Spiritual direction: comprehending Satan

Regular readers know that I write frequently about the true nature of angels, debunking sentimentalized views of them, but also increasing people’s faith in their existence as a sign of God’s promise and the goodness of life. I also occasionally address the topic of what Satan is “really like.” I think this is very important because my experience at the hands of even “Christian” cultists shows that humans inflate their own sense of self importance regarding supposed encounters with Satan and their supposed understanding of his nature and ways. So, it is time for a little more spiritual direction regarding Satan.

First of all, observe how in both the Bible and the Qur’an no one has a direct “conversation” with Satan except God (see the Book of Job) and Jesus Christ (the temptation in the desert). St. Jude alludes to an encounter between Satan and Michael the Archangel regarding the body of Moses. But no human has dialogue or conversations with “Satan,” far less understand his ways. Let’s help you understand it by putting it in terms of pride. Satan is “used to” speaking to only the powers on top, i.e. God, Jesus and the incident with St. Michael the Archangel. Satan would never stoop so low as to speak directly with or interact with a human. Notice the wording of the Bible relating the betrayal of Jesus by Judas.

John 13:27-30
Then after [he had taken] the bit of food, Satan entered into and took possession of [Judas]. Jesus said to him, “What you are going to do, do more swiftly than you seem to intend and make quick work of it.” But nobody reclining at the table knew why He spoke to him or what He meant by telling him this. Some thought that, since Judas had the money box (the purse), Jesus was telling him, Buy what we need for the Festival, or that he should give something to the poor. So after receiving the bit of bread, he went out immediately. And it was night. (Amplified Bible).

I use the Amplified Bible, which extracts fullness of meaning from the Greek and Hebrew, so that you can read what is actually happening most easily. Notice that Satan takes possession of Judas and Jesus knows the moment it happens, as Jesus knew in advance that it would happen. This is how Satan works. Satan’s only tool with humans is temptation. So clearly Satan has been at work within Judas prior to the Last Supper, but not in dialogue or “conversation,” but by means of inserting tempting scenarios of betrayal to Judas. Jesus is stating that he is aware that Judas was undergoing temptation for a while prior to that night because Jesus says “What you are going to do, do more swiftly than you seem to intend and make quick work of it.” So Jesus has known all along that Judas was listening to the temptations of Satan and was half hearted in his faith as a result. By stating that he is aware of Judas’ temptation by Satan Jesus forces Judas to make a decision once and for all on the spot. Judas decides to yield to Satan and thus Satan enters into Judas and Judas makes the “decision” to betray Jesus immediately, that very night.

So you can see that Satan does not have conversations or dialogue with humans. Satan is present only in the sense that Satan is like a constant flow of potential temptation to sin. Satan is thus very easy to defeat and many people are “Satan proof” in a sense because they simply do not respond to temptation. Satan tends to flow away from people that just don’t respond to temptations. Now by temptations you know I mean temptations to commit grave sin and to defy God, or disbelieve in God. I do not mean the very human temptations to try to get away with something that one really ought not to do, but is just an example of the less glorious side of human nature! Make no mistake; Satan is not trivial. That is why the old joke “The devil made me do it” is truly funny. It is used to describe human nature incidents that Satan would never bother to get involved in, and thus it is humorous to blame Satan for eating too many doughnuts or doing something else “bad.”

You see, Satan has contempt for those who fall for his temptations and tricks. And thus Satan (despite literature such as Faust) would never actually speak to a human or communicate with him other than to offer him temptations. If the temptations do not work then Satan “moves on.” How do we know that Satan has contempt for humans he solicits as followers? Well, Satan torments his followers in hell. I mean, think about it. If Satan was gratified and valued humans who follow him, then he would be able to provide them with a “comfortable” “reward” in hell. But hell is the place of total horror and torment, and Satan himself heaps it onto the people who are so stupid and contemptible, in his eyes, as to follow him there to hell! That is why I wonder about the intelligence of Satanists who advocate that they are just following the contrarian freedom loving agenda of Satan and are not really bad people. It is true that many people are duped into what seems like a very nature and/or rebellious oriented “philosophy” that admires and follows Satan, and those that are not actually performing profane ritual are misguided and dumb rather than evil. But you have to understand that the result is the same. If you are “evil” or if you are just misguided, if you follow Satan on earth then you end up in his realm, where only torment at his very hands awaits you for all eternity. Satan believes that people who are so incredibly stupid as to opt for him and hell deserve his total contempt in return. Satan is often astonished at what suckers humans are, and we know that because he attempts to explore the boundaries of how far a good man, Job, will go, if given “reasons” to hate God. Satan already knows how far stupid and mean people will go, but Satan is not omniscient. Therefore the Bible records an actual event where Satan tests his ability to tempt and fool a pious and virtuous man named Job by sending him (with God’s permission) afflictions. This is also why Satan has been known to attack certain saints. Again, Satan already knows how mendacious and stupid most of his followers are, but Satan explores the boundaries of what is genuinely unknown to him, which is how much he can corrupt the good.

Thus I have to remind people of several basic truths that numbskull new age cultist secular “spiritual” “thought” has diluted to the peril of the conditions on earth and the resulting judgment of individual souls on death as to whether they merit heaven or hell. The first is that Satan is real and his tool is temptation. Satan is powerless without temptation. If you are a person who is resistant and better yet oblivious to temptation, Satan has no contact with you whatsoever. Satan is entirely temptation-prone human oriented. Thus, even certain saints, being human, have chinks in their temptation armor, and thus Satan worked at them. Temptation is not just a matter of faith. Temptation is also a character and temperament problem, and can also be exacerbated by environmental and familial conditions, including other factors such as drug and alcohol abuse. Thus it should not be a surprise that even some very blessed saints had severe results of temptation by Satan, as that was their human temperament. They became saints because they resisted the weakness of their temptation, not because they never had temptation. Other saints and the vast majority of good average human people do not even feel the temptations of Satan and have total equanimity of spirit, even if imperfect as human beings.

Certain conditions promote opportunities for temptation by Satan: inflated ego with pride, power, and fortune (money). People who rise up in prominence and power also increase their vulnerability to Satan’s temptations. Power and money fuel Satan’s ability to bend a person toward idolatry and oppression of the less fortunate, while ego fuels Satan’s ability to tempt you into thinking you are a wise man or woman and a prophet. Thus, you can think of it as increasing the areas of target within you when you become rich, famous, powerful or narcissistic. Satan has “less to work with” among the poor and humble. This is why Job was an attractive target and why Satan was curious. Satan correctly viewed the prosperity of Job as an expanded area of target over the average poor pious man or woman. Satan theorized that threatening Job’s wealth, depriving him of it, and eventually of everything he had, including his health and family would be a prime temptation opportunity. Thus humility is a powerful weapon against Satan. If you are powerful and wealthy, but you are truly and consistently humble before God, then even those potential openings to temptation to turn against God and toward Satan are closed. Humility closes many of the doors between Satan and a human. Pride and narcissism opens doors to Satan. Genuine humility is one of the most powerful shields against Satan that you can imagine. The “hotter” and more prideful and arrogant that you are, the more likely you are to allow Satan to show you what eternal agonizing “hot” without God is really like. A genuinely humble man or woman almost never has to worry about anything that Satan does, for Satan ignores humans who have so effectively closed the door of temptation to him.

The other thing to remember is that Satan is not a “person,” a “soul” or a “spirit” that is part of the universe “life cycle.” You know what I mean. Yes, there are people stupid enough to think that Satan aka Lucifer is a “reincarnated” presence on earth. Anyone with a brain who reads the Qur’an or the Bible sees that Satan is not attached to humans, their lives, their bodies, their souls, their sense of time, or anything about them except as continuing targets for temptation recruitment. I am so tired of just plain bad and evil people who think they have “Lucifer” in their “lineage,” in any way shape or form. It’s just another excuse for self inflation, believing that you are or a relative have the ultimate “bad boy” in your “genealogy.” Trust me when I repeat the point I’ve made in prior blog postings; Satan hates “identity theft.” Just as the Lord God will smite and punish false prophets who dared to speak in his name, Satan, who always seeks to imitate, will punish terribly his “followers” once they are in his realm of hell, if they claimed to be him in any way, shape or form. Reread how Satan worked with his most famous “win,” Judas. Satan tempted him for a period, entered into him to make the decision, and then abandoned him like yesterday’s news once Judas made his betrayal (which he quickly regretted but committed suicide before seeking repentance). And obviously Satan was not “tied up” with only Judas; you can be sure that Satan was busy all over the earth even as he was doing the deed with Judas. So it is totally lame and stupid to believe that Satan has any attachment in time or space with any human, body or soul, and he certainly does not tie himself to some imaginary cycle of “alien reincarnation or whatever.” That’s why there is a Bible and a Qur’an to refer to, so that when you’ve had too much pot to smoke and when equally addicted narcissistic parents or “gurus” tell you otherwise, you can refer back to what really happened and observe the truth.

So what are demons? Demons do exist, but you have to remember that in Biblical times mental illness was not understood as a medical condition. So there are cases where demonic possession was blamed for schizophrenic or other mental illnesses. However, Jesus makes clear that demons exist and the Bible miracles document how Jesus was able to converse with demons (and they would recognize who he truly was) separate from the human who is afflicted. Again, demons, or jinn as they are called in the Qur’an, are manifestations of Satan. Think of them as individual “hooks” of temptation. A genuine demonic presence is thankfully very rare, but when they occur, you can see that they tend to be a “specialized” form of surrendering to a satanic temptation. Hitler is an example of a human who had a demonic possession. To put it in modern terms, think of genuine demonic possession as Satan’s continually live interface into a person. It is not possession by Satan because as I pointed out, Satan does not reside within a human, for even Judas he only possessed for a matter of moments, an hour at most, at the time of the actual deciding to betray Jesus and the performance of that betrayal. A genuine demonic possession is when Satan has a specific temptation “hook” into a person on a continual basis. That is why someone like Hitler can be so inflated and insane on the one hand, but then act like a normal human being (as much as is possible) in other circumstances. The demon constantly fuels the narcissistic and inflated power in Hitler that challenged God, yet fools oneself into thinking that he “understands” not only God, but destiny, the universe, occult powers and so forth. That is the hook that Satan identified and established permanent connectivity via what humans call a demon. Pol Pot is another example of a person who had a genuine demonic presence.

Humans need to understand that it has become more and more difficult to cast out a genuine demon, not that it was ever easy. This is because in more innocent times the entry into a person for a demon was a temptation, but the body and the mind were flawed yet not destroyed. The demon then destroys what it occupies. Nowadays there is a pressure by modern society on humans from their very birth to have trouble distinguishing reality from unreality. So the person who becomes occupied by a demon is much more “messed up” for lack of a better word in total before the demon even enters. That is why we see so many horrific examples of the amoral collapse in a frenzy of violence of more and more humans who disintegrate and merge into their identity with the demon. When Jesus worked to cast out demons (again, I mean the genuine ones, not the mislabeled mental health victims), it was easier to do so than it is now because demons could not entirely blur the line between reality and unreality. Human brains were very pragmatic and entirely rooted in the reality of being alive or dead, hungry or filled, sheltered or out in the cold or heat. There were none of the technical gimmicks or modern paradigms of today that blur the mind from childhood onward as to what is real and what is not. When Jesus expelled a demon from a sufferer, the core human identity and contact with reality remained intact. Thus you see people immediately become sensible and whole as soon as Jesus cast out the demon. Now in these times, people everywhere are increasingly disconnected as their norm, say nothing of those who are extremely alienated, from reality and unable to discern reality from unreality. Thus a genuine demonic possession today tends to destroy the entirety of the humanity of the person so that even if the demon were removed, nothing would remain of the person. This is another reason why humans are in such a terrible existential crisis and why it is urgent that humans dramatically lessen the blurring of reality and unreality. The blurring of reality and unreality is the increase in open doors to Satan, as I explained previously about narcissism, power and money. The less able a person is to distinguish between a fantasy world and reality the more they are opening doors to Satan and total control and destruction. This is why you are having more and more insane people and demonic possessed people claiming to receive “messages” from God, Satan, “aliens” or whatever. Trust me; what is epidemic now was very rare in Biblical times. Satan has incredibly “easy pickings” with so many people who are programmed from childhood to have trouble distinguishing between fantasy and reality.

That is why I have little sympathy for people who commit horrible crimes and acts and who claim that “God” or “Satan” told them to do so. Again, think this through so you realize I am not slamming the genuinely mentally ill. Genuinely mentally ill people tend to be in a continuous state of low impulse control. They can’t stop experiencing their mental symptoms, such as being depressed, or hallucinating, just to give two examples. It is like having a broken arm or a cold. It’s not like you have the broken arm one day, then the next day it is fine, and the third day it is broken again. A mentally ill person is a consistently mentally ill person, even if they have “good days” and “bad days,” just like a cold, their mental illness is a continuing presence. But people who totally flip out and do something incredibly cold and gory while also claiming communication by God, Satan or whoever fall into one of two categories. It is possible that the person is having a total psychotic breakdown, and thus it is a mental illness. But it is also possible that the person has chosen a temptation, namely inflation, of taking onto themselves godlike powers or the claim to being in contact with divine powers, due to a combination of weak ability to distinguish reality from fantasy and accepting a demonic linkage. How can you tell the difference? Here is one rule of thumb. If the person is mentally collected enough that they could have told someone they are in trouble, if they knew what they were doing is wrong and would be punished, and if they plan the “psychotic breakdown” out in advance, I view that as willfully choosing a demonic temptation. This is not to say that a mental illness or stress did not lay the groundwork. But a person who, for examples, kills all her children knowing it is wrong and having the capacity to pick up the phone and get someone to stop her is, in my opinion, a person who chose a demonic option and is not a valid “mental health” defense. I’m getting a little into legal matters but I know it is easier to understand what I am saying if I can provide examples.

Another example is a man who kills his children so that he can “make his wife suffer.” This is a person who has accepted a demonic temptation because he has put himself in the position of thinking that he “knows” what will happen to him (if he suicides) and the children, and that he has the right to “punish” his ex. This is a problem of theology and reality/unreality perception. When one kills one is making an assumption that one “knows” that whatever one thinks of the afterlife, or not, is true. That is godlike inflation in addition to a crime. Thus it is a different and more likely willful demonic acceptance than someone who just annoys the ex by stealing her car. It’s not just the magnitude of the crime but also the certainty of one’s own inflated perception to judge another person’s life and happiness/suffering as if one were God. Therefore I do not, in general, accept “mental illness” in child killing because if you listen to any of these people you will hear that they have become “instant experts” in theology, rationalizing that they (the killer) will be “together with their children” somewhere. Huh? Not so much.

So to wrap up this discussion and bring it into full circle, here is a summary. Satan is not running around getting involved in the details of people’s sin lives, nor is Satan attached in any way to human or universal life cycles. Satan is a continuing presence of temptation for the “big ticket items,” which is destroying faith in God, idolatry, power mongering and so forth. I just thought of an example, abortion, to help you discern. If a woman becomes pregnant and contemplates an abortion, Satan is not tempting her. Where Satan did "his work" is to create in the first place the lack of faith crisis and the narcissism that enabled the overall culture of death where abortion (the death of a baby) is an easily contemplated “option.” So Satan is not pursing the poor woman who is making this dreadful “choice,” even though abortion is a sin. An individual abortion is “small potatoes” to Satan, in contrast to God who values highly each and every life. Satan’s success is in tempting entire communities and societies away from God as a whole, which blurs then belief in God or not, reality or not, morals/virtues and self containment or “anything goes options.” Satan does not bother with individuals and Satan looks down upon and despises those who do follow him (after all, Satan knows full well the reality of God, so think about how stupid he thinks people who do not believe in God are in truth). Satan is easily repelled through a serenity and humility in the face of temptations. Satan is attracted by narcissism, pride, power mongering and wealth. Demons are real, thankfully rare, but are of concern because societal changes have created many more openings for them with fewer cures or restraints. Demons may be thought of as the acceptance of a specific temptation by Satan that develops into a surrendering of some or all self constraint into the specific temptation symptomology. Hitler can be thought of as a person who accepted a demonic temptation and thus was “possessed,” but definitely not “innocent by reason of insanity.” Satan and demons/jinn have no connection to the false beliefs in karma, reincarnation or aliens as they are not connected to human bodies, souls or timeframes in any way, shape or form. All of karma and reincarnation as a spiritual model is totally false, but what I am saying is that one cannot even make an argument for meshing Satan and demons to such “theories” because of the demonstrated nature of Satan and demons as clearly demonstrated in the Bible and the Qur’an. Judas is a valuable case study to understand how Satan operated in his greatest “success story” to understand that temptation is the process and “accepting the deal” is momentary “giving the wheel” to Satan, but not a relationship in any form.

I hope that you all find this useful.