Why I Deconstructed (Part of a Larger Discussion on Satan and Demons)

Introduction 

Hello readers - it's been quite a while since I've written on this blog. I haven't shared links from this blog in a long time, because my "deconstruction" journey continued, as one might imagine, and I continued to change my mind on certain subjects. Sometimes those changes were subtle, and sometimes they were bigger. And because of the way I'd changed my mind, I found myself not really wanting to share some of these writings because I either don't feel the same way I once did, or in some cases I felt I would at least argue for these issues in a different way.

But more recently, I've really felt like I wanted to share some of my ideas that I'd put so much effort into developing. I had spent so much time reading and thinking about these things, and it seemed such a waste for me to keep these ideas to myself. So I have been writing, just not on this blog. And in one online forum, I was having a discussion on Satan and demons. This is a subject I have written at length on in this blog in the past, and more recently I have written in other places about it, though I've been trying to develop my arguments on these subjects in newer, perhaps more effective ways.

As I was having this discussion on Satan and demons, it struck me that perhaps it would be helpful if I shared my story - the story of why I felt it necessary to deconstruct my old beliefs in this area. Before I go too far into the past, I feel that maybe I should go full disclosure before you think I am in some way being dishonest with you and mention that these days, I don't even use the term "Christian" in regards to myself, but I just come out and say I'm agnostic. Now, I've had some people chastise me and tell me I should say "agnostic atheist" and I'd like to explain why they say that and why I don't use those terms. Apologists seem to want to say that atheism is a belief system, but it is really not - it is like if someone were to say "there's a giant teapot in space." If someone said that to me, I'd simply say "show me the evidence." I wouldn't believe that this teapot existed until I saw that evidence, and if they showed me some fuzzy image that sort of resembled a teapot in space, I'd probably say something like "that's more likely to be a nebula that just happens to be shaped somewhat like a teapot if you look at it from the right angle." Note that my disbelief in the giant teapot in space is not an active disbelief - it is fully willing to change if I am given the right kind of evidence. So I realize I should probably say "agnostic atheist", but I don't because I'm trying to avoid cultural stigmas around the terminology of "atheist".  

Ooh, I think I see the teapot!

And before I go any further, I want to mention that my goals in writing about subjects such as Satan and demons are not to convert all Christians to agnosticism or atheism. Rather, I feel that certain forms of Christianity are healthier ways of thinking than other forms of Christianity. I feel that certain beliefs can be said to be life-giving - they can lead people away from fear and shame and towards loving your neighbor - even your enemy - as yourself. And other beliefs lead towards fear and shame and lead people to shun people who think differently. And I would also mention that it has been said at times that "there is no hate like Christian love" - now why would people say this? Well, if you really examine how certain Christians "love" people who are different than themselves, you find that what they are calling "love" is really an attempt to control and convert - to fashion other people into their own image and lead them to compliance. And that's not love - love accepts and seeks to understand.

And one other thing I'd like to mention is that I don't want Christian readers to think that the way I changed my mind on subjects such as Satan and demons is the reason I am agnostic - I want you to understand that when I went through my deconstruction phase and was reading obsessively, and I was actually more "on fire" for my faith than I'd ever been in my life during that phase. I was excited about my faith in ways I'd never been before. But I met a lot of resistance when I tried to share that with other people. And over time I felt like I was losing friends. 

My agnosticism really came about during the COVID quarantine. More and more, during Trump's first term, I'd been struggling with the problem of evil, or the problem of suffering. So when COVID shut everything down, and we weren't attending church at all any more, those questions just got much louder for me. And so I just don't feel like I can honestly say I "believe" in any form of God-belief any more - I'd love it if certain forms were true, and because I know so much about the Bible and actually enjoy talking about it, I try to push other Christians in those directions.

So I know that's a long intro, but let me try to tell my story and along the way explain why I started questioning the ideas of Satan and demons that I'd grown up with.

Calvinism

I grew up as a Fundamentalist Evangelical Conservative Calvinist Christian. Some of those terms are not terms I would have used about myself at the time - for example, I think that for a long time, my parents and I had no idea what a "Fundamentalist" was, but as the terminology became more popular and widely circulated, we became aware of it and sort of wore it as a badge of pride - like "of course we believe in and emphasize the Fundamentals!" And I don't want to explain every one of those labels at this time and take a lot of time doing so, but let me just explain that Calvinism was a big part of my journey. Calvinism teaches that God has no intention to even try to save some people - that some people are "predestined" for Heaven and some people are "predestined" for Hell. That from the beginning of time, God said "I'm going to make Tommy...hmm...Tommy's going to Hell. Now I'm going to make Susie...hmm...ok, I'm going to save her and she'll go to Heaven." Calvinism also teaches that if you are in the "elect", you  will not be able to resist God and you will end up in Heaven, and if you are not in the "elect", there is absolutely nothing you can do to save yourself. 

Now, I was worried about my salvation. Because here's the thing - I never really loved God, and I knew it deep in my heart. I could go to church and sing my heart out (even though I didn't really like the hymns all that much), and I could put on a great act, but I always knew deep inside that I didn't really love God. And how could I? I believed that my sweet old Grandma was going to hell because she didn't believe the right things, and I knew deep inside that Grandma was a sweet kind lady who didn't deserve eternal torment. So I really didn't love God. And I would ask my faith leaders: "how do I know I'm saved? How do I know I'm one of the elect?" And I'd get this circular reasoning that went like "well you know because you believe orthodox beliefs." "But how do I know my beliefs are orthodox and correct?" "Don't worry about that, you're one of the elect because you're with us." Now, occasionally someone might talk about fruits of the spirit and such, and then my questioning would go along the lines of "I try to be kind and loving, but my little brother annoys me so much and I get mad at him" or something like that, and then I'd once again get this explanation that was really an exercise in circular reasoning.

Jennifer Carpenter as Emily Rose

 

Now this in itself is a longer story, but in my 20s, I was struggling with my faith and stopped going to church for a while. I told my parents, and others, that I was agnostic. But at the time, I wasn't, really - I still believed God existed. I just believed God hadn't elected me - hadn't chosen me for heaven. And so I had a lot of fear. I remember I did something really dumb and went with a friend to see the movie "The Exorcism of Emily Rose" in the theaters, and it terrified me. There's a concept in the movie where bad things happen at 3am or something (I can't remember if it might have been a bit more specific - like maybe 3:30am or something) because this is the "witching hour", and it is the "witching hour" because it is, supposedly, the inverse of the time that Jesus died on the cross. Well, I have this strange ability - I have a really in-tune internal clock. I almost never get woken up by an alarm clock - even if it's outside my normal time to wake up, I usually will wake up 10-15 minutes before my alarm goes off. So for months after that movie, I'd wake up, and I'd be lying there, terrified to look at the clock for fear that it was "the witching hour". And when I finally looked, sure enough it would be that time of the night.

I didn't know it at the time, but this was one of the first steps in my journey to questioning my beliefs regarding Satan and demons - because later in life, I felt I needed to confront this terror.

The Vineyard

Later on in life, I went back to church. And when I was 30, I ended up in a Vineyard church. And this was an important part of my deconstruction journey, because when I was in the Vineyard, I was introduced to some new ideas that excited me and challenged certain aspects of my earlier faith. In order to understand what makes the Vineyard unique and why I liked it, you have to understand that the founder, John Wimbur, was a Quaker who later on became part of the Charismatic movement. So the Vineyard has some Evangelicalism (which means they didn't challenge my faith too much at the time, which was probably good), but they also have the Quaker attitude that being a Christian means being dedicated to non-violence, which I found incredibly refreshing at this time in my life. And another part of my faith that was challenged while I was in the Vineyard - another important part of my deconstruction - was a result of the fact that the Vineyard tends to challenge the idea of "going to Heaven when you die" because of John Wimbur's emphasis on "Kingdom theology", grounded in the idea that Jesus came to establish the Kingdom of God, not escape everyone to Heaven when they die. 

But perhaps the most important thing about the Vineyard that really challenged me and kicked off my deconstruction was the fact that the Vineyard really seemed to influence Jesus' teachings on loving your neighbor as yourself, and even loving enemies. And I became involved in various outreach efforts because of this. So I would meet atheists and agnostics, and in my efforts to "love my neighbor", they would challenge me. And I recall going back to some of my friends at the Vineyard church and telling them about how I was starting to change my mind on certain subjects. What would always seem to happen in these scenarios is that these Christian friends of mine would say that my changing my mind on these subjects was the result of me allowing the Devil - Satan - to manipulate me, and that I needed to submit to God and allow the Holy Spirit to lead me. But I would push back on them and point out that they really didn't seem to have any real, solid standard for distinguishing whether something was coming from Satan or the Holy Spirit - rather, it seemed like Satan was just a scapegoat for them to pin the blame on for anything they didn't like, and the Holy Spirit was talking to you if you happened to agree with them. 

Perfect Love Casts Out Fear 

As I began to seriously deconstruct my beliefs, I was dealing with a lot of this rhetoric that was designed to scare me away from questioning. But one thing that strengthened my resolve at the time was that a certain chapter of the Bible had really begun to be very important to me - I John 4. There were some very powerful statements in that chapter that gave me strength. Such as when verse 7 of this chapter says that "love is from God" and that "everyone who loves is born of God and knows God." And later on in verse 12 is says that "if we love one another, God abides in us." So when my friends would tell me that I was changing my mind because I was being manipulated by Satan, I would retort: but I'm changing my mind because I am trying to love my neighbor, and so what if this is actually coming from God? 

But one thing in that chapter that especially gave me strength and inspired me to question was the fact that I John 4:18 says that "there is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear." This drove me especially to question my beliefs on Satan and demons, and in no small part because I realized just how much fear those beliefs had caused in my life. And I recognized right away that when I was trying to use logic and data to demonstrate why I had started to change my mind in other areas, my friends were trying to use fear of Satan to manipulate me and dissuade me from this. And so the very ideas of Satan and demons began to become very suspicious to me.

As I began to think about this, it was also very interesting to me that I John 4:18 says that love casts out fear. I found this very interesting, because this is the same language used to talk about demons. The verse says that love casts out fear - the Greek is exō ballei, and is very similar to a case in Mark 16:17 when it uses a grammatical form of this - ekbalousin - to describe casting out demons. 

You Will Know Them By Their Fruits 

When I realized that the beliefs I had inherited about Satan and demons were not casting out fear, but were instilling and affirming fear, I realized that this was a problem. Because another passage of the Bible that strengthened my resolve to question at this time in my life was Matthew 7:15-20, where Jesus tells his followers that they can discern whether they are dealing with a false teacher by examining their fruits. And if you flip over to one of Paul's writings in Galatians 5:22-23, he says that "the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control." So if the fruit of a teaching is not love, as Galatians mentions in its list, but is instead something that love is supposed to "cast out", as I John 4:18 says, this is a problem.

In other words, there are teachings - ways of thinking - that lead someone to love their neighbor unconditionally rather than to recoil in fear from people who are different. And there are other teachings and ways of thinking which do the opposite - ideas that cause people to shun people who are different, to cast them out and condemn them to hell. Some ideas may even lead to violence. During my deconstruction phase, one book I read early on was called "Good Goats: Healing Our Image of God", and in one part of the book, the authors quote a section from another book called “No Fire Burning in Hell”, by Thomas and Gertrude Sartory:

No religion in the world (not a single one in the history of humanity) has on its conscience so many millions of people who thought differently, believed differently.  Christianity is the most murderous religion there has ever been.  Christians today have to live with this; they have to "overcome" this sort of past....  If someone is convinced that God condemns a person to hell for all eternity for no other reason than because he is a heathen, a Jew, or a heretic, he cannot for his own part fail to regard all heathens, Jews and heretics as good for nothing, as unfit to exist and unworthy of life.  Seen from this viewpoint, the almost complete extermination of the North and South American Indians by the "Christian" conquerors is quite consistent.  From the aspect of the dogma of hell "baptism or death" is an understandable motto. 

In conclusion, I want to restate that my goals for this discussion are not to convert anyone to agnosticism or atheism - rather, I still believe that there are certain ways of thinking about God and other religious ideas that are life-giving and that lead to loving your neighbor as yourself. But there are other ways of thinking about God and other religious ideas that lead people to accuse, to scapegoat, to shun, and even to excuse or even commit violence. If a belief is challenging you to love all people unconditionally, I will affirm this belief, not challenge it. But if a belief ends up being used to excuse attempts to stamp out diversity, or to shun people, or to even commit violence, I see that as a toxic belief that must be challenged.

Find Me A Victim

I've been reading "A Farewell to Mars: An Evangelical Pastor's Journey Toward the Biblical Gospel of Peace", by Brian Zahnd.  It's a wonderfully written book - not difficult to read, and yet it gets its point across very well.  And the point of the book is one that is so important for the Church today - especially the Church in America.  The point being to challenge our sacred violence, especially within the context of our religious and political systems, which all too often serve to legitimate and sacralize our violence.

I found Chapter 5 of this book to be particularly insightful, and it inspired me to write my own thoughts.  The chapter is an in depth look at John chapter 8.  Before I get into this passage, I would like to lay out some groundwork.

The Bible As Constitution

One of the worst things to happen to Christianity, in my opinion, is when the Bible was divided into chapter and verse.  Oh, of course this makes certain things much easier - I benefit from this every time I write a blog, because without this divisional system I would not be able to call attention to statements and stories so quickly and easily.  But the division causes us to be lazy readers.  We all too easily forget that the original readers of these passages did not have chapter and verse, and would read the entire thing all at once - and thus the passages and verses were naturally contextualized within the whole "book" they were within.

But when we remove verses and passages from their context, we all too often fall into a pattern of reading the Bible - as Brian McClaren puts it in his book "A New Kind of Christianity: Ten Questions That Are Transforming the Faith" - like a constitutional lawyer.  I think that this analogy of McClaren's is brilliant, but I would want to further clarify it - because we do it like a bad constitutional lawyer.

One of the best examples of this comes in the form of the gun debate.  There was an article on Mother Jones that demonstrated how, historically, the 2nd amendment of the constitution has never been interpreted to mean that anyone can have any kind of weapon and in any quantity and they can purchase them without any kind of check to make sure they are not mentally disturbed (or anything of the kind).  And in fact, as the article demonstrates, the purpose of the NRA used to be to encourage people to be more safe with their guns - but more recently, it has transformed into a lobbying group whose purpose is to radically change the perspective on the 2nd amendment to mean "anyone can have any kind of weapon and in any quantity and they can purchase them without any kind of check to make sure they are not mentally disturbed (or anything of the kind)."

This redefinition of the 2nd Amendment is accomplished by focusing very heavily on certain phrases within the 2nd amendment while at the same time blatantly ignoring their context (both literal and historical).  Those who push for this reading of the amendment will emphasize the phrases "Congress shall make no law" and "right to bear arms" - but when they do so, they have to ignore the fact that the amendment starts out with the phrase: "a well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state".  Notice the terminology: "well regulated militia".  This means that if you wish to bear arms, you must be part of a well regulated militia - it seems pretty clear from this phrase that the purpose of the amendment was not to mean that the government can never regulate arms.

But if this doesn't make it clear enough, we can check Article I, Section  8 of the Constitution itself for the definition of a militia, which states that Congress (ahem…the Federal Government…) shall have the power:

Clause 15:
To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;
Clause 16:
To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;

The fact that the purpose of a militia - according to this passage of the constitution - is to be a force that the Federal government can call upon to suppress insurrections and repel invasions, and which the government can organize and discipline, makes it pretty clear that the purpose of the 2nd amendment was never to mean "anyone can have any kind of weapon and in any quantity and they can purchase them without any kind of check to make sure they are not mentally disturbed (or anything of the kind)."

Just like the bad constitutional lawyer who emphasizes the phrases "Congress shall make no law" and "right to bear arms" while ignoring the rest of the amendment and Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution itself, we do the same thing with the Bible all the time - we take phrases out of context and form theologies out of them, and then no matter what other sections of the Bible are called to our attention we argue and fight for our perspective.  I've actually written about how the 2nd amendment ties in to this bad form of Biblical interpretation before, and that post is relevant to this one in more ways than one - but for the purpose of this post I would like to now move on to another analogy before I begin to tie this all in to John chapter 8.

The Scapegoat Mechanism
In another one of my posts I wrote about how the atonement of the cross is connected to scapegoating, and I summarized Rene Girard's brilliant theory on mimesis and the scapegoat mechanism.  This theory also plays out in John chapter 8, so I'd like to once more summarize Girard's theory, which consists of 6 steps:

1. Mimetic Desire
   Mimesis is our human tendency to learn by imitating each other.  This tendency starts the moment we exit the womb - as has been demonstrated by one study, conducted on 74 newborn babies, that found that the mean age at which these babies began to demonstrate the ability to imitate facial expressions was 36 hours.  This mimesis is how we learn - and thus it is one of our greatest strengths.  Without it, we would not even learn how to talk.  But, it comes with a weakness - we not only learn good habits and behaviors, but bad habits and behaviors as well.  And not only this, but it is through mimesis that we learn what to desire - and so often these learned desires are harmful desires.
2. Mimetic Rivalry
   This learned desire often turns into a rivalry when we end up desiring the same things as the ones we imitate - when we all desire the same things, but there is a limited quantity of these things, we end up preventing each other from obtaining these things.  So this turns into a vicious cycle - the ones we imitate first said “be like me: value this object.”  But when we reach out to take it, the ones we imitate say “Do not be like me - the object is mine, and you can't have it!”  This rivalry is demonstrated at a very early age - my own children are wonderful examples of this.  I have two daughters who share a bedroom.  The older of the two has many stuffed animals - most of which she never plays with.  The younger - who is now 2 - has begun taking these dolls, which are otherwise never played with, and she will play with them.  But the older child is then incensed - "those are mine!"  The older child takes these dolls from the younger forcefully, and then we scold her for doing so.  So then she waits for the moment that the younger child puts the doll down so that she can scoop it up and pretend that she is very interested in playing with the doll - but she has never played with this doll before.  You see, the doll becomes much more desirable to my older daughter because someone else wants it.
3. The Crisis of Distinctions
   Our societies so often distinguish classes of people according to "haves" and "have-nots".  In this way, we tend to sacralize the desires spoken of in steps 1 and 2, and we distinguish the value of people by how much of these resources they have obtained.  But when everyone wants the same things, what often happens is that we end up causing a shortage of the resource - sometimes because we have used the resource up, sometimes because of a natural disaster (which could be a weather event, a disease, a famine, etc.).  When this happens, the distinctions that formerly separated persons and groups of persons into classes disappear.  Walter Wink summarizes what happens next in "Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination":

   Students seize the administration building, demanding a share in decision-making power that has previously been the sole prerogative of the administrators. Mill workers shut down the plant, insisting on a voice in shaping their new contract. The hierarchical barriers that society has so carefully erected, unjust as they may be, dike society against the flood of anarchy. When these distinctions collapse (as when soldiers in Vietnam refused to obey orders from their officers), that social system faces the possibility of collapse. Collapse can be averted, however, if society can find a scapegoat.
   

   At this stage, society threatens to tear itself apart because we've got people fighting over these commonly desired resources.  If the fighting does not stop somehow, our societal structures will collapse.  This brings us to the next step:
4. The Necessary Victim
   In order to “save” society from the chaos that results from steps 1-3, a victim must be found - towards which all the violence of that society is then directed and released upon.  In order to do this, the society must find a victim which they can all agree is guilty, and this victim needs to be incapable of defending themselves against the mob.  So this victim often ends up being one which has features distinguishing himself/herself/themselves from the "norm" - the average citizen.  Once society has found such a victim - and one that they can all agree is guilty - the blame for all of society's problems is pinned on this victim, and they are punished by that society.  This victim then serves as a release valve - releasing the “steam” of the society’s violence.  What makes the scapegoat mechanism so insidious is that it works - after we've destroyed our victim, for a time the violence of our society disappears.  We feel good - we've taken out our anger on this scapegoat, and now people who were once enemies are friends because they've been united against a common enemy. 
   The fact that the mechanism seems to have worked leads to the next step:
5. Sacralizing the Victim
   The scapegoat is made sacred by being simultaneously regarded as cursed and life-bringing - the victim is cursed, because they were (according to our myths) to blame for all our problems, but they are life-bringing because destroying them caused the cathartic release from step 4.  Because the chaos within step 4 was survived and released through the scapegoat, the story of the scapegoat becomes sacred and cannot be challenged - a challenge to our scapegoat mechanism is a threat to society itself.  In other words, it becomes very difficult to challenge the guilt of the scapegoat, because society knows that if the scapegoat is not truly guilty, that means society shares in the blame - so if you stand up for a scapegoat, this often results in turning you into the next scapegoat.
   But this is not the final step of the cycle - because the scapegoat was not truly the problem.  Our mimetic rivalry and the fact that we never challenged our learned desires (do I really need this stuffed animal I've never played with before?) was always the issue.  So this leads to step 6:
6. Sacrificial Repetition
   The violence directed towards a scapegoat releases pressure on society, but only for a time.  And so the type of person who was made the scapegoat in step 4 must be repeatedly victimized and used as a release valve in order to control society’s violence.  This becomes a religious structure of organized violence in the interest of social tranquility.

This cycle is illustrated in the flow of John chapter 8 - but before I move on to demonstrate this, I would like to bring in just one more analogy.  Bear with me, and I promise I will tie all of this together.

Find Me A Victim

Find me a victim, or you'll be the victim!

When I was a child, one of my favorite things was Looney Tunes - Bugs Bunny, Sylvester and Tweety, Speedy Gonzales....  My family and I can quote entire scenes from some of these cartoons.  There is one particular episode that chapter 5 of Brian Zahnd's book reminded me of - it's called "Roman Legion-Hare" (you can watch it here if you like, though I will warn you that there are pop up ads).  The episode begins with a crowd at a Colosseum, awaiting the spectacle of a victim being thrown to a lion.  But after Emperor Nero announces the command to throw out the first victim, one soldier replies in a nasally voice "but sire, we're all out of victims!"  So Nero calls Yosemite Sam, and tells him to "get me a victim right away, or you'll be the victim!"  

Already, I would argue, we see a prophetic picture of the violence of Rome - as history shows us, Rome was so murderously violent that they could never find enough victims, and in the end the empire is so divided by its own competition and inner violence that they are defeated by an opponent which would seem to be weaker then their mighty empire.  So the picture in this cartoon is actually a great way for understanding how the supposed guilt of the scapegoat is really just a foil to mask our insane desire to take our violence out on someone, and this is why anyone who gets in between us and our victim often ends up being the next victim.

But back to the cartoon - after being told that if he does not find a victim, he'll be the next victim, Yosemite Sam scrambles off to find one and save his neck.  And of course, quite predictably, he runs into the wily trickster himself, Bugs Bunny.  As Sam repeatedly tries to capture Bugs, over and over he ends up being attacked by the lions which were intended for the victim.  At the end of the episode, both Yosemite Sam and Nero are standing on top of a pillar as these lions - intended for the sacred victim Sam was supposed to bring - are clawing after the victimizers.  As the old cliché goes - what goes around comes around. 

This is actually a great metaphor for how the scapegoat mechanism works!  Because if we're completely honest, it never fixes our problems, and in the end, those problems - our consuming desires and the rivalry that results from them, represented powerfully by the lions in the cartoon - end up devouring us!  We thought that by throwing a victim to our lions, we would be saved - but the lions are never satisfied!  This is because the solution to our mimetic desire and rivalry is not to find a victim - it is the realization that we don't really need the doll to be happy, and in fact if we'd just share this doll with our sister, we'd receive something much more valuable than a doll: a friend!

And now I will tie this all together, as promised.

The Truth Will Set You Free
In chapter 5 of "A Farewell to Mars: An Evangelical Pastor's Journey Toward the Biblical Gospel of Peace", Zahnd talks about how we've stripped a certain saying of Jesus from John chapter 8 of its meaning and turned it into a meaningless cliché - that saying is "the truth will set you free."  It is because we don't pay attention to the whole chapter that we've done this - just like the bad constitutional lawyer.  Because we haven't paid careful attention to the context this saying is set within, we've made "the truth" of this saying into an arbitrary thing - "the truth" can be anything!  Or more specifically, "the truth" that "sets you free" is always whatever I say it is - and not what Jesus means by "the truth".  And so the saying becomes meaningless.

But if we really want to understand what Jesus is talking about when he mentions "the truth", we ought to pay careful attention to the entire chapter this saying is set within.  And when Zahnd did this, he discovered that the saying is bracketed by two attempted stonings - and so he feels that we should interpret the saying within their context.  This bracketing, by the way, actually seems to be a commonly used literary device in Jewish writing - it is used quite often in the Gospel of Mark, and without realizing that this is what is happening, certain stories can seem quite odd.  A great example of this is when Mark brackets the "cleansing of the temple" with the cursing and subsequent withering of the fig tree - if we don't understand that the fig tree is meant to help us interpret the "cleansing of the temple", it might seem very odd that Jesus has cursed a fig tree for not bearing fruit in the middle of a season in which no fig tree would have been bearing fruit in the first place (and thus, this would seem a misuse of Jesus' power).  But if we understand that the fig tree is meant to be a metaphorical aid for understanding what happens in the temple, the problems disappear.

Likewise, in John chapter 8, "the truth will set you free" is bracketed by two attempted stonings.  At the beginning of the chapter, "the scribes and Pharisees" - or the "religious industrial complex" of their day - bring Jesus a victim (think back to Yosemite Sam and the Scapegoat Mechanism).  This victim is clearly guilty, according to them - she has been "caught in the act of committing adultery"!  Never-mind the fact that one might question the circumstances in which one would catch this act happening (what were you doing sneaking around someone else's house?), or the absence of the other party in this accusation (hey, it takes two to commit adultery).  We have a sacrificial victim here, to satisfy our need to take out our violence on someone.  So the religious leaders demand that Jesus allow them to turn this woman into a scapegoat and stone her.

Now, we should pay careful attention to the fact that this is a stoning that they are demanding.  Zahnd highlights the importance of this by pointing out how stoning is not a very efficient way to kill someone - there are far more efficient ways to do this, and ones that could have been performed by the scribes and Pharisees without seeking the cooperation of a crowd.  So why is stoning the approved form of execution in Jewish law?

Notice how other forms of execution appoint a certain member of society to carry out the execution - the ruling authorities of society are never the ones to perform the act of execution that they demand, and thus they are able to avoid the guilt.  But no matter the circumstances - even when the victim is known to be guilty without a shadow of a doubt in the mind of the executioner and thus to be "deserving" of the execution - the executioner cannot help but feel guilty for this act.  This is why so often executioners have employed various coping mechanisms - such as wearing a hood or mask in order to, as it were, pretend that it is not them doing this thing.  Modern executioners have to repeatedly tell themselves that they are performing their duty - in essence they are displacing the guilt of the execution upon the government.

But stoning is a unique method of execution in that it is a communal form of execution - the whole society joins in the ceremony, and thus all members are able to release their need for violence upon this victim!  Not only that, but they are simultaneously able to lie to themselves about the hand they have played in killing this victim.  In a stoning, each person throws a stone - an act which, alone, would not kill the victim but merely bruise them.  Collectively, however, these stones are effective for killing the victim.  In this way, each member of the society is able to deny the hand they played in killing their victim while simultaneously satisfying their need for violence. 

So the religious authorities bring their scapegoat to Jesus and demand that he let them perform their sacred violence - but Jesus unmasks this mechanism and exposes it by demanding that the first stone be thrown by someone who is without sin!  This is a brilliant move on Jesus' part, because he is exposing the scapegoat mechanism as a way for fooling ourselves into thinking we've solved the problems that are tearing apart our society through killing a victim!  This context should not be ignored when we read Jesus saying, immediately after releasing their scapegoat:

I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life.

Jesus has just acted as light by exposing the scapegoat mechanism as a fraud, and demonstrating mercy - and this demonstration of mercy is the context for the phrase: "whoever follows me".  Jesus is asking us to follow him in the way of mercy - the way of releasing our need to carry out our violence, and to crucify our ego, as it were, so that we can stop fighting amongst ourselves over the same resources!  It is our egoic desire which causes conflict, and this is why Paul said in Acts 20:35 that "it is more blessed to give than to receive" - he is challenging the selfish desires that result in mimetic rivalry!

But going back to John 8 - after Jesus says he is the light of the world, the religious authorities question his testimony.  It really stings when our scapegoating has been invalidated, and so they are now seeking to redirect their violence upon Jesus - but first they need an excuse to do so.  They need to prove to themselves that Jesus is guilty.  In this context, Jesus then makes a powerful statement that is all too often ignored in Christian theology: "You judge by human standards; I judge no one." (John 8:15) 

It is further on in this same speech by Jesus that he declares (verses 31-32):

If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.

It is Zahnd's contention in his book - and I would agree with him - that this statement should be contextualized within the events of the whole chapter.  Jesus has just freed a sacrificial victim and exposed the scapegoat mechanism as a fraud - and afterwards he said that he judges no one.  It is this word of non-judgement and mercy that Jesus is speaking of in the first half of the above statement - Jesus is saying that if you want to be his disciples, you must commit to a radically merciful life in which you judge no one.  And if you do this, you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.

Now watch what happens next - because as I said, the author uses the Jewish literary technique of bracketing here in order to help us understand what is going on in this statement.  After Jesus talks about knowing the truth and being made free, it says in verse 33:

They answered him, “We are descendants of Abraham and have never been slaves to anyone. What do you mean by saying, ‘You will be made free’?”

The fact that Jesus has implied that they are not already free upsets them - they are indignant over this implication!  But Jesus immediately replies in verse 34 that when we commit a sin, we are a slave to that sin.  Is Jesus speaking generally about sin here?  Perhaps.  But I think it would be better to consider the sin he seems to very specifically have within his sights throughout this passage - the sin of judging one another and victimizing; the sin of mimetic violence.  And Jesus delivers the punchline in verse 37:

I know that you are descendants of Abraham; yet you look for an opportunity to kill me, because there is no place in you for my word.

Do you see what's going on here?  These people need a victim.  Just like Jesus pointed out in verse 34, they are slaves to their violent behavior.  As soon as Jesus released their sacred victim, they started looking for another, and so they set their sights on Jesus.  Indeed, the chapter even lets us know this is going on right from the start when it starts the story of the woman they were trying to stone by saying in verse 6 that this whole scenario was a set up "so that they might have some charge to bring against him".

Further on in the story, the Pharisees insist that Abraham is their father - an attempt to proclaim their innocence of Jesus charge against their victimizing.  In Jesus' reply, he states (verse 41) that they are doing what their father does, and then he states in verse 44:

You are from your father the devil, and you choose to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies.

Now, does Jesus mean that Satan - as a literal being with his/her own person-hood - has literally fathered them?  He has impregnated their mothers in a dark inverse of the virgin birth?  No, I am sure he means this metaphorically - indeed, I have argued in my series "Satan: Lifting the Veil" that ha satan (literally: the accuser) is a metaphor for our accusing nature which causes violence.  So Jesus is saying here that our tendency to accuse each other when we don't get what we want is the cause of violence, and that accusation is always a lie in some form.  Once again we see that the theme of this passage is that Jesus calls his disciples to a radical mercy that refuses to ever judge anyone. 

But the Pharisees are relentless - they turn right around and accuse Jesus of being a Samaritan and of having a demon in verse 48.  This is an astounding accusation - proving that someone does or does not have a demon is an impossible task, but it could certainly be proven in a verifiable manner that Jesus was not a Samaritan, as this was (in their time) a matter of genetics and place of birth.  But why would they accuse Jesus of being one?  Because Samaritans were one of their favorite scapegoats - the relationship between Samaritans and "mainline Jews" of their day was similar to Christians and Jews, or perhaps Christians and Muslims (understand that Samaritans had shared the same religious views, but had broken with the "mainline Jews" over the issue of worshiping at the temple in Jerusalem).  In both cases (Jews and Muslims), there is a relationship with Christianity in that much of the same religious literature is shared, and many of the same convictions.  But the members of these religions are seen as "other", and are quite often portrayed by Christians as being violent, scary, without morals, etc., and they are highly resented.  This was very similar to the attitude between mainline Jews and Samaritans in Jesus' day.  The fact that these Pharisees accuse Jesus (quite falsely) of being a Samaritan exposes their pathological need to find a victim, and we see this carried out to the end of the passage in verses 56-59:

Your ancestor Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day; he saw it and was glad.” Then the Jews said to him, “You are not yet fifty years old, and have you seen Abraham?” Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, before Abraham was, I am.” So they picked up stones to throw at him, but Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple.

This entire chapter is about mimetic violence, and Jesus' call to radical mercy as the only thing which can solve the problems this violence creates.  But when we take a single statement like "the truth will set you free" out of its context, it renders it meaningless and turns it into a cliché.  But if we can see how our violence always comes back to devour us - like the lions in the Bugs Bunny cartoon - we can follow Jesus in the Way of mercy, and we will be set free!

Satan: Lifting the Veil - Part 25: Conclusions?

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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Conclusions?
And so this series comes to a close.  There is so much information that I wish I could have included somehow within this series - so many ideas and connections I would have liked to have explored.  And after all the research I've done, I only feel like I have more to explore - my hope is that for my readers, they have found this exploration to be an experience which opened them up to living a truly human life.  And perhaps some of my readers will have decided to do a little research into spiritual matters on their own - this would be a great accomplishment, in my opinion.

I want to give a few concluding thoughts before I end, however.  If it is not clear at this point what my position on the matter of "the Satan" is, I will state it clearly at this point: I believe that what I'd call the satanic or the demonic is a reality, in that it is an actual phenomenon that people across all walks of life have experienced.  But I do not believe Satan is a distinct personality.  Satan is an experience, but not an entity, in my view.

Face your fears....

In "Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination", Walter Wink writes:

[T]he New Testament insists that demons can have no effect unless they are able to embody themselves in people (Mark 1:21-28 par.; Matt. 12:43-45//Luke 11:24-26), or pigs (Mark 5:1-20 par.), or political systems (Revelation 12-13).

The Satanic is a reality that is expressed in the shaming and fear-ridden voices within, as well as through the collective aggression of a society that has affirmed and cultivated these voices. 

Satan teaches us that evil can be deceptive - it is often disguised as good.  But the flipside of this is that even those who have evil also have good in them.  And the irony of the "search for Satan" - as I sincerely hope I have communicated through this series - is that as soon as we mark someone else as belonging to Satan, we have taken on the role of the Accuser.  And so in order to truly fight this nature, we must find ways to fight for the truth without accusation and scapegoating.

To do this, I believe that the church needs to truly embrace dialogue.  First of all, this involves opening dialogue between denominations, and secondly I believe we must learn to dialogue with people of other faiths (or lack thereof).  There is so much we can learn from each other if we would do this.  And we must be clear - dialogue is not the same thing as arguing.  Arguing is really two opposing monologues - two tribal thought models that butt heads.  When we argue, we protect the thought model that has been constructed by the tribe, and defend that model at all costs from the "hostile outside tribes" without ever really considering whether or not their point of view has any merits.  Outsiders are seen as enemies - and so we become Accusers.

But dialogue is about respect.  When I dialogue with you, I don’t necessarily have to end up agreeing with you - I just want to understand why you think the way you do.  Dialogue - rather than assuming you're wrong, evil and stupid - assumes that everyone has reasons for believing the things they believe and wishes to understand these reasons.  We can hope to earn the right to critique these views after we've listened - but dialogue does not enter into the discussion with this agenda.

In “The Emergent Christ”, Ilia Delio writes:

The word dialogue means two interacting logoi, a crossing over from one world into another for the sake of sharing experience, mutual understanding, and mutual trust; a meeting of horizons, enabling return to one's own world with a deepened horizon of meaning.  Dialogue is a form of wisdom when knowledge gained through conversation leads to conversion, a deepening in love, and thus a new way of being in the world. Dialogue that is not self-expansive is self-limiting, and self-limiting dialogue is basically a monologue; essentially, we wind up talking to ourselves.

I think that the apostle Paul gave a good model for dialogue in I Thessalonians 5:19-22:

Do not quench the Spirit.  Do not treat prophecies with contempt but test them all; hold on to what is good, reject every kind of evil.

There is wisdom in the Yin Yang

Think about that first phrase - “do not quench the Spirit.”  It is implied that if we immediately reject anything that comes our way which does not agree with the thought model we have already constructed, then we are quenching the Spirit.  But conversely, if we accept everything without testing it, we may be subjecting ourselves to evil.  So we carefully, thoughtfully, lovingly test what comes our way - hold on to the good, reject the evil.

In order to dialogue, we have to see the good in our "enemies" - rather than finding the "devil" in them.

And we need to see dialogue as more than a way to spread the message of the church - dialogue is good for us, too.  During the Bill Nye / Ken Ham debate, at one point Nye brought up the scientific mystery of sex - scientists would ask why sex had developed through evolution: wouldn't it be more efficient for a species to reproduce asexually?  And the mystery began to unravel as they studied a certain species of minnow where some of their colonies produced sexually, and others asexually.  And the scientists discovered that the asexual minnows were more susceptible to bacterial infections.  It seems that sex was a biological communication system - a way for a species to pass on the "knowledge" its immune system had gained within the colony.  I think this is a powerful metaphor for what is happening to the church today - because the church has isolated itself, it has become more susceptible to ideological "infections".  But if we can dialogue with outsiders, we can learn from them, and our "immune systems" will be stronger.

The Parable of the Long Spoons
There is an old legend that tells of Rabbi Haim's visit in a vision to the realms of Heaven and Hell.  The legend tells that the Rabbi was given permission to request anything he wanted by his angel guide, and he asked permission to see both Heaven and Hell.  His guide took him first through the gates of Hell, which he was surprised to find were made with ornately worked gold and were quite beautiful.  Through the gates, he entered a large dining hall, and the smell of the food within was mouthwatering.  Rows of tables were piled with exquisite food.  But the people sitting around each table were pale and emaciated - moaning with hunger.  As the Rabbi looked closer, he noticed that each person was holding a long spoon, but that both of their arms were splinted with wooden slats so that they could not bend either elbow to bring the food to their mouths.

"I understand", the Rabbi says - his angel guide replies "but do you?"  At this point the Rabbi is taken to Heaven.  Strangely enough, he notices the gates look quite similar to the gates of Hell.  And upon entering, he finds the same beautiful scene - rows and rows of tables piled high with sumptuous food.  But in this dining hall, each person sitting around the tables looked healthy and well fed.  But strangely enough, the Rabbi noticed that they also had their arms splinted in the same manner, and were holding the same long spoons.

And then he sees it - as the people talked pleasantly, one person would take his spoon, dip it into the food, and lean across the table to feed his neighbor!

The Rabbi pleaded with his angel guide to take him back to Hell so that he could tell them the answer to their plight.  The angel complies, and the Rabbi dashes into the room and shouts to the first starving man he sees: "you do not have to go hungry!  Use your spoon to feed your neighbor, and he will surely return the favor and feed you!"  The man leaps up in anger and shouts in reply: "You expect me to feed the detestable man sitting across the table?!  I would rather starve than give him the pleasure of eating!" 

And then the Rabbi understood fully - Heaven and Hell offer the same circumstances and conditions. The only difference is in the way that people treat each other.

Forgiving the "Devil"
In order to defeat the Accuser, we must see Jesus' teaching of the love of enemies (Mt. 5:43-48, Lk. 6:32-36) as a key doctrine and mission of the church.  And to do this, we must learn to "forgive the devil".  We can no longer see anyone as pure evil, or irredeemable, or even as enemy.  We must see every person as precious. 

St. Jerome once said:

I know that most persons understand by the story of Nineveh and its king, the ultimate forgiveness of the devil and all rational creatures.

Likewise, Thich Nhat Hanh writes:

Unless you know how to love your neighbor, you cannot love God.  Before laying an offering on the altar of God, you have to reconcile with your neighbor, because reconciling with your neighbor is to reconcile with God.  You can only touch God through his creatures; you will not understand what is true love, the love of God, unless you practice the love of humanity.

We need to learn how to see the devil within, and then use this not as a tool for shame, but as a way to open up empathy towards our so-called enemies - so that they might become our brothers. 

In "The Birth of Satan: Tracing the Devil's Biblical Roots", authors T. J. Wray and Gregory Mobley write about the idea of Satan as our half-sibling:

Another virtue of the story of Satan is that it provides a parallel narrative to orthodoxy. Satan fell, and so did Adam. Satan abused his moral freedom by rebelling against the divine will; such rebellions are humanity’s favorite leisure activity. In the Watchers myth, it was the desire for illicit love, the angels’ amorous interest in the forbidden fruit of mortal women, that led to their fall from grace. Similarly, religious traditions urge their congregants to marry within the tribe. In the Lucifer myth, it was the vaunting pride of the rebel angels that led to their fall; as John Milton had Satan say, “Better to reign in hell than serve in heav’n” (Paradise Lost 1:264). Similarly, as the author of Proverbs warned, “Pride goeth before a fall” (Prov 16:18). Thus, Satan is a useful teaching tool, the ultimate bad example in religious instruction; living proof, if indeed he can be said to “live,” of what happens when freedom is not wedded to responsibility. It is as if Satan is an allegorical representative of the human race. Perhaps this is another reason why Satan remains such an attractive figure in Western culture and why his story matters to us. As strange as it may sound, we might actually feel a degree of kinship with the Devil. Indeed, this truth is buried deep within the lore of Satan, in the core tradition of the Watchers myth. For all his horrific personas, Satan is, in many respects, our half-sibling. As the Watchers myth tells it, Satan’s father may have been one of the rebel angels, but his mother was one of the daughters of men. Satan may be our evil older brother, but he is our brother nonetheless. And, through the ingenious machinations of his temptations and traps, we recognize that Satan knows us better than we know ourselves.

A Final Closing Thought
The battle against the Accuser within, and the Accuser without (expressed through the corporate spirit of the Domination Systems of our society) may seem daunting.  But we cannot lose hope - we must learn to see that our faith can move mountains, as Jesus says in Matthew 17:20.  Jesus expressly stated that if we have faith like this, "nothing will be impossible for you."  Jesus was not a superhero who swooped in and took care of all our problems - rather, he was showing us the Way.

In "Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination", Walter Wink outlines a brilliant set of statements that must never be separated.  To do so perverts the truth and functions as a danger to ourselves and others.  The three statements are:

1. The Powers are good (Rom. 13:1-6).
2. The Powers are fallen (uh...see Jesus' entire story, and the book of Revelation...for starters).
3. The Powers must and will be redeemed (Col. 1:20, Phil. 3:21).

If we accept number 1 without the others, we pervert the truth because we end up supporting systems which dehumanize and destroy.  If we accept number 2 without the others, we become agents of chaos who rebel against any and all forms of organization.  But if we keep sight of these three truths, and never lose the hope in the third, I believe that we can change the world.  I will close with one final quote from "Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination":

How remarkable, that despite its sober exposes of the Domination System, the New Testament is so free of gloom or quailing before the Powers! From beginning to end, there is only the note of victory - a victory in the unknown and open future, for the whole human race and the universe, and victory even now, in the midst of struggle. There is an absolute and unshakable confidence that the System of Domination has an end. A new world of partnership, of compassion, of human community, of conscious awareness of the limits of power, awaits us. We are to struggle with all our might and courage for its coming, yet we cannot make it come. The conditions of its arrival are beyond our control, yet we have a fairly clear idea what they are; and as a sufficient number of people are attracted to God's domination-free order, and commit their lives and fortunes to bringing it about, it will happen, because it has been happening, and it is happening now.

Satan: Lifting the Veil - Part 24: The Advocate

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 Advocate
Throughout this series, we've seen how "the Satan" works as the accusing voices within each man, and within society itself.  And we've seen how Jesus accomplished a total defeat of these voices when he refused to fight by the same methods.

But even more than this, Jesus presents the face of God as the antithesis of the Accuser - the Advocate.  I John 2:1-2 tells us that Jesus is "an Advocate with the Father".  The word that is translated as “advocate” is parakletos, and the meaning is along the lines of “defense attorney” - the opposite of the "prosecuting attorney" that "the Accuser" represents. 

Now, those who believe in Penal Substitution often try to turn the situation into Jesus vs. the Father - the Father (who is an angry judge) wishes to condemn us, but Jesus the Advocate stands in the way.  But the problem with this is that Jesus has made many statements along the lines of John 10:30, where he tells us that he and the Father are one (or of one essence, as the footnote says).  So why would we think the Father has a judgmental, angry personality if Jesus is the complete opposite?

Also, it’s interesting to note that the word parakletos is also used for the Holy Spirit in John 14:15-17 and John 15:26-27.  And Jesus identifies this spirit of defending others as the "Spirit of Truth" - so Jesus is saying that ultimate truth is not found in accusing, but in defending!

Jesus changes our image of God from an angry judge to a defense attorney.  In fact, the Bible implies that Jesus is the judge (see Mt. 25:31-46 and Rom. 2:16 for a couple examples)  - and thus the judge is the Advocate!  And how could you lose that case?  In fact, Jesus is the judge who does not judge!  (See John 8:15)

In John 8:1-11, we see Jesus acting both in the role of judge and of defense attorney when an adulterous woman is brought to him.  In refusing to let anyone else stone or condemn this woman, Jesus has taken on the role of the defense attorney.  Jesus does judge her in the way an Advocate would when he tells her “Go now and leave your life of sin.”  He has pointed out her destructive behavior and commanded her to turn from it – because God loves this woman!  Love does not condemn when we disobey – love is saddened because it knows the natural consequences we will face for this destructive behavior.  But rather than condemn her, Jesus is standing on her side as a person, and the people he seems most angry with are the stone throwers.

Later on, in Acts 9:1-22, Jesus is also Paul’s defense attorney.  It is hard to imagine a more hard-hearted person than one who would travel around stoning Christians simply for being Christians.  Paul was full of rage and addicted to control.  But Jesus showed love to him, even in his unrepentant state, and softened his heart.  Jesus loved and healed Paul – and what did Paul do to deserve this?  Nothing.

The good news of the Gospel of Jesus is not that God loves repentant sinners, but that God loves unrepentant sinners.

Perhaps the most dramatic statement of Jesus as defense attorney rather than prosecuting attorney is Jesus’ final words on the cross.  The cross shows us a juxtaposition of two realities: the depth of destruction caused by unloving behavior, and the even greater depth of love in God’s response.  Rather than condemning those who subjected him to such a violent, cruel, senseless death, Jesus says in Luke 23:34:

Father, forgive them, for they know not what they are doing.

Jesus, in his wisdom, knew that you can’t solve the hurt caused by the Accuser by piling on more guilt and fear.  This is why you rarely see Jesus confronting sin - in fact, usually the only sin he points out is the pride of the legalistic pharisees!  In other words, the sin that Jesus is always going on about is the Accusing nature itself!

The Accuser only serves to entrap people within their harmful, damaging lifestyle - I always say that you can't break a habit, you can only replace it.  This is why you will often see smokers gaining weight after quitting - they are merely replacing the bad habit of smoking with a dependency on food to solve their cravings.  So rather than accusing the sinner, Jesus the Advocate comes alongside of them and shows them what makes them special - he gives them a purpose, and replaces their bad habits with good ones.

But the picture of God that Jesus shows us is of a merciful Being.  After commanding his disciples to love their enemies in Luke 6:35, Jesus states that "you will be children of the Most High; for he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked."  Not only does Jesus imply here that mercy and love of enemies is a prerequisite for being "children of the Most High", but Jesus tells us that this is how God is.  Jesus follows this statement up by stating this explicitly in verse 36:

Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.

Jesus follows this statement up by defining just what this mercy looks like (verses 37-38):

Do not judge, and you will not be judged; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven; give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap; for the measure you give will be the measure you get back.

I am reminded of one of the most powerful scenes in movie history - in "Good Will Hunting", we are introduced to a troubled young man named Will Hunting, who is discovered to be a Math genius.  In one of the final scenes of the movie, Will has a breakthrough with his psychologist.  All throughout the movie, he has been distant and protective of himself.  But as he is talking with his psychologist - Sean (played by Robin Williams) - about the abuse his father put him through, Sean picks up Will's file and says: "Will, you see this, all this shit?  It's not your fault."  Will says, softly and in a non-committal voice "I know."  Sean repeats: "No you don't. It's not your fault."  Will repeats his statement: "I know."  But Sean is relentless - and in a dramatic act of prophecy, he comes alongside Sean and repeats "it's not your fault" while Will breaks down in tears, and you can see all the hurt he's bottled up inside for years being poured out. 

Before we can pour out the unconditional love of God, we must defeat shame.  In "Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead", shame and vulnerability researcher Brene Brown writes:

Shame is highly correlated with addiction, violence, aggression, depression, eating disorders, and bullying. Researchers don’t find shame correlated with positive outcomes at all - there are no data to support that shame is a helpful compass for good behavior. In fact, shame is much more likely to be the cause of destructive and hurtful behaviors than it is to be the solution.

Shame works like termites in a house. It’s hidden in the dark behind the walls and constantly eating away at our infrastructure, until one day the stairs suddenly crumble.

Elsewhere in the book, Brown illustrates how shame is a function of the Domination System - she tells a story of a session she had with a group of college students where a young man told her about "the box":

“Let me show you the box.” I knew he was a tall guy, but when he stood up, it was clear that he was at least six foot four. He said, “Imagine living like this,” as he crouched down and pretended that he was stuffed inside a small box. Still hunched over, he said, “You really only have three choices. You spend your life fighting to get out, throwing punches at the side of the box and hoping it will break. You always feel angry and you’re always swinging. Or you just give up. You don’t give a shit about anything.” At that point he slumped over on the ground. You could have heard a pin drop in the room.

"The Box" is the Accuser's assault on individuality.  The Accuser cannot stand when others are different - unique is not allowed. I think that some people manage to get out of that box, but then everyone else starts smacking them with baseball bats and trying to stuff them back in!  Society hates it when there is a person who doesn’t conform!  That’s the Accuser at work!  But I believe that Jesus, as Advocate, prizes what makes people unique!  God the Advocate boasts of our unique gifts: "look at how special my child is!" 

Those who do not accept the all-inclusive nature of God, revealed through the doctrine of Biblical Universalism, will be ill-equipped, I fear, to adopt Jesus’ non-violent way and speak the voice of the Advocate.  They will have difficulty accepting that violence does not redeem.  Jesus pointed to a different way of understanding judgment - judgment was not the end, but a beginning.  The fire of judgment does not consume, but purifies - as in the oft-used Biblical metaphor of the refiner’s fire (see Mal. 3:3, Heb. 12:29, I Pet. 1:7 for a few examples).  Divine judgment is not intended to destroy, but to awaken through the act of removing impurities.  God’s judgment is more often expressed through passive judgment - allowing the wicked to face the destructive traps that they themselves constructed through their exclusive structures of domination.  Through this understanding, we find that judgment is not the last word, but often the first Word which initiates New Creation.  Jesus’ entire ministry expressed this truth, as he sat at the same table as the “sinners” of his time: those who had been cast out by the political and religious systems.

Jesus the Advocate says “your sins have been forgiven, now go and sin no more” (see John 8:11) - forgiveness comes first and frees the sinner to enter into the kingdom of God, leaving behind their destructive way of life.  But to enter this new Way, we must also be willing to forgive our enemies - we must reject the very mechanism of “enemy” that scapegoats others.  We must cease to identify people by their sins, but see the image of God in them. 

In the Harry Potter series, there is a conversation between Harry and Sirius Black where Harry is worried that he might be bad because he has dark feelings and is often angry.  And Sirius says:

You’re not a bad person. You’re a very good person who bad things have happened to. Besides, the world isn’t split into good people and Death Eaters. We’ve all got both light and dark inside us. What matters is the part we choose to act on. That’s who we really are.

Often, in order to love our "enemy", we must see the enemy within - thus Jesus' teaching on projection with the illustration of a log in our own eye (Mt. 7:1-5, Lk. 6:41-42).  Loving the enemy within enables us to extend this love outward to love the "enemy" without - accepting God’s forgiveness and extending it in response.  But if we insist - after being forgiven - that God hates those we hate and refuses to forgive them, we inevitably insert a psychological time-bomb.  Our own hypocrisy, while we may successfully deny and hide from it for a time, will come back to haunt us in the end.  Unconsciously we know that a deity who is hostile towards certain types of people is potentially hostile to ourselves as well.  So we will be locked in a constant battle, and will find no peace.  This battle will ultimately descend into a perfectionism which results in the condemnation of all - the devil’s universalism.

What if "the enemy" represents our own projections?

So we must learn to see our enemies as a mirror - so often, those we have the most difficulty with are displaying characteristics that are very much a part of us.  And this can function as a useful mirror, and show us our own weaknesses which our friends ignore out of love.  Our friends rarely tell us about our faults - this is usually what makes them a friend in the first place: that they are willing to overlook our faults and let them be.  But our enemies can reveal them to us, and this can transform our enemy from a hurdle into a gift.  This becomes a very humbling experience, as we realize that before we can transform our enemies, we must first transform ourselves, and that our enemy has helped us in this task.  Then we can look at our enemies and say: “forgive them, for they know not what they do” - because we understand how the same was true of us.  We can now understand how our enemy has been deluded by the same rulers, authorities, cosmic powers of this present darkness, and spiritual forces spoken of in Ephesians 6:12.

It's time for another break - and next time, I will present some concluding thoughts.

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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?