Here is something even more provocative: There is much in Christianity that is Satanic.
If you are already offended by this post, you may simply want to stop
reading here. But if you keep reading, you will learn five ways that
Christians worship and glorify Satan, and these five areas strike at the
heart of much of what goes by “Christianity” today.
Christians often say that one of Satan’s biggest deceptions is convincing people that he doesn’t exist.
This may be true, but I sometimes think that an even bigger deception
of Satan is convincing people that he does exist, and that he is more
powerful than he really is.
It is not uncommon to hear Christians “blame Satan” and pray against
Satan for things that in any other person’s life would simply be the
result of poor choices, poor planning,or just poor timing.
Christians sometimes say that they are being tempted by Satan, or
were sent bad dreams by Satan, or were kept by Satan from witnessing to a
friend. With such ideas, Christians are attributing omniscience and
omnipresence to Satan, which are attributes of God alone. Satan is a
created (but fallen) being, just like you and me. He cannot be
everywhere at once, and so it is nearly certain that none of us will
ever have a personal encounter with Satan in our entire life. He has (in
his mind) better things to do than give you bad dreams or tempt you to
look at porn. The bad dream might be a result of the movie you watched, a
stressful situation at work or the anchovies you put on your pizza. The
temptation to sin most likely comes from your fallen “flesh,” the part
of each human which naturally pulls us toward our baser desires. In both
cases, Satan has absolutely nothing to do with it.
Christians sometimes complain that Satan created problems for them at
the airline customs gate or in coordinating travel plans. This is
especially true if these Christians are “missionaries” who are headed to
another country to “carry out the great commission.” Any problem is
therefore attributed to the power of Satan. Yet these things happen to
tens of thousands of “normal” travelers every day. To give Satan credit
for these is to give him way too much credit.
I once talked with a woman who wanted me to
cast Satan out of her car. She said that she wanted to come to church on
Sunday morning, but when she got in her car, it would not start.
Clearly, this must be because Satan wanted to keep her from coming to
church. I told her, as gently as I could, that Satan was not possessing
her car, and it would do no good for me to pray over it. More than
likely, her car wouldn’t start because of some completely natural
reason. Maybe her car was old, or the battery was dead. Or maybe it
wouldn’t start because it had been extremely cold the night before. To
give Satan credit for keeping her car from starting on Sunday morning
was to give glory to Satan that he did not deserve.
Make sure that as you go through life, you don’t give credit and
glory to Satan for things he has nothing to do with. Life is full of
problems, and everybody has problems, and these problems do not come
upon you because Satan is targeting you. In all likelihood, Satan
doesn’t even know you exist, and even if he does, he’s not going to
waste his time by freezing your car engine or slowing you down at the
customs counter.
But this is not the only way we Christians worship and glorify Satan.
2.We Accept Satanic Offerings
In Luke 4 and Matthew 4, Satan comes to tempt Jesus, and in the
process, offers three things to Jesus, if only Jesus will worship him.
The
three things Satan offers to Jesus were riches, control and fame, and Jesus rejected all three.
Yet within 300 years of Jesus’ death and resurrection, the church had
accepted and embraced all three as tools to help them spread the
Gospel. But these offerings from Satan did more to hinder the message of
the Gospel than help it.
Whenever Christians today chase after riches as a means to spread the
Gospel, control over others as a means to manage sin, and fame or glory
as a way of gaining the world’s attention, we have sacrificed the
Gospel on the altar of Satanic offerings. When we do this, we not only
fail to advance the rule and reign of God, but instead help advance the
influence of the ruler of this age.
I wrote a lot more about this in my forthcoming book,
Close Your Church for Good, and so I won’t say anything more about this point here. (
Sign up for the newsletter to get a free digital copy of this book when it is released.)
3. We Diagnose Someone as Demon Possessed
I know that this point might be controversial (but which of these
five points are not?), but I do not believe we Christians should ever
diagnose someone as “demon possessed,” for doing so might actually
glorify and honor Satan.
I sometimes think that we diagnose someone as “demon possessed”
because we don’t want to deal with the psychological, emotional, mental
or spiritual issues that the person in question is
actually dealing with. It is so much easier
to write someone off as “demon possessed”
than to do the hard work of loving, healing, restoring and mending that
may need to be done with someone who suffers in such ways.
But more than this, when we consider the “deliverance” ministry of
Jesus in liberating people from demon possession, it is important to
recognize what Jesus was, and was not, doing.
In Jesus’ day (as in ours, though to a lesser degree), people
associated sickness with sin. People believed that if you sinned, one
way God might punish you is by sending a sickness upon you. Therefore,
if a person got sick, this was taken as an indication that the person
had sinned and God was punishing them.
One of the reasons, therefore, that Jesus went around “casting out
demons” was to turn this religious lie on its head. Jesus wanted to show
that God didn’t punish sinners with demon possession, nor was demon
possession an indication of God’s punishment or of that person’s
sinfulness. The so-called “demon possessed” person was just as loved and
accepted by God as anyone else.
Furthermore, what Jesus wanted to reveal was that
the most demonic thing about demon possession was not the demon possession itself, but was the diagnosis of demon possession.
To diagnose someone as “possessed by a demon” is to diagnose them as
being outside the grace of God, underserving of His love, care and
protection, and as having been so sinful as to incur one of His greatest
punishments.
But to show us that God does not send demons and that
God does not punish sin,
Jesus “cast out demons.” When God is truly at work, it is not to punish
someone with demons or accuse them of having a demon, but to rescue,
deliver and free people from such hopeless and condemning accusations.
So to accuse someone of having a demon or of being possessed by a
demon is to remove a person from the sphere of God’s grace and love, and
lock them in a prison of shame, fear and darkness, which
is demonic. Therefore, to keep from glorifying Satan, we must never accuse someone of being demon possessed.
In fact, this accusatory spirit—for which we Christians are often
known—is the fourth way we Christians worship and glorify Satan.
4. We Engage in Satanic Accusations
The word “devil” in Greek is
diabolos. It is built upon the Greek words
dia, meaning
across, and
bollo, meaning
to cast or throw. The devil is one who casts or throws across something. In the various contexts of
diabolos, it refers to one who maligns, slanders, or sows discord and division.
The word “satan” is similar. “Satan” is a Hebrew word (the Greek is
satanas), and it means “accuser.”
Both of these meanings are clearly seen in nearly every passage in
Scripture where Satan, or the devil, is described. He accuses God of
withholding something good from Adam and Eve (Genesis 3), and he accuses
God of showing favoritism to Job (Job 1). In Luke 4 and Matthew 4, he
accuses, challenges and questions the mission and purpose of Jesus. The
New Testament refers to him as the “accuser of the brethren” (Rev
12:10).
While God only loves, forgives and accepts, Satan only judges, accuses and condemns.
So when we Christians judge, accuse and condemn others, whose example are we following? Are we more like God or more like Satan?
When we demonize our enemies so we can condemn them, we mimic Satan rather than God.
When we accuse and condemn those whom we think are “sinners,” we mimic Satan rather than God.
When we sit in judgment on others, because they believe something
different or behave in ways we think are wrong, we mimic Satan rather
than God.
If we were to mimic God, we would love unconditionally, forgive infinitely and accept unreservedly.
But by mimicking Satan, we worship and glorify him instead.
And this judgmental, condemning, accusing attitude leads to the fifth and greatest way we worship Satan.
5. We Commit Satanic Violence
The most Satanic thing Christians do, however, is committing violence in the name of God.
If one person murders another, this is evil.
But it is infinitely more evil when one person murders another
in the name of Jesus Christ.
The same goes for war, vengeance, lust, greed, gossip, slander and
any other thing that is contrary to the character and nature of God.
When Christians go to war against their enemies in the name of Jesus
Christ, we are not worshipping the God who told us to love our enemies,
but are worshipping the demonic being who loves nothing more than to get
us to do his bidding while blaming it on God.
We commit adultery because “God wants us to be happy.” We retaliate
against our selfish neighbor because “God wants us to stand up for what
is right.” We become rich on the backs of the poor because “God wants us
to be wealthy.” We tell lies about others because “God wants us to
share prayer requests.”
And on and on it goes.
Satan, having failed to become like God, tries to get God to become like him. And though God will never fall into such a trap,
we who worship God have made God into Satan by doing what Satan wants while attributing it to God.
The most blatant way we do this is by committing violence against our
enemies and claiming that it was divinely sanctioned, that God wants
our enemies dead as much as we do.
While it is the thief who comes to steal, kill and destroy, God gives
generously to all, grants life to those in the shadow of death, and
mends broken lives and damaged souls. If we are going to follow God, we
will do what God does —
even (especially!) for our enemies.
The Glorification of Satan
I know that this post will be somewhat controversial, but I believe
that if the church is ever going to rise up and reveal to people the
outrageous love of God, we must begin by jettisoning everything that
looks like Satan.
I have suggested five ways we can do this above. Do you have anything to add?
Since our youngest was diagnosed with a brain tumor 28 years ago (and
is now doing well), what people have said to us through the years has
run the gamut from perfect to really bad. Most people really want to
encourage when we hurt, but often they say exactly what you don’t need
to hear.
