Satan: Lifting the Veil - Part 23: Death

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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The Death of the Domination System
In the last post, we explored how Jesus' answer to the question of resisting the Domination System was through a complete rejection of its methods of violence - through non-violent resistance.

But to truly understand how we can even be capable of resisting this System, we must understand that Jesus' ultimate answer on how to resist the Domination System was to die to it.  Paul understood this, and wrote in Colossians 2:20 that we must die "with Christ to the elementary principles of the world" and cease to live by its decrees.  And Jesus said we must deny ourselves and take up our cross to follow Him (Mt. 16:24, Lk. 9:23), as well as losing our life for His sake in order to find it (Mt. 16:25, Lk. 9:24).  In the second verse of these passages, when Jesus says that those who seek to save their life will lose it, the original language uses the Greek word peripoiein to speak of making secure.  This literally refers to setting out a boundary or property lines.  And Jesus is saying that by creating walls around ourselves for protection, we are actually shutting ourselves off from life!

By dying to the power of the Domination System, we refuse to give it any hold in our lives - the System loses its power when it ceases to have anything to offer us.  Until we do this, no matter what state we are in - whether it be plenty or want - we will continue to be under the power of the Domination System.  If we have much wealth, our wealth will dominate us as we seek to protect it.  And if we have little wealth, our longing for wealth will dominate us.  Walter Wink illustrates this in "Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination":

Those born to privilege and wealth may miss life by having been installed at the center of a universe revolving around their own desires. Others, born to merciless poverty and the contempt of the ruling class, may miss life by never feeling really human at all. If the advantaged must die to their egocentricity, the underprivileged must die to their hopelessness, fatalism, and acquiescence in their own despoiling.  Rationalists may need to die to idolatry of the mind; dominating personalities to their power; proud achievers to their accomplishments.

By taking up the cross freely, Jesus and his followers deny the power behind empire’s most potent threat, turning it from an instrument of domination into an instrument of liberation.  Only by facing this great fear does one overcome all terror.

The death we must experience is a total death - both of our grasping desires, and of the illegitimate authority the Domination System claims over us.  The first could be called a death of the privatized ego, and the second a death of the superego.  Without a death of the superego, the death of the privatized ego may simply mask the fact that we are a cog in the wheel of the Domination System - the false self that is imposed on us by the Powers.

In Galatians 2:19-20, Paul actually uses the word translated to the Latin "ego" for "I" throughout the passage, so that it could be translated like so:

For through the Law my ego died to the Law, so that I might live to God.  My ego has been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer my ego who lives, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.

This shows that in order to live in Christ, we must no longer identify ourselves through ego of any form, but must identify ourselves through the self-emptying True Self that is Christ - the outward focus of unconditional love which empties itself as a servant (Phil. 2:7).

Philippians 2:6-8 shows us that subjugation to Jesus the king means the end of all subjugation - all forms of domination must go!  Christ does not make all things subject to himself through coercion, but through service, and when they fall under his dominion they enter into this same mode of service.

We must even be freed from the superego of religiosity - for so often the outward focus of legalism hides our own insistence on my will (rather than thy will), which only results in a subconscious condemnation.  And legalism distorts the goodness of God's creation.

But the wisdom of God which was made flesh in Jesus must even be made known to the church and the authorities of the heavenly realms (see Eph. 3:10).  As Jesus shows us in Matthew 21:31, sometimes the sinners enter the kingdom before the piously religious.

This shows us that to understand grace, we must actually face our own evil - so much religious thought holds that the true religious experience involves being identified as good by virtue of belonging to the right side.  But this ends up feeding into the scapegoating mechanism as we then find ourselves in need of an outlet for our repressed feelings of fear, anger, greed, lust, and hatred.  But by experiencing the release that comes from knowing we are sinners but are still accepted by God’s unconditional love, we are freed to pour out this same love and acceptance into the world without fear.

The ego which must die is so beautifully explained by Thomas Merton's concept of "False Self", which appears in "New Seeds of Contemplation".  Merton describes the False Self as that which occurs when we turn everything inward in service to ourselves. We make an idol out of ourselves, and then we believe we can find fulfillment through things - creating an idol out of the good things God has created. This does not render them evil - they are still good because God created them that way. But in our misuse of the good gifts God has given us, we pervert them. We also have a tendency - when we do this - to identify ourselves through those idols. We define ourselves by what we wear, what we listen to, or a set of opinions (such as a political identity). We are not those things, though we pretend that we are for a time. That is why Merton calls it a "False Self" - it is nothing, but we treat it like it's something.  Merton describes this concept a bit more in these passages:

My false and private self is the one who wants to exist outside the reach of God’s will and God’s love— outside of reality and outside of life. And such a self cannot help but be an illusion.

Detachment from things does not mean setting up a contradiction between "things" and "God" as if God were another "thing" and as if His creatures were His rivals. We do not detach ourselves from things in order to attach ourselves to God, but rather we become detached from ourselves in order to see and use all things in and for God. This is an entirely new perspective which many sincerely moral and ascetic minds fail utterly to see. There is no evil in anything created by God, nor can anything of His become an obstacle to our union with Him. The obstacle is in our "self", that is to say in the tenacious need to maintain our separate, external, egotistic will. It is when we refer all things to this outward and false "self" that we alienate ourselves from reality and from God. It is then the false self that is our god, and we love everything for the sake of this self. We use all things, so to speak, for the worship of this idol which is our imaginary self. In so doing we pervert and corrupt things, or rather we turn our relationship to them into a corrupt and sinful relationship. We do not thereby make them evil, but we use them to increase our attachment to our illusory self.

Later on, Merton writes about the contrasting "True Self".  The "True Self" is what God always intended us to be - we were created in His image, and He is a giver and a creator. This is what unconditional love is - it's an outward focus, rather than an inward focus. And when we focus the gifts God has given us outward, then we will be engaging our "True Self".  Merton writes:

To say that I am made in the image of God is to say that love is the reason for my existence, for God is love.

Love is my true identity.  Selflessness is my true self.  Love is my true character.  Love is my name.

If, therefore, I do anything or think anything of say anything or know anything that is not purely for the love of God, it cannot give me peace, or rest, or fulfillment, or joy.

If we die to this False Self, the promise of the Gospel of Jesus is that we will be resurrected into new life - and this very event mocks the Domination System itself!  The point of Jesus' resurrection was not merely that a miracle happened - it was that it symbolized the complete defeat of the Domination System in a way that invalidated its power!  Brian McLaren writes in "Why Did Jesus, Moses, the Buddha, and Mohammed Cross the Road?: Christian Identity in a Multi-Faith World":

The scandal of Easter was not simply that a supernatural event occurred. Minds in the ancient world weren't divided by the rigid natural-supernatural dualism that forms modern minds. In those days miracles were notable not for defying the laws of nature (a concept that was unknown until recent centuries), but for conveying an unexpected meaning or message through an unusual or unexplainable medium. What was the scandalous meaning conveyed by the resurrection of Jesus?

It was not simply that a dead man was raised. It was who the raised man was. Someone rejected, mocked, condemned, and executed by both the political and religious establishments was raised. A convicted outlaw, troublemaker, and rabble rouser was raised. A condemned blasphemer and lawbreaker was raised. A nonviolent nonconformist who included the outcasts - and therefore became an outcast - was raised. What does that mean about the authoritative institutions that condemned him? What does that mean about his nonconformist message and nonviolent ways?

Belief in the resurrection is a complete denial of the only power the Domination System ever had - and this is the way to overcome all fear, and thus free us to love our enemies without ceasing.

It's time for another break, and in the next post we will explore the antithesis to the Accuser - the Advocate.

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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?