Why I'm not a Satanist
Edit: My good friend Noah Tolson pointed out to me that my usage of Dharma was incorrect. In Buddhism, dharma refers to a sense of law and order. The correct word is Dukkha to describe suffering from attachment. The blog has been updated with the correct usage :)
My first ever sequel blog! If you haven't read the first post, you likely won't understand what I'm saying (which might be entertaining, so go ahead). If you want to though, here is the first post: https://bramsfunblog.blogspot.com/2018/06/why-im-satanist.html
In the blog, I claimed an identity as a Satanist. But through the ensuing chastisement (luckily all in a generous spirit), I've realized that wasn't actually as useful as I thought it was. There are things I'm glad to have said. I am sympathetic to the character of Satan; I do think there seem to be problems with God and Jesus that make labeling myself as a Christian unattractive; I do strongly believe in a narrative of love for the world that looking at the character of Satan has helped me to achieve. But I think I was also very wrong (it seems to happen more and more recently)
Posting the first blog sparked several conversations, one of them with a good Christian friend of mine. There is a danger in trying to present a worldview which you do not subscribe to, so to my Christian readers I apologize for the caricature of your God I've presented. My friend was very gracious and suggested an alternative narrative that he felt represented his position more effectively. He has agreed to let me post it here, so thank you Isaac :)
"I believe that Satan was not created to be a monster. If I named my story I think I would call it Satan the Prodigal son. I think God created Lucifer and loved him and gave him amazing talents. God knew that without the freewill to choose not to love Him, His angels could never actually love Him. So, instead of creating a bunch of slaves/robots that had no choice but to love Him, He created free beings capable of great good and, therefore, great evil. Satan made His choice, challenging God for the right to reign. (C.S. Lewis hints that he believes Satan's pride was upset when God made humans and gave them a whole planet to rule over). My timeline is messy on when Satan leaves heaven with his compatriots, but it doesn't really matter to me. God makes humans and gives them a literal utopia to live in but, still knowing that love can't exist without choice, He also makes a rule that they are free to break. He tells them that there will have to be dire consequences associated with choosing to love themselves over Him, because He is so impossibly good and pure that He can't continue to be what He is if He is with people who care more about themselves than others. Satan sees these beings and sees an opportunity to have what he desires, dominion (my best guess at his motive, I truly don't have much clue what he wanted). Fast forward and every human being chooses to love themselves above others. God tells the humans that they must be willing to give up their love of themselves if they want to be with Him. We fail. God becomes a man while also maintaining Godliness, and provides an example of how we can live a life that puts ourselves last. Then people believing to know the will of God (one reason I don't think I can understand His motives) kill this God-man. His death and resurrection is a gift to all humanity, since we are too weak to give up our love for ourselves in action, we can now try to make ourselves better over time and just accept this free gift and that is enough. I think this part had little to do with Satan, I believe that eventually Adam and Eve (or some descendant of theirs, likely one Isaac Gover) would have eaten the apple anyway and chosen to love themselves over God and each other. Heaven is not some asylum that doesn't allow people in to protect the current snooty residents, it is the most inclusive utopia that is begging people to just realize that love for oneself is destructive and causes people to do bad things, and to accept the amazing love that the God that made them is attempting to show them. "
While I don't necessarily agree completely, there is a lot of beauty in this narrative. I think it does a good job of capturing the best parts of God's character. However, I'm still left unsatisfied at points. This narrative is not very sympathetic to Satan. Here we must be careful, because unless Satan is fundamentally different from all other living things, I believe there must be a shred of good in him. I also am deeply uncomfortable assuming God is perfect, for the reasons I have stated in the previous post. So where does that leave us? Can we construct a narrative that treats both fairly?
I believe we can. But to do so, we're going to have to do something we in the west are deeply uncomfortable doing: we're going to have to give a shit about what "primitive" people think. Specifically, I believe that Eastern Philosophy can provide a lens for understanding both Christianity and Satanism more effectively. There are still lots of Eastern Philosophies which I've never tried to immerse myself in, so my understanding will primarily come from Buddhism. But there are shared elements of Daoism, Confuscianism, and probably others that have also informed my perspective.
One of the fundamental threads that runs through Eastern philosophy is the idea of duality: that two things that appear to exist in opposition are actually the same thing. Light/dark. Self/other. Yin/yang. My blog being entertaining/my blog being unbearably boring. This is a difficult concept to understand through the lens of Western thought, and I don't claim to understand it (very sorry if I'm butchering this, friends who are more entrenched in this thought system), but there are two ways of understanding it (to the extent that understanding it is possible) that I have tried to cling to. 1) most of these concepts are conditioned on the vantage point of the viewer- the distinction between self and other is completely contingent on who is doing the observing. From the point of view of an outside observer, this distinction vanishes. 2) most concepts that appear opposed can only be understood using the other. Dark is the absense of light. Light is the absense of dark. They are both referencing the same fundamental substance (the light/dark substance- whatever that is spib). In both cases, the only way to understand a duality is through paradox, which is a bit of a bitch if you want to understand- because a paradox is, by definition, not understandable.
So what happens when we bring east and west together? A really good sports game: that's what. But more importantly, we can find a way to unite the God-sympathetic narrative with the Satan-sympathetic one. So let's tell a new story.
Narrative 4 (Satan- a variant on God): God and Satan, though different entities, are in fact the same entity viewed from different angels (whoops, angles. Maybe there was a third angel that recognized this. No one can say). They both had the same perception of something beautiful beyond themselves and were attracted to it. But they saw it from different perspectives. God, born the ruler, saw the necessity of order and the value of trying to maintain that order. Satan, uncomfortable with the power dynamic and recognizing the danger inherent in it, sought to subvert the natural order by opposing God. This made the two enemies, although they were both fighting to achieve the same beautiful world. They created the concept of good/evil when they did this. God's concept of good was Satan's concept of evil, and vice versa (see- it's all about perspective). Enter humanity. Not knowing the concept of good/evil (something which doesn't actually exist, if we are to take the Eastern perspective), humans existed peacefully. But both Satan and God allowed this concept to fall into the hands of humanity, God by jealously danging it in front of them to test their loyalty and Satan by tempting them to have them take it to spite God. Thus good and evil entered the world of man, and with it- suffering. Because from the perspective of, for example, Buddhism- attachment to good/evil and the resulting value judgements are the source of dukkha (suffering caused by attachment to the world). Satan and God continued to fight over the affection of humanity like two divorced parents who are too insecure to realize they are scarring their children by competing for their affection and making them choose between the two. The rest of the story is rather insignificant. From the Christian perspective, God won by being a good guy and demonstrating his love on the cross. From the Satanist perspective, Satan won by demonstrating the ego of God for all who cared to see. Neither Satan nor God should be held in judgement, because they were doing what they did to try to bring about the same end result- beauty.
The only way to understand the overarching narrative is to see both sides- to simultaneously see both Satan and God as the protagonist in a bigger story that neither of them realized they were in. And then the question is this: what sort of narrative do we get? Is it the narrative of love- that the end of the story is a happy one? Or is it the narrative of fear- that the ending is tragic? Only you can decide, because you are yourself a part of this overarching narrative with an important role to play, because you also are the same entity viewed from a different angel and you have an important piece of the puzzle to provide. If you believe you are in the narrative of fear, I've got bad news for you: you're going to have a bad time. You will live in alienation from the beautiful, constantly terrified that everything you have will be taken from you by a cruel universe. But if you allow yourself to believe in the narrative of love- if you stop judging the actions of others as good or bad and realize that you are simply two characters in a story outside of either of your control- that's where you'll find beauty. It goes by many names. To buddhists, it is nirvana. To Christians, it is heaven. To Marxists- it's communism. To feminists, its matriarchy. To me, it's several insignifant love reacts on facebook. Just kidding- but I'll need at least one more blog post to completely summarize all of the human condition and the ending of the story ;)
But until then, relax. Laugh more. Try to forgive someone who's hurt you by seeing the world from their perspective. Get a fudging pupper. You'll mess up, but that's fine- a good story needs conflict to avoid becoming boring (become a masochist- it'll help).
So in summary, I am not a Satanist. To be a Satanist is to ascribe more weight to the narrative of Satan than to any other narrative. Just as to be a Christian is to ascribe more weight to the narrative of Christ than to any other narrative. Both are important if you want to understand the whole. One interesting philosophy that seems to touch on this is Universalism- but again, that's a different story for a different day.
Good talk.
My first ever sequel blog! If you haven't read the first post, you likely won't understand what I'm saying (which might be entertaining, so go ahead). If you want to though, here is the first post: https://bramsfunblog.blogspot.com/2018/06/why-im-satanist.html
 |
| How many beers do you think they had to drink before this seemed like a good idea? |
Posting the first blog sparked several conversations, one of them with a good Christian friend of mine. There is a danger in trying to present a worldview which you do not subscribe to, so to my Christian readers I apologize for the caricature of your God I've presented. My friend was very gracious and suggested an alternative narrative that he felt represented his position more effectively. He has agreed to let me post it here, so thank you Isaac :)
"I believe that Satan was not created to be a monster. If I named my story I think I would call it Satan the Prodigal son. I think God created Lucifer and loved him and gave him amazing talents. God knew that without the freewill to choose not to love Him, His angels could never actually love Him. So, instead of creating a bunch of slaves/robots that had no choice but to love Him, He created free beings capable of great good and, therefore, great evil. Satan made His choice, challenging God for the right to reign. (C.S. Lewis hints that he believes Satan's pride was upset when God made humans and gave them a whole planet to rule over). My timeline is messy on when Satan leaves heaven with his compatriots, but it doesn't really matter to me. God makes humans and gives them a literal utopia to live in but, still knowing that love can't exist without choice, He also makes a rule that they are free to break. He tells them that there will have to be dire consequences associated with choosing to love themselves over Him, because He is so impossibly good and pure that He can't continue to be what He is if He is with people who care more about themselves than others. Satan sees these beings and sees an opportunity to have what he desires, dominion (my best guess at his motive, I truly don't have much clue what he wanted). Fast forward and every human being chooses to love themselves above others. God tells the humans that they must be willing to give up their love of themselves if they want to be with Him. We fail. God becomes a man while also maintaining Godliness, and provides an example of how we can live a life that puts ourselves last. Then people believing to know the will of God (one reason I don't think I can understand His motives) kill this God-man. His death and resurrection is a gift to all humanity, since we are too weak to give up our love for ourselves in action, we can now try to make ourselves better over time and just accept this free gift and that is enough. I think this part had little to do with Satan, I believe that eventually Adam and Eve (or some descendant of theirs, likely one Isaac Gover) would have eaten the apple anyway and chosen to love themselves over God and each other. Heaven is not some asylum that doesn't allow people in to protect the current snooty residents, it is the most inclusive utopia that is begging people to just realize that love for oneself is destructive and causes people to do bad things, and to accept the amazing love that the God that made them is attempting to show them. "
While I don't necessarily agree completely, there is a lot of beauty in this narrative. I think it does a good job of capturing the best parts of God's character. However, I'm still left unsatisfied at points. This narrative is not very sympathetic to Satan. Here we must be careful, because unless Satan is fundamentally different from all other living things, I believe there must be a shred of good in him. I also am deeply uncomfortable assuming God is perfect, for the reasons I have stated in the previous post. So where does that leave us? Can we construct a narrative that treats both fairly?
I believe we can. But to do so, we're going to have to do something we in the west are deeply uncomfortable doing: we're going to have to give a shit about what "primitive" people think. Specifically, I believe that Eastern Philosophy can provide a lens for understanding both Christianity and Satanism more effectively. There are still lots of Eastern Philosophies which I've never tried to immerse myself in, so my understanding will primarily come from Buddhism. But there are shared elements of Daoism, Confuscianism, and probably others that have also informed my perspective.
 |
| You could spend your life contemplating this, but you'll probably never understand. And thas kew |
So what happens when we bring east and west together? A really good sports game: that's what. But more importantly, we can find a way to unite the God-sympathetic narrative with the Satan-sympathetic one. So let's tell a new story.
Narrative 4 (Satan- a variant on God): God and Satan, though different entities, are in fact the same entity viewed from different angels (whoops, angles. Maybe there was a third angel that recognized this. No one can say). They both had the same perception of something beautiful beyond themselves and were attracted to it. But they saw it from different perspectives. God, born the ruler, saw the necessity of order and the value of trying to maintain that order. Satan, uncomfortable with the power dynamic and recognizing the danger inherent in it, sought to subvert the natural order by opposing God. This made the two enemies, although they were both fighting to achieve the same beautiful world. They created the concept of good/evil when they did this. God's concept of good was Satan's concept of evil, and vice versa (see- it's all about perspective). Enter humanity. Not knowing the concept of good/evil (something which doesn't actually exist, if we are to take the Eastern perspective), humans existed peacefully. But both Satan and God allowed this concept to fall into the hands of humanity, God by jealously danging it in front of them to test their loyalty and Satan by tempting them to have them take it to spite God. Thus good and evil entered the world of man, and with it- suffering. Because from the perspective of, for example, Buddhism- attachment to good/evil and the resulting value judgements are the source of dukkha (suffering caused by attachment to the world). Satan and God continued to fight over the affection of humanity like two divorced parents who are too insecure to realize they are scarring their children by competing for their affection and making them choose between the two. The rest of the story is rather insignificant. From the Christian perspective, God won by being a good guy and demonstrating his love on the cross. From the Satanist perspective, Satan won by demonstrating the ego of God for all who cared to see. Neither Satan nor God should be held in judgement, because they were doing what they did to try to bring about the same end result- beauty.
The only way to understand the overarching narrative is to see both sides- to simultaneously see both Satan and God as the protagonist in a bigger story that neither of them realized they were in. And then the question is this: what sort of narrative do we get? Is it the narrative of love- that the end of the story is a happy one? Or is it the narrative of fear- that the ending is tragic? Only you can decide, because you are yourself a part of this overarching narrative with an important role to play, because you also are the same entity viewed from a different angel and you have an important piece of the puzzle to provide. If you believe you are in the narrative of fear, I've got bad news for you: you're going to have a bad time. You will live in alienation from the beautiful, constantly terrified that everything you have will be taken from you by a cruel universe. But if you allow yourself to believe in the narrative of love- if you stop judging the actions of others as good or bad and realize that you are simply two characters in a story outside of either of your control- that's where you'll find beauty. It goes by many names. To buddhists, it is nirvana. To Christians, it is heaven. To Marxists- it's communism. To feminists, its matriarchy. To me, it's several insignifant love reacts on facebook. Just kidding- but I'll need at least one more blog post to completely summarize all of the human condition and the ending of the story ;)
But until then, relax. Laugh more. Try to forgive someone who's hurt you by seeing the world from their perspective. Get a fudging pupper. You'll mess up, but that's fine- a good story needs conflict to avoid becoming boring (become a masochist- it'll help).
So in summary, I am not a Satanist. To be a Satanist is to ascribe more weight to the narrative of Satan than to any other narrative. Just as to be a Christian is to ascribe more weight to the narrative of Christ than to any other narrative. Both are important if you want to understand the whole. One interesting philosophy that seems to touch on this is Universalism- but again, that's a different story for a different day.
Good talk.
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