We need to talk about Satan: Why has the devil slipped out of view?
By Martin Saunders, Christian Today.
[…] When the prevailing theology of the day centres as it does around love, peace, grace and acceptance, it’s easier to keep The Enemy safely out of view. Ideas of spiritual warfare between angelic and demonic forces are a bit weird and socially unpalatable anyway, but when we’re less focussed on sin and judgement, there seems to be less need to talk about the architect behind so much of the darkness. In part we’ve reduced him to a silly caricature, an angry red monster with a pitchfork; in part we’ve just quietly airbrushed him out of our theology. These days, an Anglican Christening service – old liturgy packed with references to evil and the devil – usually elicits awkward looks from the congregation, let alone the godparents speaking it. We’ve left him behind.
Yet if we look at Scripture, he does seem like an important figure. He famously engages Jesus directly in the wilderness, and tries every trick in the book to hook into Jesus’ humanity and spoil his perfection. When Jesus talks about him, in John 12 v 31, he actually refers to him as ‘the ruler of this world’; while Paul calls him ‘the god of this age’ (2 Corinthians 4 v 4). Various New Testament epistles warn against him: Peter calls him ‘a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour’ (1 Peter 5 v 8), John calls him ‘the wicked one’ who has most of the world under his spell (1 John 5 v 19). This is a pretty serious character, and these many warnings suggest he’s a reality of which we should be gravely aware.
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