When I was a teenager, I went to church, and almost every ‘Christian’ there was a complete asshole. What makes it worse is that they try to justify it. This honestly made me think that if God and Satan were real, I’d want to know Lucifer’s story. Maybe he’s not actually ‘evil.’
Popular Christianity is heavily based on paganism, which is incredibly ironic considering that paganism is generally posed as the antithesis of Christianity. The story of Lucifer is syncretized with the story of Prometheus, although Lucifer doesn’t really benefit humanity at all. According to the popular interpretation, Lucifer is the origin of all evil, became a snake in the garden of Eden, and then tempted Eve to eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. However, the snake isn’t actually connected to Lucifer in the text—that interpretation was added later to explain the problem of evil (why it exists if God is supposedly good)
The idea that Lucifer is insubordinate and violated the natural hierarchy is very old, but the idea that Lucifer is the origin of evil is relatively new.
Christian theology contains many holes like this because there’s a tendency towards treating every word in the Bible as literal, where it may have been written allegorically or as a parable, as Jesus often did. (Just to be clear, Jesus did NOT write the Bible, I’m just pointing out that the writers of the Bible may have tried to replicate his style.) This issue is compounded when you include the Old testament, as it contains portions which are clearly mythological, but are nonetheless treated as fact by certain modern Christians.
I like the Gnostic explanation that the being who created the material universe was a lesser deity of some sort (I think they call it evil but I’d probably go with chaotic or something). It made people to have intelligent-ish beings to interact with, and it put the Trees of “Knowledge of God & Evil” and “Life” in the Garden (for some reason) but didn’t want Adam & Eve to become knowledgeable & immortal.
In this telling, the “Serpent” is Jesus by which they mean the physical projection of the actual highest actually all powerful, all loving, etc etc god, and it wants to free A&E so it convinced them to eat the fruit.
Wasn’t “Lucifer” as a concept post-biblical? Obviously in the Torah you have The Satan, the judge on God’s divine council. Lucifer is a post-biblical interpretation of various prophetic scripts to make Satan out to be the overarching “evil” of the bible. Which is funny because that interpretation of Satan (and God) comes from Zoroastrianism, which holds that there is a great good spirit and great evil spirit.
Lucifer existed before but didn’t become entangled with Satan until after christianity had roots. So it is a post biblical merge, but pre-biblical. The concept is older, the merge changed the focus of the concept.(69 is just number, until it becomes a joke as well.)
Satan and more properly the ‘Devil’ as is the main concept in modernity. This is due to the romans using this translation preferably from the Greeks. The devil then got most of their iconography from Pan and some roman art traditions. This is far more important than people realize. Anyways, all this was forming in the roman zeitgeist while Christianity was not canonical to the empire yet.
I think if a being like lucifer exist and is truly evil then it has tricked these ‘christians’ in to worshiping it instead of the god.
Being Christian or going to church doesn’t make you a good person any more than a speed limit sign prevents people from speeding.
Good chance what we call the Satan at some point we’re originally a god from a pagan religion, like Beelzebub for example. If they were good that depends, if they were replaced in the first place perhaps that old religion was worst compared to what predates Christianity, another thing also is perhaps replaced because were forced to by the invaders.
hes also known as samael before the fall, or lightbringer, which is pretty much the opposite in his current form. plus there were other angels that fell with him, but they are more obscure and depending different texts?
The name “Lucifer” also means “light bringer”, and it can be interpreted to refer to his gift of the “light of reason” to humanity in the garden.
You ever read the three little pigs, from the perspective of the wolf?
The Bible is one side of a story.
Cogito ergo Diablo
I think, therefore I’m the Devil?
As a man who works in retail, Lucifer was an employee who thought he deserved a raise, and maybe even take over as manager one day, but the current manager didn’t like that so he sent Lucy to burn at the customer service desk (hell) for eternity.
Well, there’s also Lucifer’s questionable scheme to genocide and enslave all the customers, though that part is debated.
Wait, are you saying that Amazon is actually Satan?
You mean the god that prioritizes fealty and “love” for him alone over virtue, righteousness and good works? One who will give entrance to heaven to a life long sadistic, violent, and self-centered man who repents in his death bed, but will eternally condemn a man who has fed and clothed millions, who saved lives, who reformed bigots and criminals but questioned the existence of God or worshipped another. Compared to Satan, an angel that wished to overthrow this selfish god. Who values knowledge and choice in humanity. Who rewards ambition and creative joy. Who is stuck in hell with the rest of those condemned by the Almighty. I mean, is really no wonder many Christians are how they are.
If you haven’t, read Horns by Joe Hill (skip the movie, it’s not the same). It plays a lot with this dynamic. The protagonist isn’t a hero, isn’t “the good guy”, but has a righteous cause and when God fails him, the Devil steps up.
Horns is a really good movie though. It’s just, as you said, not representative of the book.
Lucifer’s crime was daring to question his father.
After being cast out he was put in charge of overseeing those that were deemed by that same father to be bad after death.
Seems to be a common link there, and it’s not Lucifer.
And then there’s the book of Job, the entirety of which is a story where God and Satan make a bet over a guy named Job. Satan says Job is only faithful because of the wealth God has granted him. God says Job is genuinely faithful, and tells Satan he can put Job to the test. So Satan has the entire guy’s family killed by bandits, he loses all his material possessions, and winds up plagued and homeless. Job mostly keeps his faith, yet he is persecuted by his friends (just verbally) who believe his sudden punishments are happening because he must have done something wrong and his faith must be false. Still, he holds out, mostly. Then, when Job finally starts to actually crack, God shows up as a fucking whirlwind and goes on a long-ass ramble about how great he (God) is, to which Job humbles himself. God’s response to this is to praise Job. He then chews out Job’s friends who persecuted him and demands they sacrifice 7 bulls and 7 rams and have Job pray for them because God is only gonna listen to Job, nevermind it was all a bet between God and Satan that led to this misunderstanding. Then Job is gifted twice what he had, 14000 sheep, 6000 camels, 1000 yoke of oxen, and 1000 female donkeys. A new family, with seven sons and three daughters, and of course the daughters are just the most beautiful daughters in the whole land. Then Job lived another 140 years. And this definitely makes up for the first family slaughtered, because the Bible says so.
Something something reading the Bible is the greatest proof you can ever need that it’s bullocks.
Children are fungible of course
If everybody you
meetmake is an asshole…No, I think his crime was that he wanted to take away the whole purpose of life aka living with choice between good and evil. Then the icing was that he wanted God’s glory to be given to him.
My understanding of the purpose of life is that we have no memory of before, we are faced with plausible good and evil choices, and finally we get some hardware that lasts (physical body). There is some irony that the option for evil comes first from lucifer.
If you have come to understand lucifer as good and god as bad aren’t you just… ermm… nvm.
I mean… God literally commits genocide multiple times, and that’s just from the stories that they chose to actually include. Satan/Lucifer mostly tempts people to do things they want to do anyway.
Seems pretty cut and dry honestly.
Nothing against rascals or tricksters here.
My interpretation of Book of Job is God and Satan are in a toxic relationship where they egg each other on to fuck with people so you shouldn’t trust either of them.
I feel like many Christians in America are completely disconnected from actual values espoused by Jesus in the Bible. Republican (many of the Christians) policy is diametrically opposed to Matthew 25:31. No one quotes John 13:34 because they rather quote Old Testament BS about what’s an abomination. Why not focus on the love for others, including enemies? Why not focus on helping the poor, the sick, the homeless? Why not help the immigrant? The Bible specifically calls this out as a marker of getting into heaven.
Most of these people don’t even read the book. They like the sense of community at a church, but it feels like it’s formed into a total in:out group mentality. We can’t be a Christian nation as long as there are poor & people struggling.
Then the Utah governor says something like, “We can’t have people camping wherever they want.” my emphasis. Bud, they don’t WANT to be homeless. The lack of empathy is so apparent.
they get thier fill from evangelical/televangelist pastors.
I see those kinds of Christians as revisionist Christians. US evangelical Christianity is like it’s own religion that does not follow the teachings of the Bible or Christ. Their religion is guided by their political dogma, not the other way around.
also where the rapture came from, evangelicals.
Yeah, totally different than Cathlocism which never did that kind of thing. Or any of the other sects of Christianity which never did that kind of thing.
Stupid people are dangerous in groups, like the most scary dangerous thing on the planet in the Holocene.
I never said others were good.
I got really stoned one time as teenager and thought I had come to the very real and imminent discovery that Christianity is and was always the work of deep evil to silence and quell all other true religions. The crusades, the burning of the library at Alexandria, Pope John Paul III sitting on his throne of pure gold, It all made perfect sense. Don’t question it, just have faith.
I more or less fell headlong into atheism of a sort shortly thereafter, so part of me must really believe that on some level I guess?
Sethian gnosticism. You beheld the demiurge and stopped short before seeing the light of the pleroma. You’re not wrong, but there’s a few more steps on the path yet.
I read the excerpt on Wikipedia and it didn’t seem to fully describe my own experiences, though I expect it doesn’t hold a candle to the depths of the topic. I will have to read more to see if it helps verbalize the feeling I get towards organized religion.
Thank you for this.
You’re getting downvoted but I believe you’re principally correct. Except it’s Sethian.
Yeah thank you for that. Damned autocorrect is a crime against literacy.
Much like how the president is lying about Chicago and Portland being crime filled dens of sin to keep people from finding out how cool of a city they are.
Portland seems so cool, based on all the live videos they have shared.
I mean, Lucifer is an angel who questioned the system. We know that statistically, there is a chance he is right and everyone else is wrong. Based on my observations of humanity, the chance of the minority being right is higher.
Honestly to me the whole concept of Lucifer as written in the bible to me, makes me question the whole thing.
like 5 year old me was like “OK wait so how is this guy so stupid that he thinks that he went to battle against god, is he really stupid, everyone knows god is 100% perfectly all powerful”, then you think further and realize literally lucifer was supposedly like the closest angel to god, if anyone has a solid view on gods power, it’s him. Which honestly points to the idea that god… isn’t immortal, isn’t all powerful etc… he just uses that lie as a crux to prevent people from threatening him.
Honestly the story of the tower of babel cements that even more. Now first of all if you’ve heard this story from christians… get rid of the pre-conception because usually preachers etc remove a lot of what is actually in the text, and add things that aren’t there. The story is not about stupid men trying to build a stairway to heaven.
The story as written, in short, man was amazingly unified, world peace was achieved. They were building the tower as an enormous landmark so basically people could see their city from wherever they were, as well as just a testament to what they could accomplish when they worked together.
God looks down at it and says "wow, look at these humans, when they work together, they can accomplish anything they set their mind to. They keep this up and they would be as powerful as gods. To which, god saw that as a credible threat, and so he smashed the tower, spread them all out, and made them speak different languages. Ensuring that they would be too busy fighting eachother rather then becoming a potential threat to him later.
In short, the old testiment is kind of littered with actions that only make sense, if you conclude god, actually has weaknesses and can be beaten.
I recall as a kid being told most of the angels rebelled with Lucy. That was told in the perspective that God was all powerful to put down the superior numbers. As an adult its more like bro?? Wtf 75% rebelled?
lol yeah one of those things that is attempted to be fanfic to make him seem stronger… but in the end it does the exact opposite. If most the people on your side rebel, you either made or recruited very evil people that thought you looked weak. Or you were doing things that they found horendous enough they’d rather make a futile attempt and accept the cost of failure then take part in whatever you are doing.
“can be” vs. “should be”. But yes, the god of the Torah is a jealous god. I mean, he flat-out says, “you shall have no other gods before me”. Not, “no other gods exist”, or “you can’t respect other gods”. Just, none before him. Which says that while he might be omniscient and omnipotent, he’s not the only god who is so.
Thomas Paine’s The Age of Reason
When we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we called it the word of a demon, than the word of God. It is a history of wickedness, that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind; and, for my own part, I sincerely detest it, as I detest every thing that is cruel.
- Examination of the Old Testament
