[For the sake of my posting schedule and your time, I am posting segments of Chapter 3 as I write them. If you have any suggestions or comments, reach out through my contact form. To read everything released so far, visit the Satan and Spiritual Warfare page.]
Modern day influences
Christian culture over the last century has popularized Satan as a powerful and personal threat. But we must ask – why would Christians accept it? After all, history is filled with many false or misguided beliefs that have risen and fallen in a generation because they lack the teeth to stick around. Yet dualism has gained such momentum that we are shocked to learn our modern notions of Satan are a product of centuries of tradition that may have originated in Zoroastrianism, not the Bible. So why has this belief been allowed to embed itself so thoroughly in our modern thought with no clear sign of letting go?
To answer that, we will turn away from the past and examine the present. We will see, quite clearly, ways that we have allowed culture to define how we interpret Satan’s role in Scripture. We will also take note of how different flavors of dualism that we’ve seen throughout history are still alive and well today. This final capstone will propel us into the rest of the book, giving us greater clarity to help us set aside our assumptions so we can more clearly see what God says about Satan, spiritual warfare, and the life of a faithful follower of Jesus Christ.
Satan as an Icon and Boogeyman
Starting in the 1960s, Satan began taking on two contrasting cultural identities. Early rumblings of Satan’s corrupting influence in American culture played out much as we’ve seen it since the days of the Puritans. Films such as Rosemary’s Baby, The Exorcist, and The Omen capitalized on the longstanding American fear of Satan’s ability to corrupt the innocent. In 1983, Ronald Raegen invoked the image of Satan to the National Association of Evangelicals when he compared the human-centric philosophy of Communism with the Serpent’s words of “Ye shall be as Gods.”[1] Books such as Turmoil in the Toybox further fueled the popularly-named “Satanic Panic” by showing how nearly everything popular with children and young adults in that day, whether Troll dolls or Star Wars, actually carried occultic symbolism that would condition children to grow up and worship the devil.
On the opposite end of culture, Satan became a symbol of freedom, individualism, and rebellion against a stagnant and stifling religious culture. “Sympathy for the Devil” by the Rolling Stones took up the idea of Satan’s moral corruption and turned it back on culture by claiming that Satan was behind many historical atrocities, including recent events that many Americans would have seen as God-ordained. Black Sabbath used Satanic imagery and language throughout much of their work, a practice that Ozzy Osbourne continues to this day. Marilyn Manson continued this trend in the 90s, becoming an honorary priest in the Church of Satan[2] and releasing an album called “Antichrist Superstar” that, like the Rolling Stones, said that Satan was behind Conservative America.[3]
Despite their apparent differences, these two views of God and Satan show the strong influence of Zoroastrianism today. Both view the world’s problems as a clear line of “good vs evil” by reducing human behavior and cultural shifts to the work of the Prince of Darkness. Over the last 60 years, religious conservatives have especially taken up this idea by casually blaming Satan for everything that goes against their political, cultural, or moral beliefs. Meanwhile, those in the “counterculture,” while seeking to break free of religious conservatism, linked arms in using Satan as either a symbol of absolute evil who aligns himself with Western Christianity or as a sympathetic character who opposes the true evil perpetuated by God and his followers.[4] In either case, Satan takes on a form far more aligned with dualism than biblical Christianity.
Psychology and Our Innate Goodness
“If you bring forth what is within you, what you have will save you.”
No, this isn’t a quote from a Disney movie. It’s from The Gospel of Thomas, one of the “Gnostic gospels” from the early centuries, yet it could easily be an inspirational quote spoken today. It’s the advice preached by modern psychology that tells us to look within to know who we truly are as we find the strength to save ourselves from psychological suffering. Our culture is driven by the idea that we, as people, are inherently good. Humanistic worldviews highlighted the extreme end of this, yet the very idea is so ingrained in Western thought that many Christians apply it without realizing it.
As we discussed previously, Gnosticism taught that human beings have a “divine spark” within them that leads them to truth and salvation. This teaching helped address the problem of evil by assuring us that humans are inherently good creatures, but outside forces negatively influence us. Today, psychology has repackaged this ancient heresy, teaching us that humans must turn to self-knowledge to know what is true for them.
Consequently, modern Gnosticism has taught us something about our innate goodness. After all, if psychotherapy tells us to look within for true salvation from our suffering,[5] then whatever is within us must be inherently good. And as ancient Gnostics blamed the material world for the presence of evil in our lives, we likewise look outside our presumed goodness to explain our tendency for evil.
Consider how Christians counsel themselves or one another amid personal difficulty. Where does an alcoholic’s temptation to drink come from? Why does someone question their salvation? Why does a parent feel like a failure to their children? Where do we get those thoughts that we know are too evil to reflect what’s in our hearts?
“That’s just a lie from the Devil!”
Why do we naturally gravitate to that explanation? Likely because it helps us reconcile our worst thoughts and feelings with the idea that we aren’t capable of them. Even Christians who teach “total depravity”[6] reach for this easy scapegoat. For most, the only way to explain violent, disgusting, or embarrassing thoughts is to place the blame outside ourselves. If we don’t believe we’re capable of the worst thoughts we’ve ever had, it must be someone truly evil and incredibly powerful who puts them there. What else could it be?
Today, this is particularly ironic when so many bemoan our current culture’s need to shift blame instead of take responsibility for their actions. Those same people may not recognize that believing they’re only capable of a certain level of evil compels them to pass the blame to a dualistic version of Satan. Gnosticism seems outdated, yet its core teaching about our innate goodness (and the subsequent need to explain evil outside ourselves) is alive and well.
Modern Pentecostalism: Obvious Sensationalism and Secret Knowledge
We’ve discussed the rise of Pentecostalism and its high emphasis on spiritual warfare. Over the decades, especially as culture places increasing authority on experience and emotions, Christians have been drawn to Pentecostalism’s exciting and high-energy culture. Often, even without realizing it.
As a personal example, I was intrigued when I read Frank Peretti’s This Present Darkness in middle school. Today, I still meet many Christians with no connection to Pentecostalism who were drawn in by the tale Peretti told. And who wouldn’t be? It features a sleepy town undergoing an incredible demonic attack, which can only be repelled by God’s faithful as their prayers unleash an army of angels against the darkness. It has mighty angels, demons in charge of specific sins (lust, laziness, sickness, etc), supernatural conspiracy, and a fierce battle over spiritual territory.
Yet for all the Christians who recommend books that portray spiritual warfare as an epic struggle, few realize that it’s precisely what Pentecostalism teaches about the spiritual realm.[7] People love the idea of a constant war of demons and angels surrounding us, with our prayers being the only thing that can tip the balance because it’s very Hollywood. It’s exhilarating, empowering, and purpose-giving. It makes Christianity exciting, sometimes becoming the only thing that makes our faith feel real.
But that book is just one example of how the Christian world has normalized Pentecostalism’s teachings. Another example of how we’ve been conditioned is how we talk about our personal experiences with God and Satan. Pentecostalism places a high emphasis on personal experience and inner knowledge, no different from how we saw various strands of mysticism borrowed from Gnosticism in the past. The Bible has its place, but they often place just as much value and truth in our individual experiences.
Today, this secret knowledge is widely seen in personal dialogues people have with God or Satan. “The Lord told me” or “I heard Satan whispering” are common phrases used in the church today that reflect a core aspect of Pentecostal life. And like Mary’s “secret knowledge” in the Gospel of Mary,[8] no one can question the validity of what someone hears from God or Satan. Instead, we must accept that any feeling, impression, or thought can (and should) be attributed to a powerful divine being. To deny someone’s personal encounter with ultimate good or evil is uncaring at best, and at worst, it may make us pawns of the Enemy.
And because it’s all so subjective, we rarely question whether the things we think we hear contradict Scripture. The experience is exciting; we want it to be real, and thus, others mustn’t lead us to doubt what we believe is true. Hence, much of what we find exciting about the Christian life isn’t found in the pages of the Bible but in fiction, pop theology, or social media clips that we don’t realize find their source in a very different theology. In this way, we’ve allowed Pentecostalism to define a bulk of how we think about the supernatural world around us and our encounters with it, leading us to prefer an exciting version of Satan.[9]
Apocalyptic Obsession
Ronald Wilson Reagan was secretly the Antichrist because his three names had six letters each, making his name 666. Barrack Obama received the same accusation due to his charisma and alleged ties to Islam.[10] Bill Gates fulfilled the requirements of the Antichrist by trying to trick Christians into taking the “mark of the beast” by putting microchips in the Covid-19 vaccine.[11] Donald Trump supposedly fulfilled Revelation 13:3 by surviving an attempted gunshot wound to the head.[12]
Similar to an unhealthy obsession with the supernatural, another reason we want to believe Satan is so powerful is because of an imbalanced emphasis on the End Times. Branches of American Christianity love identifying the Antichrist and showing how various world events prove Jesus is returning in the next few years. Dispensationalism[13] has even become a bit of a joke due to the many failed predictions about Christ’s return or the end of the world that have come and gone.
Of course, many Christians focus on the end times because they look forward to the return of their Savior. However, it’s easy to focus on the sensational prophetic events in the Old and New Testament and be far more excited about those than daily Christian living. As we’ve seen just in the few examples above, this tendency toward the exciting risks us forgoing sound Bible reading if it means we can try to shoehorn a biblical prophecy into a daily piece of news.
With dualism’s continued influence, we feed our sensationalism by seeing Satan pulling the strings behind any event that could remotely be associated with end-times prophecy. Suppose we could spend a month recording how Christians worldwide discuss current events. If we did, there’s little doubt that we’d eventually hear Satan held personally responsible for nearly every event. We see just a snippet of this reality when Christian media portrays policies and politicians as tools of Satan that will build up his Antichrist and usher in the Seven-Year Tribulation.
Combine those accusations with the years we’ve spent claiming this thing is a sign of the End Times or that person is the Antichrist, and it becomes evident how lazy we become. And, of course, these things are rarely discussed as though Satan is a finite creature with limited power, reach, influence, and presence. Instead, if we want to fuel our apocalyptic obsession, we must create a god-like being capable of working such constant evil throughout the world.
History Creates the Present
When we think of Satan, it’s easy to assume that everything we believe is directly connected to divinely inspired texts written over 2,000 years ago. However, because we are often disconnected from history, we fail to realize that we aren’t interpreting Satan through a biblical or even modern lens. Instead, what we say about Satan is often firmly rooted in a pagan, dualistic belief that has entangled itself with other worldviews throughout the ages.
Much of this chapter focused on how American Christian tradition has influenced the definition of who and what Satan is. The reason is simple – although America may not be the only promoter of this “almost” god of evil, it has exported this belief across the world. Looking back to when the Puritans began colonizing the country, the United States of America has never quite shaken the overwhelming fear of Satan and the overestimation of his presence.
This ever-present creature of evil saw his powers evolve throughout history to match whatever evil the culture wanted to blame him for. The rise of Pentecostalism saw one of Satan’s most significant shifts in centuries, giving him an entire pantheon of specific demons under his command that we must fight against. And as culture and politics shifted around the church, the things we blamed on Satan grew to match the evils we saw around us.
The Satan we see today is a far cry from his relative absence in the Old Testament, and even the few mentions in the New Testament don’t match the constant presence and almost limitless power he carries in the minds of modern Christianity. Instead, just as those Christians in the past interpreted Satan through the influences of their culture, we see ourselves doing the same. Whether it’s our obsession with the sensational or our need to explain how we could be capable of uncharacteristic thoughts or temptations, we risk passing on a version of Satan that is not only biblically inaccurate but one that will also rob future generations of spiritual growth.
I know that only some people love history, but I hope this look through the past has been valuable to all readers. In our information-filled society, it’s easy to assume that we are operating at the highest level of knowledge, leading us to speak with absolute certainty and not question why we believe it. In doing so, we may not realize that while Satan is an actual figure in the Bible, he’s also ballooned into a mythological figure over the centuries.
Satan’s Hollywood level of excitement is primarily why I find this book necessary. With each new piece of media, sermon, or discussion amongst friends, Satan’s power grows, morphs, and creeps him closer to rival God. If we don’t ground our beliefs in God’s word alone, we put the cart before the horse by allowing culture, tradition, preference, emotion, and other factors to interpret the Bible for us. But when we evaluate those same things with God’s word as our highest authority, we will better deduce whether a belief is rooted in God’s truth or simply a product of imperfect humans.
Make no mistake: Satan is both real and dangerous. But he’s not the one many of us have spent our lives fighting against. This misunderstanding has not only resulted in us spending time and energy waging “spiritual warfare” against an enemy who isn’t there but it’s also kept us from seeing the real battlefield.
We will now continue to look at the main topics of this book: Satan and spiritual warfare. As you move on, prepare to be disappointed. Who Satan is, and the battle we fight, aren’t the emotion-tickling things that make preachers shout and congregants collapse. If you agree with the end of this book, Satan will rarely come to mind as you counsel yourself and others. Spiritual warfare will never be worthy of a Hollywood movie.
Considering how the sensationalism of Satan and spiritual warfare are responsible for creating an “almost” god of evil, I trust that’s okay. For those who already feel deflated, I pray you’ll pause to consider whether Christianity is about a relationship with your Savior or just the thrill of the supernatural. Spiritual warfare is exciting. But as we’ll see, the genuine excitement of the Christian life comes from glorifying Jesus Christ instead of fighting Satan and his minions.
[1] George Johnson, Architects of Fear: Conspiracy Theories and Paranoia in American Politics (Los Angeles: Tarcher, 1983), 167.
[2] Church of Satan (@ChurchofSatan), “We confirmed in 1996 that ‘Antichrist Superstar’ is not a Church of Satan project…” X, August 22, 2018, https://x.com/ChurchofSatan/status/1032389943723577348.
[3] Michael Deeds, “LaVey, the Church of Satan, and Marilyn Manson’s Antichrist Superstar,” Diabolique Magazine, August 9, 2023, accessed August 11, 2024, https://diaboliquemagazine.com/lavey-the-church-of-satan-and-marilyn-mansons-antichrist-superstar/.
[4] I must note here that many artists, and arguably the Church of Satan itself, view the devil as an abstract concept more than an actual being. Still, despite what they believe about an actual Satan figure, they still show infuences of dualism.
[5] Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels (New York: Random House, 1979), 124-126.
[6] “… the effects of the Fall extend to every dimension of human existence, so that we dare not trust any ability (such as reason) that we remain capable of exercising in our fallen state.” Stanley Grenz, David Guretzki, and Cherith Fee Nordling, Pocket Dictionary of Theological Terms (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1999), 37.
[7] It’s unclear whether Peretti follows Pentecostal theology, but its influence is abundantly clear in his book.
[8] Gospel of Mary 9:4-8
[9] Note that this book will heavily emphasize the reality of the supernatural realm. The issue of this section isn’t a belief in the supernatural, but rather an unbiblical one.
[10] “Complete Distortion of the Bible.” PolitiFact. Last modified April 2, 2008. Accessed August 13, 2024. https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2008/apr/02/chain-email/complete-distortion-of-the-bible/.
[11] Dwoskin, Elizabeth, and Craig Timberg. “A False Vaccine Theory, Spun Through the Internet, Turns Allies into Antagonists.” The Washington Post, February 16, 2021. Accessed August 13, 2024. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/02/16/covid-vaccine-misinformation-evangelical-mark-beast/.
[12] Body of Messiah 70×7. “Trump Survives Head Injury: Is This the Fulfillment of Biblical Prophecy?” Medium, August 11, 2023. Accessed August 13, 2024. https://bodyofmessiah70x7.medium.com/trump-survives-head-injury-is-this-the-fulfillment-of-biblical-prophecy-61df73bf871c.
[13] For sake of this discussion, Dispensationalism believes in a Rapture, seven-year Tribulation, and literal 1,000 year reign of Christ.
