, by virtue of this knowledge, knows what is bad for us; for every virtue, there must be an equal and opposite vice. (This polarization is reminiscent of how the reactionary left reflexively hates whatever President Trump does, no matter how beneficial to the country.)
I'm just spitballing here, as usual. But Screwtape suggests we are on the right track; for example, "We [demons] want to suck in, He wants to give out. We are empty and would be filled; He is full and flows over."
Moreover, while God ultimately wants individuals-in-communion with him and with each other -- AKA the body of Christ -- Satan wants to deny and eliminate distinction. While God wants particles within the wave, Satan wants the wave to obliterate the distinct particles. See college campuses, for example, where "diversity" is a word signifying its compete absence.
Apparently, hell is a kind of hive-like blob; which implies that when we encounter a hive-like blob on earth -- e.g., the liberal media, academia, National Socialism, Communism, etc. -- we are seeing a facsimile of hell.
This would also imply that it's not enough to merely eliminate individuality. To be on the safe side, Satan will want to undermine and erode any institution that leads to individualism, because once individuals exist, it's hard to eliminate them short of genocide.
"Give me liberty or give me death" really comes down to "I would prefer to die as an individual than to live as an ant." Freedom is individuality lived, as individuality is freedom lived -- bearing in mind that true individuality is always rooted in love, community, and intersubjectivity; it is trinitarian, not atomistic. Atomistic individualism leads to libertarianism or existentialism, and is but a step away from nihilism.
Interesting too that neither God nor Satan ever force the issue; both recognize and "respect" free will, but there must be something different in the way they understand it.
You might say that God attracts whereas Satan tempts. Temptation is obviously a kind of attraction, but it is "away" from what is good for us; or just say away from the good, true, and beautiful. How does that work? While the two movements are "opposite," they can't be equal, because again, the latter isn't really real, just a privation, ultimately the shadow resulting from the light.
Screwtape posits a theory of cosmic undulations, which makes sense as far as it goes. I first encountered this idea many years ago in a book or lecture by Alan Watts. Many New-Age types will say something similar, to the effect that "everything is energy," and what is energy but a wave with crests and troughs? Everything is in rhythm, from the seasons, to days, festivals and celebrations, etc. The Dude puts it best:
I remember Schuon saying something similar as well, about the inevitable dissonances, fluctuations, and enigmas in this world; which must be the shadows of harmony, rhythm, and mystery, respectively.
Let us not forget that God is necessary while we are contingent, and that it is always possible for contingency to detach itself from the very absolute that must be its source, and careen into a detached contingency, AKA the absurdity of absolute relativity. What is a leaf without the tree? An infant without a mother? A toe -- with nail polish even -- without the girl?
Anyway, Screwtape observes that God actually utilizes the troughs for his own ends. Indeed, you don't have to read too many spiritual biographies to see that it is often the case that the deeper the trough, the greater the sanctity. Dark nights of the soul, and all that.
Nevertheless, a trough is a trough, and the trough is where the temptations can be tempting indeed. Put conversely, souls in heaven are way beyond temptation, because they know that nothing promised by the Screwtapes of the world can hope to match the beatific vision.
Let us stipulate: virtues lure; vices tempt. Screwtape suggests as much: "He [God] cannot 'tempt' to virtue as we do to vice."
11 comments:
I often wonder if the accuser would seek forgiveness?
What will happen to all of the souls that were ________(fill in the blank). i.e.,Tricked, mislead, lied to...
How are they to be redeemed?
Anyway, Screwtape observes that God actually utilizes the troughs for his own ends.
Just had that discussion today, how God can use even the evil that men do to accomplish great good that would have been otherwise impossible. Context was the reign of King Henry III, whose horribleness simply resulted in the strengthening of the English legal system and the development of Parliament. There are of course a gazillion other examples, the Cross being the greatest...
Doug, for me the answer lies in the truth that God knows our hearts. Did we act out of genuine love, or of mere self-interest? Given the opportunity to escape/ improve/ correct the course, did we take it or run away?
Finally, on the last day as we hang, each of us, on our crosses, do we accuse, curse and mock the Lord, or ask Him to remember us?
Saul persecuted Christians, even to the point in having a part in the death of St. Stephen. He did so out of a misguided zeal for the Lord; it was this very passion which God turned instead to the best possible use of Paul's life.
Finally, on the last day as we hang, each of us, on our crosses, do we accuse, curse and mock the Lord, or ask Him to remember us?
Being the playful ass that I can be, I think I would call him an asshole and know that He would probably call me an old crow.
:^)
In my Satanless heaven, I’ll win the spiritual monopoly game and will treat all you losers well, just as a good shepherd manages his sheep. My apologies, but as a lifelong sociopathic control freak it could only ever be thus.
But I do wonder what would happen to life long lost Hindus from deepest India, or the Sentinelese, or Moslems who tried to last as long as they could as Coptic Christians until all the persecution and shunnings got to them, and they capitulated. Shouldn’t there be some kind of work-release pergatory for them?
Everybody who hasn't read Revelations but believes it knows that the best representation of Revelations can be found in the “This is The End” movie - a bunch of desperate Hollywood liberals evading demons while trying to get the blue light.
And around 40% of Americans know that heaven would be like residing in the Trump Tower with the Trump family, forever.
But what could hell possibly be like? Living with the Clintons?
Yes. Yes it would. Except you’d be locked into a room with them watching Cable TV, with 6 minutes of show and 5 minutes of commercial, day after stinking Groundhog Day, forever. And every show would be about BHObama. With no choom or munchies allowed. Ever. Forever.
Think about that people. Is that what you want?
You sound pleasant.
The heaven I can imagine cannot possibly be the heaven that is. Instead of trying to wrap my head around what precisely it entails, I prefer to simply wait and trust that when the Lord has promised something is good, then it is.
Random tangential thought of the morning: I was just reading comments to this post at Instapundit's, discussing an Atlantic article where the author whines that all those 2nd Amendment marchers somehow took away his 1st Amendment rights. Commenter Lincoln Annie observed,
"I get it. My existence makes you disappear."
Right there, I think, is a key foundational point to what drives a lot of leftists. It's not just that they disagree about the best way to govern a country so that the most people have the best life they can. It's that they find it literally unbearable and intolerable that there are people out there - a lot of people - who think differently about things than they do, and simply by existing prove that the leftist is not a little god.
Way back when I was following atheism to its logical conclusions, it dawned on me that Alanis Morisette was proof that I'm not god, and the cosmos could not possibly be some internal set of projections created by the random firing of neurons in an isolated brain. Everything about her was so baffling and repulsive that I knew with absolute certainty that she was not a subconscious creation of my own mind, but something purely outside of myself. Of course, this realization didn't make me "disappear"; to the contrary, I found it quite comforting since no sane person should want to have that kind of power. However, to someone who has given himself no other option - that is, who has closed off the very idea that there might be an actual God and he ain't it - discovering that people exist who you find wholly baffling, repulsive, and other to yourself might be completely intolerable. In essence, it cancels out his conception of himself, and makes him feel insignificant.
No wonder they hate us so much.
People project onto the world whatever it is that works for them personally, or, whatever doesn't work. Few are courageous enough see beyond themselves, even to bite the hands that feed, especially if ones own tribal standing is at risk. This makes it hard to understand why a lifelong Hindu would believe and do the things they do, when one is a not-Hindu. But its always very easy to "explain."
But somebody has to be right, and projecting reflexive self-righteous hatred isn't much of a tool to help figure that out.
“The older I get, the surer I am that I’m not running the show.” --Leonard Cohen
What does the Devil want?
The Devil's mother was a slattern with a taste for wine and disreputable company. Her prize possession was a handsome black ram who was given a harem of ewes which he guarded zealously.
It was told this woman unwisely entered the paddock of this black ram and was attacked and then raped by same. Others said she enticed the ram.
In any case she gave birth to a son Shaytan from this union. The boy was born with horns and cloven hoofs, and inherited his father's jet black hair.
Shaytan was judged an abomination and banished to dwell in a deep cave from which issued sulfurous fumes.
It is told Shaytan was visited by God and given special powers. God was said to have realized in order to test the goodness of the people, there would have to be a Tempter, and Shaytan was selected for this job due to his deep resentment against human beings.
This was said to have occurred in Antediluvian times.
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