SERMON: there's a way of thinking about "the devil" / "Satan" / "the adversary" that's loosely ~out there~ in Christian thinking and in light of this Presidential Medal of Freedom thing I'd like to kick that particular can around a little
among American evangelicals, a personified Satan rules. (I would argue "rules" is the right verb here: their praxis centers what they oppose; they worship that which they center.)
The personified Satan, as latte-sippin' coastals know, is largely the legacy of John Milton, one of the greatest poets ever to live. In the Bible, we have the serpent in Genesis -- literally never not a serpent; not an angel who falls; a snake in the garden --
then we have "Satan," literally "the adversary," to whom few of the traditionally demonic attributes are given until we get to the New Testament.
What does this adversary -- sometimes "accuser" -- do? For me this question is best answered in Job, where, in a story that, if true, would morally require us to reject its God, the adversary says to God: "Yr dude will curse You to Yr Face if you let me mess with him enough"
So the Lord says "Sure, go ahead," and there's your standard myth-progression of calamities until Satan gets to personally afflict Job, who finally issues one of the greatest poems of despair ever written but does not curse his God.
(Then God, rather mystifyingly, basically responds "I'm God, you wouldn't understand," but he also gets a good poem read in the process & everybody feels better.)
But among the many (for me, lifelong & continuing) lessons of Job is this view of what evil is, what the devil's supposed to be like. He's the guy who wants you to feel hopeless, because hopelessness is how the bad guys can get over.
That is their whole plan: not to inspire their own troops, but to make yours feel like the fight isn't worth the effort.
Giving a man who has devoted his life to ridiculing, belittling, and insulting others -- whose cancer I pray be healed, banished from his body, sent back to Hell; cancer is also demonic and nobody deserves it -- the Presidential Medal of Freedom is a deeply Satanic gesture.
Not in the sense that it springs from some ridiculous* blood-stained altar below a baphomet-hierophant scene where somebody's actively petitioning the Dark Lord for power. That's fairy tales.
*awesome
*awesome
It's Satanic in that the point is to make the people who trade in hope feel hopeless, to feel like no matter how hard you work to make the world better, the bad guys keep making the world worse.
Don't be discouraged. Don't give them the satisfaction.
You don't have to believe in God or Jesus or anything beyond this world to get some benefit from understanding this dynamic to be in place, I don't think; I hope not; I seek a faith that has room for people who don't have or want any.
In that faith we can all look at a medal being draped around a bigot who's devoted his whole life to mocking, belittling, and ridiculing others, and say:
this is not our concern. we have work to do, irons in the fire, and faith in the effort. faith is the substance of things not seen
which tells me not to let myself get too overheated about seen things when their only purpose is to try to undermine my resolve. /end
