Isn't God missing the devil?

by Narkissos 15 Replies latest watchtower bible

  • Narkissos
    Narkissos

    Some time ago I started a (short) thread entitled ?How important is the devil to God??

    ( http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/10/63454/1.ashx ).

    I?d like to address the same question from a slightly different angle.

    When Yhwh, the god of ancient Judah, became ?God?, he was first thought (over against dualistic Persian influence) as the Cause of reality in an absolute sense, including ?good? and ?bad? -- even ?evil? in the moral sense. This is reflected in Isaiah 45:7: ?I form light and create darkness, I make weal and create woe; I Yhwh do all these things.?

    Shortly afterwards, however, a more or less independent character emerged, building on the traditional ?satan? who was playing a role in the divine realm (Job 1:6ff; Zechariah 3:1ff). This character came to be seen (especially in the so-called intertestamental literature) as the absolute enemy of ?God? and the autonomous cause of ?evil?. Nowhere probably the opposition of ?God? and ?the Devil? is described in such radical dualistic terms as in GJohn ? e.g. 8:44: ?He (the Devil) was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, for he is both the liar and his father.?

    This development could be described as a divine auto-exorcism: ?God? expelling ?evil? from himself into a distinct character. Consequently ?God? had to be only good. A number of ?devilish? acts earlier ascribed to Yhwh (for instance, mixing up languages in Babel, sending a ?bad spirit? to Saul or a ?lying spirit? to Ahab?s prophets) were not seen as worthy of Him any longer (e.g., God cannot lie anymore). An example of that is possibly found already in 1 Chronicles 21: what was Yhwh?s action in 2 Samuel 24 (enticing David to make the census) becomes Satan?s.

    The result of this might appear as ?the only-good God? (and His worship) being increasingly disconnected from reality, and especially appealing to people when they are tempted to escape reality. This, in turn, makes him quite vulnerable too. For instance, can such a ?good God? appear as the cause of the natural life cycle, including predators?

    So I wonder: isn?t ?God? missing ?the devil?? Wasn?t it kind of suicidal of him to forsake ?evil? and to cast it out of the realm of divinity?

  • peacefulpete
    peacefulpete

    I'm guessing that was a rhetorical question.

  • toreador
    toreador

    Ya lost me.

  • Carmel
    Carmel

    Does a light "need" a shadow for it, the light, to exist?

    God needeth not the idea of evil or its reality. Only the biblical God seems to!

    carmel

  • JamesThomas
    JamesThomas

    You mean like humans which are most healthy and balanced when we are aware of, and thus incorporate all of our traits (good and bad); rather than bury and hide them within the subconscious. It seems that the Christian-Judeo/Islamic type god has shrunk from it's already extremely limited beginnings. Perhaps this is because these religions have their roots in paganism, which generally had a much larger and grand comprehension or understanding of God; and in order to separate themselves more and more, they have to continually shrink their idea of god that it be recognizably different. Children of a lesser god are in some ways understandably more comfortable. Their god is a big invisible man. It is tiny enough to understand and relate to; since it is simply a photocopy of themselves. j

  • Leolaia
    Leolaia

    Here's a question: did all of Judaism or Christianity maintain this dualism, or were there sects that maintained the balance of good and evil within God?

  • JCanon
    JCanon

    This is very interesting! Is God missing the Devil....

    I'll just say this, after Satan's TRIAL in heaven, which is all the "battle in heaven" was about, and he was kicked down to the earth, the Heavens rejoiced. Now I know the Bible records that the heavens rejoiced, but I'll tell you, they were PARTYING FOR THREE FULL DAYS!!! It wasn't just good riddens, therefore, Satan had gotten onto everybody last nerve including God's. So YHWH in particular was relieved he was finally gone. So is God missing Satan? Not hardly. It's like enduring something and after it's over realizing it was worse than you really were letting yourself admit to.

    Finally, as far as Satan being a general concept o "evil" the Bible does not support that. He is called the "covering CHERUB" and is thus a specific angel, the one who served with Jesus as the other "covering cherub" in the special capacity on "Mount Zion". These two cherubs, Jesus and the angel now called Satan, are who are depicted on top of the Ark of the Covenant whose wings are "covering" the Ark.

    Satan is a murderer and so we're sick of him and won't miss him when he's gone. It's unfortunate, but that's the way it is.

    Basically, at the trial what it came down to, all of Satan's arguments and excuses for the way he is still didn't justify his killing innocent mankind so that's what nailed him. I mean, if you're unhappy and you think God and everything else is unfair and you can't take it any more, then it's sad and you commit suicide, take some pills or jump in front of a train. But you don't say, "Well it didn't work out for me so I'm going to poison everybody in the whole world and make them suffer to." If you don't like this God, then fine. Why try to trick others into giving up their life? So killing mankind it just to get back at God out of hatred. Satan is sick and vicious and he needs to be put out of his misery, once and for all. And even if he's pretending he's glad it will be all over soon, he won't be missed.

    Anyway, God TRICKED Satan into "committing suicide" by creating the physical universe if you want to know the DEEP story. See before, in Heaven, it was all talk. There were no "sins" that had the sentence of DEATH. Angels could do anything they wanted. You couldn't KILL anybody or anything. But Satan had already started to rebel, apparently and was becoming a menance and a "resister" in heaven and basically a huge pain. Beauty had gone to his head. So God made it possible for ALL his creatures to choose good or bad on pain of death, which was only possible in a PHYSICAL UNIVERSE where you can commit an ACT, and where there can be LAWS that can be broken.

    So in Eden, it was not Just Adam and Eve who could possibly sin, but Satan! The PHYSICAL UNIVERSE in the context of free moral agents makes SIN possible and thus DEATH possible. So when the physical universe was created, what was in Satan's heart he couldn't resist and so he made a choice by which God had a right to kill him by his laws. Satan probably WANTED to die because he didn't respect these laws of God. But to protest those laws, he forced god to use them against all of mankind, even innocent mankind and thus kill them all. Maybe Satan figured that he was making a point here or that God would back down from killing billions of innocent humans.

    BUT, Satan didn't know about this little "Ace in the hole" called the RESURRECTION. That basically says that if you're innocent and you die, you can come back to life again. Thus what's the big deal about DEATH if you're coming back? See. So DEATH is only a big deal if it's the SECOND DEATH, the lake of fire death, where you NEVER come back.

    So that's basically what God did. The broad stroke was simply that he was forced to kill everybody so that all died to satisfy the letter of the law. But once that was satisfied on a technicality, he put in the ressurrection option for resurrecting anybody who was deemed righteous. So in that way, Satan and the wicked stayed dead, and the righteous came back to life. Yes, it's all very painful and the world had to go on with all the problems and allthe imperfections and everything, but in the end, essentially most of those people who would have been born and who would have proved faithful will basically still get life; those who even in a perfect world probably would have sided with Satan, just like ONE-THIRD of the angels did, would likely have done it anyway, so they were already lost. So in the end Satan is just a bad memory, but just for a short while, then he will be forgotten completely.

    But God was hurt by all this and very disappointed and very hurt. And at one point basically sort of said, "I'm done with it!" But out of mercy told his son, Jesus, who loved mankind, okay, IT'S YOURS, ALL YOURS! You be God. So he gave Jesus EVERYTHING, every soul in heaven and on earth. So anyone not worshipping and bowing down to Jesus and showing disrespect won't be able to have life. So one must bow down to Christ, someone much lesser than God himself, and if you don't, then you die.

    Interestingly, Christ himself is probably not as "nice" as his father is. He has even less of a tolerance for disrespect. If you even raise your eyebrow int he wrong way or start thinking about raising your eyebrow in the wrong way, you're going to be swimming in the lake of fire without a paddle! "KISS THE SON LEST HE BE ANGRY, OR YOU PERISH IN YOUR WAY."

    So that's one of the messages the second coming Messiah must get across for people to have life, and that is, God is tired and irritable and not in a good mood after Satan's little interruption and so you don't have that much rope to be challenging him. The anointed UNDERSTAND THIS. They also know Christ isn't tolerating one blip either. That's why when people start getting killed in massive numbers, the 24 elders IMMEDIATELY throw their crowns down and bow QUICKLY before God to acknowledge they have no "questions" regarding whatever God does.

    So, those people ON THE LINE aren't going to make it. I'm (I mean Jesus) is going to say "Ooops!" I know you were on the other side of that line but I accidentally got carried away and wiped out the first three rows on my side of the line...SORRY! Christ doesn't deal with "LUKE WARM". So at the appropriate time your head has to be down and your lips kissing the floor, none of this half smile and nodding. Kiss the feet! Whe it says kiss the son it means on his feet.

    Now that might sound harsh and all that, but if you want LIFE that's how to get it. In fact, you can't keep your own life and have eternal life. You must give up your own temporary life to get eternal life. Now lots of people can't do that. But those who do can get eternal life. Everything is designed to keep Satan and anyone even remotely resembling him OUT of the kingdom.

    "It's harder for a RICH MAN to get into the kingdom than it is for a camel (hump in the thread) to get through the eye of a needle."

    Now contemplate what that means?

    How does a rich man get into the kingdom? By becoming poor.

    JC

  • Narkissos
    Narkissos

    Sorry for asking such silly questions!

    What I meant is this: historical monotheism emerged from (Persian) dualism and soon fell back into dualism. In Western thought moral dualism even survived monotheism. Can we face reality without dualistic lens? That was, perhaps, Nietzsche's deepest question, ironically put into the mouth of Zarathustra -- the original prophet of dualism.

    Did the idea of God beyond good and bad, which was Second Isaiah's creation, survive somewhere? IMO the Sadducees would be pretty good candidates -- unfortunately, they didn't leave many writings (perhaps Qoheleth?). There is also the rabbinical interpretation of loving God with all one's heart as meaning with one's good and bad inclinations. The cynic overtones of Q could perhaps meet the challenge, if they were taken out of their traditional Christian interpretation as summum bonum:

    I say to you, do not resist evil.
    I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.
    Do not judge, so that you may not be judged.

    The Beelzebul controversy (which may actually be common to Q and Mark) builds on an aporia of dualism: the Kingdom of God breaks through where Satan expels Satan...

    And the recurrent insistence of GThomas on "making the two one" might also point to a possible overcoming of dualism (quite differently from later full-fledged Gnosticism)...

    Random thoughts... What actually is at stake, of course, is not "God" or "the devil", but the way we consider the world, ourselves and other people.

  • Mr. Kim
    Mr. Kim

    Isn't God missing the devil? Answer: No. GOD ----does not "miss anything."

  • Carmel
    Carmel

    I strongly reccomend Eilene Pagel's book on the subject. "The Origin of Devil". Not quite the exact title, but she traces the history of early Christianity, and how the concept of "evil" transformed from a non-descript force to being personified. Evil existed in other traditions, including Persian Zoroasterianism, but was only descibed abstractly, not personified. We can thank the early Christina church and its power hungery leaders for using the fear and guilt approach of a "evil incarnate" to control the masses.

    carmel

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