Satan: Lifting the Veil - Part 12: Bow Down to the Domination System

Table of Contents:
Part 1: Introduction
Part 2: Two Case Studies
Part 3: Serpent = Satan?
Part 4: What is Satan's Real Name?
Part 5: Accuser
Part 6: A Son of God?
Part 7: God's State Prosecutor
Part 8: God’s Sifter
Part 9: Azazel
Part 10: Desert Temptation
Part 11: What Does a Jewish Messiah Look Like?
Part 12: Bow Down to the Domination System
Part 13: Proclaiming Jubilee
Part 14: The Evil One
Part 15: The Angels of the Nations
Part 16: The Gerasene Demoniac
Part 17: Further Lessons on Exorcism in the Bible
Part 18: Driving Satan from Heaven
Part 19: The Unveiling of the Beast of Rome
Part 20: Unveiling the Beast Today
Part 21: Jesus and the Domination System
Part 22: Violence
Part 23: Death
Part 24: The Advocate
Part 25: Conclusions?

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Bow Down to the Domination System
When I started exploring the trials of Jesus in the desert, I introduced the idea that these trials were not coming from a being of pure evil, but were in fact the conventional wisdom of the day on what a Messiah should look like - and Jesus had to wrestle with this ethos and counter it throughout his entire ministry. 

The third, and final temptation in this story may be the most important - it defined Jesus’ entire ministry.

In this trial, the Accuser shows Jesus “all the kingdoms of the world and their glory” and says: “All these things I will give You, if You fall down and worship me.” (Mt. 4:8-9 - parallels Lk. 4:5-7). 

Once again, if you are observant, you can find this same trial coming from Jesus’ followers in the gospel of John!  John 6:15 has them coming with the intention “to come and take Him by force to make Him king.” 

You see, if you understand the context of the Maccabean revolt, then you understand that because Judas Maccabeus was understood to be a success, the Jews expected their Messiah to establish a physical “kingdom of God”, and to do this through violent revolution.  Israel believed that the messiah was coming to place them over all other kingdoms - as the new and biggest ever empire!  Now, the “kingdom of God” was a dominant theme throughout Jesus’ ministry, as I’ve explored elsewhere - but it contrasted the popular view of Israel’s restoration to the status of a physical kingdom.

In Luke’s version of the story of the third temptation, the accuser says that the kingdoms of the world have been “handed over” to him (Luke 4:6) and he gives them to whomever he wishes (you just have to bow down).  This language has a very striking parallel that Walter Wink picked up on in “Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination”:

Hence the refrain all through Revelation 13-the Beast "was allowed" to exercise authority (v. 5), "was allowed" to make war on the saints and to conquer them (v. 7), "was given" authority over every tribe and people and language and nation (v. 7). The Second Beast, likewise, "is allowed" to perform miracles (v. 14), and it "was allowed" to make the image of the First Beast speak (v. 15). I am not aware of such a concatenation of permissions stated so repetitively anywhere else in Scripture. Luke's temptation narrative, however, reflects the same concept. Satan boasts (accurately, I believe) that all the kingdoms of the world have "been delivered" to him (Luke 4:6).

War is Hell

The language of the kingdoms of the world being “handed over” to the Accuser is echoed later on in the Gospel of John (see John 14:30 and 16:11, as well as 2 Cor. 4:4 and I John 5:19), but we are told that his days are numbered and he will be driven out!   (See John 12:31)

But nevertheless, at this time, the Accuser rules, and promises to give Jesus the kingdoms if he will bow.  This may be the most insidious of the three temptations - here, the one in the role of accuser/adversary is offering Jesus all the power of the Domination System itself, if only he will surrender himself to the spirit of that system.

But this was a voice that was repeated by the culture in Jesus’ time repeatedly.  So if we realize that Satan is not the voice of pure evil, but is actually repeating the conventional wisdom of the day, and that Jesus had to be tested by this commonly held view and come out on top of it, then we can see how this was a necessary trial for him to overcome before he began his mission!  We can see how Jesus had to hear the voice of this temptation and rebuke it - that this was actually the mission he modeled throughout his entire life’s ministry. 

You see, Jesus saw that when we engage in accusing behavior - refusing to come alongside those we accuse and admit our own weakness, our own tendencies to err in often the same ways, and/or our own share of the blame in the situation at hand - we assert ourselves over others in a relationship of domination.  And that domination relationship acts as a sort of viral infection that spreads - the person we Accuse goes on to take out their pain on others in the role of Accuser.  This grows until it infects an entire society, and becomes the Domination System!  And so often, there is a voice within the societies of those being dominated that tells them that the only way to get out from under the thumb of the Domination System is to turn violence back on them - but as we saw in the story of the Maccabees, this is a self-defeating method that only seeks to replace one Domination System with another, which eventually turns on itself and crumbles under its own weight!

Gregory Boyd has an interesting way of expressing the power of the third temptation in his book "The Myth of a Christian Nation: How the Quest for Political Power Is Destroying the Church":

The lesson of history, a lesson the Devil has known all along, is this: The best way to defeat the kingdom of God is to empower the church to rule the kingdom of the world — for then it becomes the kingdom of the world! The best way to get people to lay down the cross is to hand them the sword!

Jesus’ entire life models the rejection of these three temptations:

1. The people of God must be able to deny their physical needs in order to serve, and must live in a spiritual manner, nourishing the rest of the world through the outpouring of their living water (see John 7:38)
2. The word of God is not a constitution that we use like a lawyer would - taking phrases out of context in order to assert our own authority and superiority over others.  Rather, it is a way of life that makes room for others and redeems the sinner through radical, inclusive love.
3. The kingdom of God is not a model of exclusive, authoritative, tyrannical power whereby the people of God are held in a position of superiority and exclusivity, but are rather to be exalted through servanthood (the way up is the way down.  Or as Jesus put it: the first will be last and the last will be first: Mt. 19:30, Mt. 20:16, Mk. 10:31).
   

So the three temptations are actually an archetypal model of Jesus’ ministry.  The story serves not to introduce new problems into the mix - rather, it is a revelation.  It is an unmasking of the systemic issues within that culture’s paradigm.  And one of the hard things to understand is that in many ways, these temptations were not actually evil - they were more accurately yesterday’s conventional wisdom, which at the time of their origination served the community well.  At one time, Israel was a physical kingdom, and it was glorious!  It was the envy of the world in Solomon’s days - kings from all around would come to visit and pay homage to the glory of the temple as well as learn from Solomon’s wisdom.  So the temptation is often a desire for regression - to go back to the ways that once were, which at one time in history served the community quite well.

One of the hard lessons that I think is missed from the three temptations is found in the way the Accuser role points scripture at Jesus like a lawyer.  Throughout Jesus’ life, we see the Pharisees doing the same thing even to the point of calling Jesus a blasphemer for forgiving sins (see Mark 2:6-7 and Luke 5:21).  They said he was a lawbreaker (Matt. 15:1-3, Luke 6:1-4), crazy (Mark 3:21), and accused him of being in league with the devil himself (Matthew 12:24).  Did you catch the irony of that last one?  They accused him of being in league with the Accuser. 

All too often we miss the irony of these accusations when we legalistically accuse others of these same things today, rather than finding Jesus within the “least of these”.  This highlights a particularly perplexing problem - not only does evil disguise itself as divine, but the divine disguises itself as "evil" (or to put it another way: the divine becomes what we thought was evil).  William Blake summarized this concept with the following quote:

Every Religion that Preaches Vengeance for Sin is the Religion of the Enemy and Avenger and not the Forgiver of Sin, and their God is Satan, named by the Divine Name.

Blake is not talking about Satanism here, but about a legalistic version of Christianity that behaves satanically under the banner of the cross.

In contrast to the legalism of the pharisees, we find that Jesus’ model of life is not a rigid, lifeless idol of legalistic concepts, but is rather very fluid.  I think Richard Rohr sums this up quite nicely in his book “Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life”:

If there is such a thing as human perfection, it seems to emerge precisely from how we handle the imperfection that is everywhere, especially our own. What a clever place for God to hide holiness, so that only the humble and earnest find it! A “perfect” person ends up being one who can consciously forgive and include imperfection rather than one who thinks he or she is totally above and beyond imperfection.

The irony of turning Satan from a servant of God who serves a function as sifter into pure evil is that we end up playing that very accusing role ourselves!  And when we do this, Satan almost ceases to be under God, but becomes a sort of rival deity with godlike powers himself.  But this causes huge logical problems for us if we believe that Satan was created by God, and God predestined his mission - how does this fail to make God the author of evil?

Another ironic effect of the legalistic version of God is that Satan and Satanism become more alluring - it is not so much that the Satanist is rejecting the idea of God, but rather that he or she hates this legalistic God, who very well may deserve it!  Remember the story of Matthew Murray from an earlier section of this series?

The Weakness of Rules
In his brilliant book “David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants”, Malcolm Gladwell tells the story of Vivek Ranadivé - who had decided to coach his daughter Anjali’s basketball team.  Ranadivé had decided on two principles - the first that he would never raise his voice.  The second had to do with strategy.  Gladwell wrote that “Ranadivé was puzzled by the way Americans played basketball”, and goes on to write:

He would never forget the first time he saw a basketball game. He thought it was mindless. Team A would score and then immediately retreat to its own end of the court. Team B would pass the ball in from the sidelines and dribble it into Team A’s end, where Team A was patiently waiting. Then the process would reverse itself. 

Ranadivé noticed that sometimes, a team would use what is called a “full court press” - that is, after scoring, the team would pressure the other team for the entire length of the court.  And he noticed that there was no rule against using this method all the time.  Ranadivé realized that the fact that teams did not use this method only widened the gap between teams with tall players who were good at shooting, and teams with what seemed like weaker players - girls who were not as tall and couldn’t shoot as well.  So, Ranadivé wondered, why did the “weak” teams play in a way that gave the “good” teams an advantage?

By training his team to have the endurance to be able to use a “full court press” all the time, every time, Ranadivé was able to advance all the way to the National Championships, where they lost because an overzealous referee started calling Ranadivé’s team for every touch they made, and Ranadivé was forced to tell them to stop using the full court press.

You see, the lesson Vivek Ranadivé teaches us is that “outsiders” are able to see the weakness of playing the game the conventional way.  Outsiders see that some of the “rules” are not really rules at all, but unspoken agreements which do not need to be followed, and actually create weaknesses.

Gladwell writes in one place:

Vivek Ranadivé stood on the sidelines as the opposing teams’ parents and coaches heaped abuse on him. Most people would have shrunk in the face of that kind of criticism. Not Ranadivé. [Said his daughter, Anjali:] It was really random. I mean, my father had never played basketball before. Why should he care what the world of basketball thought of him? Ranadivé coached a team of girls who had no talent in a sport he knew nothing about. He was an underdog and a misfit, and that gave him the freedom to try things no one else even dreamt of.

Jesus’ response to the trials of the Accuser - and the way he conducted his entire ministry - shows us that he had also noticed the weaknesses in the legalistic, conventional wisdom of his day, and as an “outsider”, he had found an unconventional way to play the game.

Mara and Satan

Perhaps one of the greatest issues with taking the story of Jesus’ temptation in the desert literally is the striking parallel that can be found in a Buddhist text:

Then Mara the evil one drew near to him, and said: “Let the Exalted One exercise governance, let the Blessed One rule.”

“Now what, O evil one, do you have in view, that you speak this way to me?”

“If the Exalted One were to wish the Himalayas, king of the mountains, to be gold, he might determine it to be so, and the mountains would become a mass of gold.”

The Exalted One responded: “Were the mountains all of shimmering gold, it would still not be enough for one man’s wants. He that has seen suffering—how should that man succumb to desires?”

Then Mara the evil one thought: “The Exalted One knows me! The Blessed One knows me!” And sad and sorrowful he vanished then and there.
Samyutta Nikaya 4.2.10

The striking similarity between this passage and the story of Jesus’ trials in the desert might cause some discomfort for people who take the story literally.  But if it is taken as a mythical story which uses symbolism to convey spiritual truths, one will not be surprised at all that a completely separate culture stumbled onto the same truths and wrote about them in similar words.

In science, we use mathematical formulas to express physical truths.  One must wonder - if we were to discover another culture on the far side of the galaxy that had arrived at a similar scientific understanding, would their formulas resemble ours, though slightly different?

And why would it be so surprising that another religion had discovered truth?

Perhaps because the accusing voices within have tried to put us in a relationship of domination over all other cultures, believing that we hold the monopoly on truth and righteousness, while they hold a monopoly on ignorance and stupidity, sin and evil?

Paul Carus, a scholar of religion and philosphy who lived from 1852-1919, has something of interest to say about the similarities between Satan and Mara in his book "The History of the Devil":

Mara is also called Papiyan the Wicked One or the Evil One, the Murderer, the Tempter. In addition he is said to be Varsavarti, meaning “he who fulfils desires.” Varsavarti, indeed, is one of his favorite names. In his capacity as Varsavarti, Mara personifies the fulfilment of desire or the triple thirst, viz., the thirst for existence, the thirst for pleasure, the thirst for power. He is the king of the Heaven of sensual delight.

There is a deep truth in this conception of Mara as Varsavarti. It means that the selfishness of man is Satan and the actual satisfaction of selfishness is Hell.

This reminds us of one of Leander’s Märchen, in which we are told that once a man died and awoke in the other world. There St. Peter appeared before him and asked him what he wanted. He then ordered breakfast, the daily papers, and all the comforts he was accustomed to in life, and this kind of life lasted for many centuries until he got sick of it and began to swear at St. Peter and to complain of how monotonous it was in Heaven, whereupon St. Peter informed him that he was in Hell, for hell is where everybody has his own sweet will, and heaven is where everybody follows God’s will alone. Similarly, according to the Buddhist conception, the heaven of sensual delight is hell, the habitation of the Evil One.

In my next post, we will explore how Jesus’ first sermon answered the accusing voices within the Domination System of his day, as well as exploring “Satan’s” development further.

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Table of Contents:
Part 1: Introduction
Part 2: Two Case Studies
Part 3: Serpent = Satan?
Part 4: What is Satan's Real Name?
Part 5: Accuser
Part 6: A Son of God?
Part 7: God's State Prosecutor
Part 8: God’s Sifter
Part 9: Azazel
Part 10: Desert Temptation
Part 11: What Does a Jewish Messiah Look Like?
Part 12: Bow Down to the Domination System
Part 13: Proclaiming Jubilee
Part 14: The Evil One
Part 15: The Angels of the Nations
Part 16: The Gerasene Demoniac
Part 17: Further Lessons on Exorcism in the Bible
Part 18: Driving Satan from Heaven
Part 19: The Unveiling of the Beast of Rome
Part 20: Unveiling the Beast Today
Part 21: Jesus and the Domination System
Part 22: Violence
Part 23: Death
Part 24: The Advocate
Part 25: Conclusions?