Recent Musings:
A devil of a notion.
Monday, March 20, 2006
I heard a man of the cloth state that when Peter rebuked Jesus in the New Testament and Jesus said "Get behind me Satan!" that Peter was Satan because he was challenging the identity of Christ.
He went on to say that anything or anyone that challenges the identity of Christ is Satan.
I like this idea because it makes Satan less of a villainous guy with horns who scares you in the dark of night and more of an evil force that can influence anyone against Christ's vision, even a disciple like Peter.
The work of Satan, then, is to distract us from whom Christ is. When churches start focusing more on tradition and less on Christ's gospel, that's Satan. When relationships focus more on security and less on honesty, that's Satan. When parents focus more on their expectations for their child and less on the nurture of the child, that's Satan.
Perhaps it's an elementary idea, one that every child is taught growing up in a Christian home, and yet I think it's impact has been diluted. As a society, it's been easier to equate Satan with blatant evil - murder, rape, child molestation - and less with the people living next to you in your home. That's a dangerous philosophy, to believe that the evil in the world is "out there" and does not co-exist within the every day of your life; it leaves too much room for self-righteousness and double standards.
Anyway, this basic definition that Satan can be anything and anyone that contests what Christ represents gives me, as a Christian, a much larger and much more present reality of Satan. It leaves me feeling that I need to be more aware and more alert to what's happening around and within me, to verify whether it's Christ or Satan that's being validated.