25.  What is sin?  What is evil?  Does Satan exist?

Summary:

•	Although religions disagree about what sin means, the original Hebrew and Greek words for sin both mean “to miss the mark”—suggesting a mistake or failure, but not permanent guilt.  

•	The idea that all people are born guilty because of Adam’s and Eve’s first sin was created by later Christian theologians.  Called Original Sin, this idea was never taught by Jesus and does not exist in Judaism nor Islam, which teach that people are born innocent; they sin through choices, not inheritance.

•	Understanding evil begins by considering its opposite: unconditional love.  Many people never receive unconditional love, and that scarcity leaves them vulnerable to fear, resentment, and temptations to commit harmful behavior.  

•	The ego forms in childhood when unconditional love is lacking.  The ego measures worth by possessions, status, and reputation.  The ego lies constantly.  When those lies are believed, they can grow into hatred, abuse, and violence toward oneself and others.

•	In many religions and philosophies, Satan is not necessarily a literal supernatural being, but a symbol of the human ego—arrogant, fearful, selfish, and deceptive.  Stories like the serpent in the Garden of Eden, Iblis in the Holy Quran, and the red dragon in Christianity’s Book of Revelation, make much more sense morally and logically when interpreted as symbolic descriptions of the ego rather than literal descriptions of an evil super-being.

•	For centuries, people who believed that they were fighting Satan by hating others—calling them witches, heretics, or evil—were driven by their own ego.  Hatred in the name of righteousness is still hatred, and hatred comes from the ego.

•	The best protection against evil is to strengthen your own conscience by practicing unconditional love and forgiveness, including by forgiving yourself.  As the ego loses its power, the impulses that lead to cruelty and violence lose their power as well.

Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and various other religions have the concept of sin.  However, they have not always agreed on what sin is.  Is sin a crime?  Is sin a mistake?  Is sin an inheritance?

A traditional teaching from Christianity is that all people are born into sin, which means that all people are already sinners at birth, already guilty.  This idea is called original sin because, in the Holy Bible, Adam and Eve committed the first sin when they disobeyed God by eating the forbidden fruit.  Consequently, according to this idea, all of their descendants are born into sin.

Despite a long history, this idea of original sin is not a teaching from Jesus himself.  In fact, many Christian churches do not agree with it, many Christians do not believe it, and the Christian Gospels do not record Jesus ever teaching it.  It was invented by some Christian theologians centuries after Jesus died.  The idea of original sin does not exist in Judaism, despite the story of Adam and Eve being a Jewish story (Genesis, chapters 1-3), and it does not exist in Islam, despite the Holy Quran also having the story of Adam and his wife.  Judaism and Islam both teach that sin is an action, a deliberate choice, not an inherited condition like an inherited disease.  They teach that all people are born innocent and that God forgives each person’s sins when the person sincerely repents.

The Hebrew word for sin is khata— חָטָא —which directly translates as “to miss the mark.”  When an archer uses a bow to launch an arrow but the arrow misses the target, the archer has missed the mark.  The word khata can also mean failure, but not necessarily guilt if the person made a sincere effort.  About two centuries before Jesus was born, Jewish scholars carefully translated the Hebrew Bible into Greek, the same language the Christian Gospels were later written in.  That Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible is called the Septuagint.  The Greek word for sin, used in both the Septuagint and the Christian Gospels, is hamartia— ἁμαρτία —a word that also means “to miss the mark.”  So the earliest Christians did know what the word sin meant.  Perhaps they felt some guilt when they committed a sin, but they were not taught that every person, including every newborn baby, is “born into sin.”

Judaism and Islam define a sin as violating a commandment from God.  In the Hebrew Bible are 613 commandments, including the famous Ten Commandments.  Jews refer to all 613, collectively, as “the Law.”  Pious Jews strive to obey every single commandment, but violating some is probably inevitable because there are so many commandments.  Therefore, the most holy day in Judaism is Yom Kippur— יום כיפור —meaning the “Day of Atonement,” which in the Jewish calendar is the last day of the “Ten Days of Repentance.”  Yom Kippur is observed with fasting and prayer, and it typically emphasizes forgiveness, repentance, and setting moral intentions for the following year.  Yom Kippur does not emphasize guilt or shame.

In Islam, the Arabic word for sin is junāḥa— جنَاح —or gunāh in Persian (Farsi).  The word also means wrongdoing.  Islam has various categories of sins, of which here are four.  Heinous sins committed against God are called dhanb, although the specific sin, if due to ignorance, might be unintentional.  Sins that are intentional are called ithm.  Sins of idolatry are called shirk.  Sins that are moral mistakes are called khati’ah. 

Most other religions, including Hinduism, Buddhism, Daoism, and Confucianism, developed without the idea of sin, or at least without the idea of original sin.  However, they do teach that actions have consequences.  Most religions that include some belief in reincarnation or rebirth also believe in some form of karma.  They teach that cruel or violent behavior creates bad consequences in one’s current lifetime and also creates a spiritual debt that must be resolved in future lifetimes.  Physical violence and non-physical violence are both violence.  Cruel behavior includes theft, infidelity, and any lying that hurts someone deliberately. 

Several Indian religions, including Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism, also have the concept of Dharma, although the concept varies per religion.  The word Dharma— धर्म in Sanskrit—comes from the Sanskrit root dhri, which means to support, uphold, or maintain.  In ancient Hindu scriptures, Dharmais described as cosmic and spiritual laws that bring order to the Universe, because otherwise the Universe would be in chaos.  Violations of Dharma cause disruptions that can negatively affect an individual person, family, society, nature, perhaps the world, perhaps even the Universe.  Dharma includes guidelines, ethics, duties, customs, and traditions meant to help people become the best versions of themselves, growing spiritually.  This includes an emphasis on truthfulness, generosity, and non-violence.  In Buddhism, Dharma includes the teachings of the Buddha himself, including how to attain enlightenment, but Dharma for a Buddhist also means understanding those teachings and actually practicing them.

Daoism and Confucianism originated in ancient China.  Daoism teaches that a person can achieve inner contentment and tranquility by acting in harmony with nature and likewise with the Dao (the eternal Way).  This means practicing compassion, peacefulness, honesty, and integrity.  Confucianism teaches that every person deserves respect.  It also teaches that if everybody in society practiced mutual respect, then harmony would exist throughout society.  Daoism and Confucianism both warn that cruelty and violence disrupt harmony, and the consequences include more cruelty, more violence, more destruction. 

Centuries ago, when believers in Christianity and Islam arrived in China, they equated cruel and violent behavior with sinful behavior.  Therefore, in Daoism today, the Chinese word zui— 罪 —which means misconduct, crime, or guilt, is sometimes translated as the word sin.  Likewise, in Hinduism today, the Hindi word paap— पाप —which means misdeed, immorality, or guilt, is sometimes translated as sin.

Many religions proscribe ethical rules, which in some religions are called religious laws.  Rules can be valuable, but some of those rules, especially those written many centuries ago, might now be considered overly extreme, or no longer appropriate, or even immoral.  In the Holy Bible, for example, there are commandments that require the death penalty for the following sins: worshipping deities other than the LORD (Numbers 25:1-5, Deuteronomy 13 and 17:2-7); blasphemy against the LORD (Leviticus 24:15-16); doing work on the Sabbath day, the seventh day of every week (Exodus 35:2); contempt for law courts (Deuteronomy 17:12); adultery (Leviticus 20:10, Deuteronomy 22:22); and cursing your own parents (Exodus 21:17, Leviticus 20:9).

When ethics becomes only obeying rules even if those rules contradict each other, then there is a danger that some of those rules might be morally wrong.  Ethics and morality are related but not the same.  Morality is almost a feeling that a particular action or behavior is inherently virtuous or wicked, right or wrong, or at least it feels like a complicated dilemma.  That feeling comes from a person’s conscience.  Ethics is an attempt to achieve morality using intellectual reasoning.  Ethics tries to answer questions such as why is a particular action virtuous or wicked?  Who is at fault?  Was the person trying to be honest, or trying to avoid suffering harm, or trying to avoid doing harm?  An emotional answer, as when a person’s conscience feels uncomfortable, is not sufficient as an ethical answer.  Ethics are valuable to have, but ethical thinking can be deceived, distorted, or manipulated.  Knowing what is evil is not always simple.

·  The mystery of evil. 

In the field of ethics, one of the most controversial problems is how to define evil.  Even the word evil can be surprisingly difficult to define.  Some definitions equate evil with another word, such as wicked, but substituting one word for another does not explain the two words.

To inflict pain is sometimes described as evil, but there are times when pain is good.  Pain can be a physical signal from your body alerting you that something is wrong.  The consequences can be more dangerous when something is wrong but there is no pain.  For example, leprosy is a disease that deforms the body in ugly ways and can also cause paralysis and other destructive ailments.  Leprosy first attacks the body’s nervous system, which means that its victims do not feel physical pain.  Consequently, those victims may physically injure themselves but do not realize they are hurt and are becoming more damaged with each injury.  Many people associate leprosy with evil, but leprosy is not physically painful.

If a disease is both harmful and painful but the disease cannot think, then is the disease truly evil?  The disease never deliberately chose to be harmful.  It lacks any intention to do evil.  It lacks any ability for moral reasoning.  The disease is not insulted if we call it evil, but we risk weakening the description of “evil” when we apply this word to things that did not choose to commit evil.

To deliberately inflict harm is sometimes described as evil.  However, inflicting harm is also a matter of perspective.  If you thoroughly clean a hospital by killing germs there, then you have removed the ability of those germs to harm people—but you harmed the germs.  Many animals hunt and kill other animals for food.  To be killed is to be harmed—but the animals doing the killing, are they evil?  You might describe their behavior as cruel, but is their behavior truly evil?

If a large animal such as a tiger, bear, or crocodile is hunting for food and attacks a human because it wants to eat that person, is the animal’s intent truly evil?  The animal wants food to eat, nothing else.  If, instead, the hunter is a human, hunting an animal for food but nothing else, would the human’s intent be evil?  Most people would answer no, that is not evil.  If a human hunts another human, another person, because the hunter intends to eat that person, is that intent evil?  That behavior is called cannibalism and most people would answer yes, that intent is evil.  But if a tiger, bear, or crocodile attacks another tiger, bear, or crocodile—another of its own species—to eat it, is that intent evil?  Many people would answer no, that intent might be cruel but it is not truly evil because the animal does not understand evil. 

Actually, the idea that an animal does not understand evil is an opinion, not a fact.  Regardless, trying to define evil as the intent to commit harm can become so complicated that it is not very useful as a definition. 

What qualifies as evil may represent a mystery of some sort, but the word evil should represent an extreme horror that shocks your conscience.

If evil represents one extreme, then perhaps a clue to its mystery can be found in the opposite extreme.  The opposite of evil is unconditional love.  And unconditional love is a trait that too many people lack.

·  Understanding evil begins with understanding ourselves. 

According to the major religions, and perhaps according to most religions, the source of evil—deliberate evil—is within each of us.  (Perhaps in this sense the concept of original sin is at least partially accurate.)  Doing something evil can feel as natural as your ability to speak.  But it is also a choice, much like speaking is a choice.  Words can be used to express love, praise, thanks, and forgiveness—but words can also express deliberate insults and harm. 

In the religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, a common symbol for the source of evil behavior is the human heart.  The heart has become this symbol because when you feel emotions such as intense joy, or intense anger, you may feel your heart literally pumping in your chest.

In Judaism is the concept of yetzer hara— יֵצֶר הָרַע —which is a shortened version of the phrase, “The inclination of the heart of man is evil.”  That phrase is in the Hebrew Bible’s story of Noah and the Great Flood, specifically in Genesis 6:5 and 8:21.  In the story, evil acts committed by the human race become so terrible that God sends the Great Flood to destroy most of the human race.  Afterwards, the nature of humans does not change, but God decides that henceforth the human race will either survive or perish because of what humans do.  God decides, “I will never again curse the ground for Man’s sake, although the imagination of Man’s heart is evil from his youth…”  (Genesis 8:21.)

In Christianity’s Gospel of Mark 7:20-23, Jesus himself explains the source of evil:

The symbol of the heart facing countless temptations to choose sinful behavior also appears in the Holy Quran of Islam.  For example:

Today, the word pride has multiple definitions.  The word does not always refer to sinful behavior.  For example, pride can mean feeling joy when someone you know has accomplished something wonderful.  You are proud of that person, you have pride in that person.  Pride can also mean love for a group that you represent in some way, such as your nation.  Pride in your nation is sometimes called patriotism.  Patriotism is beneficial when a nation responds with empathy and assistance for people desperately in need, people who belong to that nation or part of another nation.  Patriotism does not prohibit empathy for other nations and peoples.  Patriotism can be beneficial when it encourages a nation to accomplish great things, as when the United States of America devoted extraordinary efforts to put the first astronauts on the Moon in 1969. 

Patriotism can become dangerous, however, when it encourages arrogance.  Arrogance in a person is likewise dangerous.  The word arrogant comes from the Latin words arrogantem and arrogans.  Those words mean overbearing, insolent, boastful, conceited, rude, presumptuous, pompous. 

What people in ancient times called arrogance or arrogant behavior, we call egotistic.  We call it the ego. 

·  Your ego is you, but also not you. 

The word ego is the Latin word for “I” or “myself.”  Today, the words ego and egotistic can mean selfish or self-centered.  Despite these meanings, however, your ego is not really you.  And your soul is not really you, although in comparison to your ego, your soul is a more accurate description of the genuine you.  Your ego is what your mind imagines yourself to be.  It imagines yourself in the context of the world you live in.

Your ego’s image of yourself begins to form soon after your birth, when your ego begins to notice your family situation and the society around you.  It is noticing your social and cultural environment.  As you grow, your ego notices that your environment seems to have standards of what qualifies as a successful person.  Some people have more possessions than other people—possessions such as wealth, power, status, beauty, intelligence, athletic ability, popularity.  And your ego notices.  People with more possessions seem to attract more attention, more respect, more praise, and are more likely to be obeyed by others.  And your ego notices.  People with fewer possessions might be treated as unsuccessful, or even as failures.  And your ego notices. 

Your ego then measures yourself against those standards.  They are not necessarily absolute standards or even good standards because they are only opinions, a combination of random events and your ego’s interpretation of how people behave and what people say, especially about other people. 

Parents can exert a strong influence on their child’s personality, but they are not the only influence.  Influence can also come from a child’s peers, family relatives, and other people.  They may represent different age groups, different parts of society, different social classes, different religions, different races or ethnicities.  Children learn from the behavior of others—learning by example.  Is the child being taught kindness, empathy, compassion, and forgiveness, all taught by example?  Or is the child suffering unfairness, embarrassment, injury, betrayal?  Every child wants to be loved, accepted, and praised for doing the right thing.  Every child wants to avoid getting yelled at, abused, hurt, and treated as a failure.  Every child feels emotions very intensely because the experiences of a child are new to that child. 

When a child is raised in an environment of love, especially of unconditional love, then the standards perceived by the ego become less important, or perhaps not important at all.  When a child does not receive unconditional love, however, the child suffers a need for love, a need for self-worth and self-respect.  The ego tries to fill those needs, but the ego fails because the ego is not love.  The ego exists because of a multitude of fears, including the fear of not being worthy of love unless that love is somehow earned.  If a person has never experienced unconditional love, or has forgotten what unconditional love feels like, then the ego takes over.  If love is conditional, then the ego wants to know what the person must do to get those conditions.  Then the ego tells you to get those conditions.

The ego is part of your personality, and it claims to be your identity.  However, because your ego comes from your fears, it is not really you because your fears are not really you.  Your ego seeks praise, but because it comes from your fears, any praise that you get will never really satisfy your ego.  Your ego always wants more.

The ego tells you that it is pursuing your happiness, but the ego does not really know what happiness is.  Genuine happiness comes from unconditional love and lasting contentment.  The ego pursues only amusements, which are only temporary distractions from feeling unsatisfied, unworthy, unloved.  The ego also torments you for not doing enough, for not achieving enough, for not being enough.  For those reasons, the ego hates you—and so it demands to be bribed with possessions.  Those bribes will never satisfy the ego for very long, however, because the ego is not the core problem.  Lack of unconditional love is the core problem.  And more possessions are not the solution.

·  Your ego’s most important possession is your reputation. 

Some people care about their own reputation, other people do not.  Some people care about their reputation but not enough to worry about it.  Some people worry about their reputation more than they care about anything else.

Your reputation is how people perceive you when you are not present.  You cannot entirely control your reputation because you cannot control what other people think, including what they think of you.  You can only influence your reputation.  It can be influenced by your image, your actions, your writings, and your creations, including how you look, what you say, and how you say it.  However, other people can also influence your reputation, including people you have never met.  It can be influenced by stereotypes, rumors, cruel jokes, even a single act that people talk about without any context.  People you do not know may treat you as their enemy because of what they imagine about you, correctly or incorrectly, fairly or unfairly.

A person can have two reputations: a personal reputation and a professional reputation.  A professional reputation is for business purposes because it helps other people to guess how a person will conduct business and make decisions involving money.  If the person is an employer, how does the person treat employees?  Are they treated with respect, encouragement, and fairness, and supported when they need help?  Or does the employer abuse employees, avoids taking responsibility for their difficulties or mistakes?  How often does the person lie?  And what does the person lie about? 

Some people believe that a person’s professional reputation defines that person.  It does not.  How a person conducts business can be very different from how a person treats family members and friends.  A professional reputation can be helpful for conducting business, nothing else.  When a business involves competition, the goal is success—measured in terms of profits or power or the satisfaction of customers.  In a family, the goal should be mutual love and support.  (Not all families have mutual love, but they should.)  Morality and trust are essential in business relationships and also essential in relationships between family members and friends. 

Your ego may not agree, however.  Your ego wants to possess your reputation because a reputation is an image.  Perhaps your reputation is an illusion, but your ego still wants to possess it if people believe in that illusion.  And to preserve that illusion, the ego lies.  The ego lies because it is afraid of admitting the truth and of facing shame if the truth is ever exposed. 

The founder of Daoism, Lao Tzu, warned: “Care about what other people think and you will always be their prisoner.” 

·  The identity of the Evil One might surprise you. 

Might God have competition from someone evil?  In the Jewish, Christian, and Islamic scriptures, the ultimate Evil One is called Satan, the devil, portrayed as having supernatural powers and evil intentions.  Today, many people question if Satan really exists, or they believe he does not.  Other people are convinced that Satan does exist, as an actual supernatural being.  In Christianity’s Roman Catholic Church, for example, some members of the clergy are appointed to be professional exorcists.  Their job is to use prayers to God and other religious methods to cast out demons who have seized control of the bodies of unfortunate people.  The problem is called demonic possession.  Numerous exorcists have said that they have dealt with cases of demonic possession in which Satan himself was involved. 

Demonic possession is not proof that Satan exists.  In fact, the existence of Satan has not been proven scientifically.  Some skeptics say that cases of demonic possession can be explained as the person suffering severe psychological problems, but that those problems are all within the mind and brain of that person, not caused by any demon that supposedly enters the person. 

Interestingly, among people who have had near-death experiences, there is no consensus on whether or not Satan exists.  Many NDE experiencers say that Hell does not exist, and this implies that Satan does not exist.   By contrast, a small percentage of NDE experiencers say that Hell does exist because, they say, they went there, although only temporarily.  Some of them say they met Satan there, or at least they met one or more demonic beings.  (Imprisonment in Hell is supposed to be eternal, but somehow those people got out.  If any of them truly met Satan, then Satan failed to keep them in Hell.)  NDE accounts of Hell are part of a category known as a Distressing Near-Death Experience, or dNDE.  The NDE experiencers who deny that Hell exists have speculated that, in a dNDE, a person’s deepest fears actually create a horrifying experience for that person.  Perhaps the person feels shame, guilt, and unworthy of God’s love.  In response, the mind imagines a form of Hell. 

Scientists devoted to materialism agree with this theory, at least to some extent, but they call the dNDE a hallucination, occurring entirely in the brain.  NDE experiencers insist that the typical NDE, including a dNDE, feels much more real than would a mere dream, nightmare, or hallucination.  They say that, during an NDE, the soul is newly released from the limitations of the human body, and in that unexpected freedom the soul can easily create its own environment by merely thinking thoughts.  This phenomenon also happens during joyful NDEs.

Among the general population, there is a common assumption is that if demons exist, then Satan must exist, but if demons do not exist, then Satan does not exist.  This assumption is flawed, however, because there are other possibilities.  What people call “demons” may exist, but demons may not be “fallen” angels.  They could be ghosts or other phenomena that no longer inhabit a physical body of their own, and, for whatever reason, they have not left Earth.  If this explanation is correct, at least partially, then the ghosts that people call “demons” might exist without any existence of Satan.  When exorcists believe  that they encountered Satan involved in cases of demonic possession, the demon or demons that the exorcists spoke to could be lying, trying to scare the exorcists.

Some additional arguments against the existence of Satan as a supernatural being can be found, perhaps surprisingly, in the religious scriptures that describe Satan.  Those descriptions contain contradictions—logical contradictions and moral contradictions.  A number of very religious people would disagree with this assertion; they would argue that religious scriptures declare the existence of Satan as a “fallen” angel with supernatural powers.  They believe that religious scriptures should be interpreted literally, but a literal interpretation of those scriptures is what causes the contradictions.  When those scriptures are interpreted symbolically, not literally, the contradictions disappear and the scriptures make more sense, logically and morally.

Therefore, perhaps Satan does exist but not as a supernatural being. 

Perhaps Satan symbolizes the human ego.  Perhaps Satan symbolizes your ego.

Many Jews, Christians, and Muslims probably already believe this, that Satan symbolizes the ego.  Many other religions also have this belief.  In Hinduism, for example, the ego is called the ahamkara— अहंकार —which is different from the soul, the Atman.  If you believe that you are only your body, mind, and personality, then Hindu faiths warn that you believe in a falsehood.  And that falsehood, that your ego is you, encourages another falsehood: the false belief that you are separate from the Divine.  In Hindu beliefs, the ego is the presence of Mada— मड़ा —depicted in Hindu art as a demon who represents arrogance and excessive pride.  In Hindi, both the word and name Mada can mean “intoxicator.” 

In Buddhism there is a concept called Mara, which is depicted in Buddhist art as a demon symbolizing internal obstacles to enlightenment, such as harsh emotions, ignorance, and attachment.  In artwork, Mara is sometimes depicted with three daughters who represent three forms of temptation: craving, discontent, and lust. 

In Sikhism, the ego is called haumai— हौमई —an arrogance that encourages destructive traits including lust, anger, greed, and attachment.  Sikh teachings warn that haumai, the ego, is the root of human suffering.  Sikh teachings also warn against ahankar (also spelled hanker)— अहंकार —which refers to the ego in the form of excessive pride and vanity, self-centered importance, obsessed with possessions.

In the Baha’i faith, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, son of the founder of the faith, explained in a discussion of the faith in 1912 that your ego is your lower nature, not your spiritual or higher nature.  “This lower nature in Man,” he explained, “is symbolized as Satan—the evil ego within us, not an evil personality outside.”

·  Satanic behavior: lies from lies, evil from evil. 

When a person frequently brags about how wonderful that person is, such as how very smart, how very accomplished, how very beautiful, wealthy, and influential that person is, that person may appear to have abundant self-love.  But that bragging is the person’s ego talking.  Behind the ego, behind its egotistic mask of bragging and image, that person actually has self-hatred, not self-love, not any unconditional love.  The ego is lying to itself.

As a person’s ego torments that person (because that is what the ego does), the ego is slowly filling that person with lies, with fear, with anger, and eventually with hatred.  Fear and hatred are subjective, which means that fear and hatred can distort the person’s ethical thinking and moral understanding, especially when the lies of the ego are believed.  Love and forgiveness become conditional, which means they become corrupted, misunderstood, treated as weaknesses instead of as moral strengths.  Hatred of one’s own soul increases, fed by lies.

Gautama Buddha warned, “When one feels no shame in telling a deliberate lie, there is no evil, I tell you, that he will not do.”  (Majjhima Nikaya, the Ambalatthika-rahulovada Sutta, Middle Discourse 61.)

A person with self-hatred can then hate others.  A person who abuses oneself can then abuse others.  This is genuine evil because the abuse flows in two directions, not one.  It flows from the perpetrator’s ego into the victim, and it flows from the perpetrator’s ego into the perpetrator.  Hatred exists on both ends of the flow.  Abuse leads to more abuse.  Hatred leads to more hatred.

The lies of the ego include inventing excuses to justify any action, any behavior, any abuse, any crime.  To justify behaviors that would upset a person’s conscience, the ego can devise surprisingly ethical reasons.  But those ethical reasons are still lies, and this is why religious violence and atrocities occur, because the ego has convinced itself that if atrocities can be religiously justified, then they are supposedly morally justified.  Even an ingenious ethical justification can be a moral lie, a lie which only the ego could devise and be persuaded by.

·  What the Hebrew Bible says about Satan. 

Judaism portrays Satan somewhat differently than Christianity and Islam traditionally have, because Christianity’s New Testament and Islam’s Holy Quran encouraged additional ideas about Satan.  Judaism’s Hebrew Bible is much older.

Thousands of years ago, the Hebrew word satan— שָׂטָן —referred to an adversary, any adversary.  The adversary could even be a good angel sent by God.  In the Hebrew Bible’s Book of Numbers (22:22), a man named Balaam began a journey to the kingdom of Moab, but God did not want Balaam to go there, at least not yet.  So God sent an angel to block his way.  The angel was not evil, but the Book of Numbers still calls him a satan because the angel was an adversary of Balaam going to Moab. 

The first time the Hebrew Bible names the devil as “the devil” (as “the Satan”) is in the Book of Job.  The devil (Satan) is an important character in the story.  Instead of an adversary of God, the devil is portrayed as a member of God’s court of advisors, serving God and obeying God’s orders.  The devil is an adversary of people.  The devil makes accusations against people, accusing them of being sinners and hypocrites, and then the devil tries to persuade God to condemn them.  This role as an accuser or a prosecutor is also mentioned in the Book of Zachariah 3:1-7 and is implied in Psalm 109:6.

The Book of Job is named for the man the story is about.  Job is a devout Jew with great blessings from God, including great wealth, a large family, and good health.  The devil accuses Job of being devout only because God has given Job great blessings.  The devil predicts that if those blessings were taken away, Job would curse God.  To convince God, the devil asks for God’s permission to take away those blessings.  God agrees.  The devil then inflicts horrific tragedies upon Job, destroying his wealth, killing his children, and ruining his health with sickness, all of which cause Job enormous grief and physical pain.  Job is also terribly confused because he cannot see any religious reason for his tragedies.  Job never curses God, however.  He remains devout.  The primary lesson of the story is that God understands the world better than you do and, therefore, whatever unfairness you may suffer might have a good reason that you are not aware of. 

The story told in the Book of Job could be fictional.  That is the opinion of many Jewish scholars over the centuries, including the eminent Rabbi Moses ben Maimon, famously known as Maimonides.  The author of the Book of Job somehow knew about conversations between God and the devil.  And the author somehow knew the detailed thoughts of Job, as if the author could read Job’s mind.  The story also involves some unanswered questions.  If God is all-loving, then why does God allow the devil to torment Job, including killing Job’s seven sons and three daughters and likewise many servants, merely to prove to the devil that Job will never curse God?  The devil ought to know from past experience that God is always right.  Why, then, does the devil not accept God’s belief that Job will never curse God?  The primary lesson of the story does not depend on answering these questions.  To illustrate that lesson, however, Job had to suffer horrifically and unfairly in ways that an all-loving God should not inflict, and so the author needed a villain, the devil, to act with God’s permission but not be God. 

The devil is a character in the story but also a symbol.  The devil would prefer to torment and kill people instead of trust in God’s knowledge that Job will remain devout.  The devil has less trust in God’s wisdom than Job has.  The devil symbolizes the ego because the ego wants to be right, always, no matter how severe the costs that others must pay to determine the answer. 

Many readers of the Bible believe that the devil first appears in the Book of Genesis, as a talking serpent in the Creation story.  However, the words devil or Satan do not appear in Genesis.  According to Genesis, when God created the Garden of Eden, God planted within it the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, and commanded Adam and Eve not to eat the tree’s fruit.  The tree’s presence in Eden was still a temptation, however.  Why did God put the tree there?  Why not put the tree somewhere that Adam and Eve could not easily reach?  Why create the tree at all?  God is all-knowing, and therefore God must have known that Adam and Eve would someday eat its forbidden fruit and become sinners.  And why did God create a serpent with evil intentions, and with an ability to talk to Eve and tempt her?  If the serpent was an angel in disguise and with evil intentions, then why did God create him?  Did God not know that an evil angel would spread evil, including tempting people into becoming sinners? 

None of these questions is answered by the Book of Genesis.  If God knew the story’s outcome in advance, God does not show it.  God condemns the serpent in Genesis 3:14, declaring: “Cursed are you above all livestock and all wild animals!  You will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life.”  Cursing a serpent to crawl on its belly for the rest of his life might seem like a lenient punishment for a serpent.  (Before the curse, how did the serpent travel around?)  Actually, the curse is harsh because the curse is symbolic.  In ancient times, people imagined that Heaven was up in the sky, above the clouds.  God condemns the serpent to the ground, far from Heaven.  The serpent cannot even walk.  The serpent must crawl on the ground and eat dust.  The ground also implies the underworld, the world of the dead.

Is the serpent also the devil?  If so, then the devil would be crawling on his belly all the days of his life.  (And the devil’s lifetime lasts for thousands of years, at least.)  This image of the devil crawling on his belly, never walking, never standing, is not how most people imagine his appearance.  The idea that the devil could transform his appearance into something else, perhaps into something human, contradicts the curse that God imposed on him.  The Book of Job does not portray the devil as crawling on his belly.

If the entire Creation story is meant to be more symbolic than literal, then the serpent himself is a symbol.  In fact, the serpent has always been a symbol of some sort, including for people who believe that the serpent is the devil.  The Book of Genesis never states this.  God treats the serpent as merely a naughty animal.  God never describes him as a “fallen” angel.

The serpent also symbolizes the ego.  Indeed, as a symbol for the ego, a snake is very appropriate.  A snake can slither around and get into places that most people do not expect.  Likewise, your ego can appear in ways that you do not expect, making decisions for you that are selfish and unreasonable due to the ego’s fears and selfish desires.  Smarter decisions tend to be selfless decisions, not selfish ones.  Snakes exist in a variety of sizes, some of them enormous, and this is likewise true of human egos.  And much like a snake, if you feed your ego, it will grow larger and want more; but if you control your ego, it can be kept small.  A snake can shed its own skin but remain the same snake.  Likewise, the ego may try to shed its own responsibility for its mistakes by trying to blame other people.  It takes responsibility only when the ego will be praised.  It tries to shed responsibility when it faces blame and criticism.  When a person is always trying to escape blame, other people might even call that person a “snake.”

Eve, the first woman, is an appropriate symbol for a victim.  The desire for absolute power is an ambition usually associated with men, perhaps with a particular man, but not with a young woman so innocent that she has not committed any sins.  Nevertheless, Eve has an ego.  The serpent, symbolizing the ego in everyone, beguiles her ego.  The serpent tells her that if she eats the forbidden fruit, she will become like God.  Eve allows her ego to take control of her.  She forgets that the Garden of Eden contains everything that she would ever need: food, protection, beauty, the love of her husband, the love of God, an ability to converse with God, even immortality and the freedom to do almost anything she wants except eat the forbidden fruit.  But her curiosity is triggered.  Curiosity is not necessarily bad, but her ego neglects to think about what could go wrong, and that mistake is very bad.

After Eve eats the forbidden fruit, she demonstrates her love for her husband, Adam, by sharing the fruit with him.  Apparently, she does not want to become like God without her husband also becoming like God.  Her action represents another lie told by the ego: that selfishness is not selfishness if you share the benefits with somebody else, especially with someone you love.  This is a lie because everything that is wrong with selfishness will contaminate that other person as well as contaminate you.  Before Eve shared the forbidden fruit, she alone was a sinner.  After she shared the fruit with Adam, he also became a sinner.  Eve may have believed that sharing the fruit was an act of love, but that act was driven by her ego.

Later, in the Book of Ezekiel, the possible existence of an evil angel is implied, but a different interpretation is much more likely.  In Ezekiel 28:1–14, God tells the Prophet Ezekiel to tell the King of Tyre, who is an arrogant ruler, that his arrogance will result in disaster.  Ezekiel himself says these words are God’s own, to be said directly to the King: “In the pride of your heart you say, ‘I am a god; I sit on the throne of a god in the heart of the seas.’  But you are a mere mortal and not a god, though you think you are as wise as a god. …By your great skill in trading, you have increased your wealth, and because of your wealth your heart has grown proud. …Because you think you are wise, as wise as a god, I am going to bring foreigners against you, the most ruthless of nations; they will draw their swords against your beauty and wisdom and pierce your shining splendor.  They will bring you down to the pit, and you will die a violent death in the heart of the seas.  Will you then say, ‘I am a god,’ in the presence of those who kill you?”  (Ezekiel 28:1–9.)

God’s words are speaking to the King’s arrogant pride; they are speaking to his ego.  And God is not finished speaking, for God continues: “You were the seal of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty.  You were in Eden, the garden of God; every precious stone adorned you… You were anointed as a guardian cherub… You were blameless in your ways from the day you were created till wickedness was found in you.  Through your widespread trade you were filled with violence, and you sinned.  So I drove you in disgrace from the mount of God, and I expelled you, guardian cherub… Your heart became proud on account of your beauty, and you corrupted your wisdom because of your splendor.  So I threw you to the earth… I made a fire come out from you, and it consumed you, and I reduced you to ashes on the ground in the sight of all who were watching.”  (Ezekiel 28:10–14.)

In this second paragraph, God seems to be describing someone other than the King of Tyre.  In the Hebrew Bible, a “guardian cherub” refers to an important angel having the beautiful body of a child and often associated with protection and worship in the presence of God.  Was the King of Tyre really a guardian cherub?  Was he really in the Garden of Eden?  Was he really thrown to the earth by God?  These words seem to describe a beautiful angel in Eden but who later committed sins of pride, arrogance, and vanity, and therefore God condemned him to the earth, a punishment similar to that of the serpent.  Are God’s words really talking about the serpent?  Numerous readers have thought so. 

Nevertheless, the context of the words shows that God intended them for the King of Tyre.  And God also spoke these words for us—as a warning, because they describe the human ego, the symbolic serpent within each of us. 

The ego craves the idea of being a god.  (“In the pride of your heart you say, ‘I am a god.’”) 

The ego wants to believe it is masterful at conducting business and acquiring money.  (“By your great skill in trading, you have increased your wealth, and because of your wealth your heart has grown proud.”)

The ego remembers when the person was very young, beautiful, and innocent.  (“You were the seal of perfection…blameless in your ways from the day you were created.”)

Children often express love and faith in ways better than adults do.  (“You were anointed as a guardian cherub…full of wisdom.”)

The ego was in Eden because Adam and Eve were in Eden where they represented all humans.  The serpent was there, too.  And they all had egos.  (“You were in Eden, the garden of God.”)

But the materialism of the world offered temptations.  The ego wanted more, and more, and more, to be acquired by whatever means possible.  (“Through your widespread trade you were filled with violence, and you sinned.”)

The ego cannot tolerate contentment because the ego emphasizes greed and vanity.  (“Your heart became proud on account of your beauty, and you corrupted your wisdom because of your splendor.”)

The ego is obsessed with this world because the ego does not exist in Heaven.  (“So I threw you to the earth…I drove you in disgrace from the mount of God, and I expelled you, guardian cherub.”)

When you allow your ego to take control of you, then eventually the greed, vanity, and fears of your ego will inflame paranoia.  Afraid of losing your possessions and likely also afraid of death, your paranoia will consume you, affecting your every action, every decision, every thought.  (“I made a fire come out from you, and it consumed you.”)

And by then, everyone who sees you will see only your ego and your paranoia.  (“I reduced you to ashes on the ground in the sight of all who were watching.”) 

The King of Tyre was destroyed by his ego.  And unless you become aware of your own ego and control it, your ego can destroy you.

Elsewhere, in the Book of Isaiah, the words of Isaiah 14:12-15 can seem like another description of the serpent or of a “fallen” angel: “How you have fallen from Heaven, morning star, son of the dawn!  You have been cast down to the earth, you who once laid low the nations!  You said in your heart, ‘I will ascend to the heavens; I will raise my throne above the stars of God; I will sit enthroned on the mount of assembly, on the utmost heights of Mount Zaphon.  I will ascend above the tops of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High.’  But you were brought down to the realm of the dead, to the depths of the pit.”  (Isaiah 14:12-15.)

Many centuries ago, a Christian theologian associated these words with Satan, especially the words, “How you have fallen from Heaven, morning star, son of the dawn!”  In the sky, a star that ancient people called the “morning star” is actually the planet Venus, which in Latin is called Lucifer, meaning “light-bringer.”  Since then, many Christians have referred to Satan as “Lucifer” in the mistaken belief that Satan’s name is supposedly Lucifer.  In fact, the name Lucifer is not even in the Bible (except in Latin translations of the original Hebrew or Greek text).  The words of Isaiah 14:12-15 do not refer to the devil, or to the serpent, or to any “fallen” angel. 

Words taken out of context can be deceptive, especially words from the Bible.  In actuality, the words of Isaiah 14:12-15 are part of a larger set of verses that were meant to insult the ancient King of Babylon after he died.  (He was despised by Jews because he had enslaved the ancient Israelites.)  Those verses begin with Isaiah 14:3-11, which state: “On the day the LORD gives you [Israelites] relief from your suffering and turmoil and from the harsh labor forced on you, you will take up this taunt against the King of Babylon: ‘How the oppressor has come to an end!  How his fury has ended! …The realm of the dead below is all astir to meet you at your coming; …All your pomp has been brought down to the grave, along with the noise of your harps; maggots are spread out beneath you and the worms cover you.”

Then come the words of Isaiah 14:12-15, which conclude: “But you were brought down to the realm of the dead, to the depths of the pit.”  Satan (or supposedly Lucifer) is not mentioned and not even intended.

·  What the New Testament says about Satan. 

The common era (C.E.) began when Jesus was alive, and at that time the Hebrew word satan was still being used to mean any adversary, not necessarily an evil one.  In the Christian Gospels of Matthew 16:23 and Mark 8:33, a disciple of Jesus, Peter, asks Jesus not to travel to Jerusalem because Jesus expects to be killed there.  Jesus says to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan!”  Jesus is calling Peter a satan.  Then Jesus explains why: “You are a stumbling block to me.  You do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.”  (Matthew 16:23.)  Having in mind “merely human concerns” instead of God’s concerns is a way of describing the human ego.

Nevertheless, by the time of Jesus, a common belief had developed among Jewish scholars that the devil mentioned in the Hebrew Bible may exist as a supernatural being, as the ultimate Satan, perhaps commanding a number of demons. 

Jesus appeared to share those beliefs, but he also described the devil somewhat differently.  Jesus called the devil “a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him.  When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies.”  This description does not fit descriptions of the devil in the Hebrew Bible, including in the Book of Job.  And it does not fit the description of a “fallen” angel.  Why would an all-loving God create an angel who is “a murderer from the beginning” and is always lying, even to God?  People who are frequent liars still sometimes tell the truth, but an angel who always lies can never tell the truth, not even a small truth.  According to Jesus, the devil is “the father of lies.”  Why would God give a supernatural liar and murderer the power to tempt people into sinning?  God cursed the serpent for tempting Eve.  If God could solve a multitude of problems by immediately destroying the devil, or by not creating the devil, then why does God allow the devil to exist?  These are major contradictions in Christianity’s traditional portrayal of Satan. 

An alternate explanation is that Satan symbolizes the human ego.  The ego always lies, because the ego emerged from a lack of unconditional love.  The ego tries to make sense of the world, but it fails to because the ego does not understand love, especially unconditional love.  The ego is driven by fear and is devoted to selfishness.  The result is that the ego produces only lies.  The ego lies even to itself. 

Numerous cultures have a belief that spiritual growth can be increased by living alone in the wilderness for days, weeks, or months.  There, your body is exposed to the weather as you roam the wilderness without any of the material benefits of civilization except for what you can carry.  You are alone with your own thoughts.  Some cultures combine this experience with fasting or by eating very little.  Eventually your body becomes exhausted, desperate for food.

Jesus underwent this experience soon after he was baptized as a young man.  The experience is recorded in the Gospels of Matthew 4:1-11, Mark 1:9-13, and Luke 4:1-13.  Matthew provides the longest account, which begins: “Then Jesus was led by the spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.  After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry.”  The devil comes, although what the devil looks like is never described.  Perhaps Jesus could only hear him.  The devil tempts Jesus to violate his fasting, challenging him, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.”  Jesus replies with a quote from the Book of Deuteronomy 8:3—“Man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD.”  Matthew then says the devil transported Jesus to the top of the Great Temple in Jerusalem and dared Jesus to jump off.  The high fall could be deadly, but if Jesus believes that God’s angels will save him, why not jump?  Adding to this dare, the devil quotes Psalm 91:11-12—“He will command his angels concerning you, and they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.”  Jesus replies by quoting from Deuteronomy 6:16—“Do not put the LORD your God to the test…”  Matthew then says the devil transported Jesus to a mountain from which Jesus could see “all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor.”  And the devil offers those kingdoms to Jesus: “All this I will give you—if you will bow down and worship me.”  Jesus answers, “Away from me, Satan!”—and then Jesus references Deuteronomy 6:13, declaring, “Worship the LORD God and serve Him only.”  So the devil left him, according to the three Gospels.

Did a “fallen” angel named Satan speak to Jesus, or did Jesus’ own ego try to tempt Jesus?  There is evidence that it was the ego.  Jesus had fasted for forty days, and both Matthew 4:2 and Luke 4:2 say he was hungry.  Such a fast has two religious purposes: to test the person’s discipline with painful hunger, and to encourage the person’s mind to experience visions when the body is weakened by hunger.  Jesus probably experienced both. 

Traditional Christianity teaches that when a demon is exposed to anything holy, such as water that has been blessed (“holy water”), the demon reacts with anger and hatred because it feels terrible pain.  Therefore, if a demon were to try to quote a holy scripture, then the mere attempt should cause the demon to feel terrible pain.  Yet, Satan shows no obvious pain when quoting Psalm 91:11-12.  This would be possible if Satan is not really a demon but the human ego.  A person’s ego would feel no pain quoting any holy scripture. 

The temptations that Jesus experienced—holy scripture being quoted at him, trying to persuade him to violate his fast, offering him great wealth and power instead of his future as a poor wandering preacher—these are temptations that we can imagine that Jesus’ ego would express.  Jesus may not have physically stood on top of the Great Temple in Jerusalem or literally seen all the kingdoms of the world, but Jesus’ mind and ego could easily imagine such visions after he had starved his body for forty days.  And those temptations were not ridiculous.  In Jesus’ time, there were Jews who predicted that the Messiah would be a military leader who would subdue the world by force.  If Jesus had decided to become the military leader they expected, many of them would have followed him.  But that role was utterly contrary to Jesus’ message of forgiveness, non-violence, and love your neighbor including your enemies.

A disciple of Jesus but who later betrayed him was Judas.  According to the Gospels of Luke 22:3 andJohn 13:27, the spirit of Satan entered Judas.  Satan did not betray Jesus, however.  Judas betrayed Jesus.  To say that “Satan entered Judas” implies that Judas was not responsible for his own actions, that Judas was like an innocent person possessed by a demon.  That is not how Christians view Judas.  Christians hold Judas responsible for betraying Jesus.  Judas was not driven by a demon or by an evil angel.  Judas was driven by his own ego.

Some deeply religious people assume that Satan could never enter a deeply religious person.  The Apostle Paul, in his Letter to the Ephesians 6:11, advises: “Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes.”  Nevertheless, deeply religious people do commit sins.  Everyone commits sins.  Jesus warned some of the most religious people of his time, “You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desires.”  (John 8:44.)  Jesus did not mean that Satan fathered biological children.  Jesus knew that the clergymen he criticized did sincerely believe they were worshipping God.  Jesus was also famous for casting out demons from people, but there is no record of Jesus casting out demons from people he accused of being children of Satan.  Jesus didn’t have to, because they were not possessed by demons.  Jesus accused them of wanting to carry out the desires of Satan because they wanted to carry out the desires of their own egos.  Their egos had corrupted their faith with selfish desires, including trying to look very religious, wise, and powerful.  That is why Jesus called them hypocrites.  (Matthew 23:13-29.)

The Book of Revelation, the last book in the New Testament, has encouraged many Christian ideas about Satan.  Revelation was written decades after the death of Jesus.  It describes a dream that is full of symbolism and, therefore, it can be interpreted in multiple different ways.  Due to its vast symbolism, the dream makes very little sense if you interpret it literally.

Revelation 12:1-6 says that a pregnant woman—described as “clothed with the Sun, with the Moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head,”—gives birth to a son who “will rule all the nations with an iron scepter.”  God quickly takes her newborn son up to a heavenly throne.  The mother, meanwhile, flees into the wilderness “to a place prepared for her by God,” where she is cared for.  To help her escape to safety by flying there, God gives her “two wings of a great eagle,” according to Revelation 12:14.  All of these descriptions involve symbols.  One traditional interpretation is that the woman represents the nation of Israel, that the twelve stars on her crown represent the original twelve tribes of Israel.  She also represents the mother of Jesus, Mary, because her son is Jesus Christ, whom Christians consider the Messiah.  His iron scepter is a symbol of royal authority.  The wilderness represents a portion of the world where Israel will await the Second Coming of Christ. 

The reason why God quickly took her son up to Heaven, and why the mother needed to flee to safety, is because an enormous red dragon wanted to attack the mother and devour the child.  To explain that symbol, the author himself directly states in Revelation 12:9 that the dragon represents “that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray.  He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him.”  Revelation 12:3 describes the dragon as having “seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns on its heads.”  Revelation 12:4 says the dragon’s tail “swept a third of the stars out of the sky and flung them to the earth.”  Many Christians have interpreted this to mean that Satan persuaded a third of the angels in Heaven to become Satan’s followers. 

Revelation 12:7-9 then says that a war was fought in Heaven between the forces of Satan and the forces of God, in which the forces of God were commanded by the Archangel Michael.

Many Christians believe those “fallen” angels (meaning they fell from the sky because they were expelled from Heaven) rebelled against God and became demons.  They believe a supernatural war in Heaven resulted in spiritual warfare on Earth, with Satan and his followers, now demons, doing whatever they can to tempt people into sinning and, after death, to imprison those sinners in Hell for eternity.

Revelation 12:7-9 can be interpreted very differently, however.  The story is part of a dream, a dream full of symbols.  If the story is interpreted literally, it contains some moral and logical contradictions.  For example, notice that God is not mentioned in Revelation 12:7-9.  God is all-powerful, and so if God had become directly involved in the war, there would never be a war.  God would know of Satan’s rebellion before it began, God would know who Satan’s allies were before they joined Satan, and God would win the war before it was fought.  Angels are supposed to know the future, and therefore all of them, Satan’s angels and God’s angels, would already know the war’s outcome before it was fought.  This means that Satan and his allies would be utter fools to attempt a rebellion against God.  Even if Satan’s army could defeat Michael’s army, Satan and his army would still lose—because God is all-powerful.  Nobody can defeat God.  And Satan and his angels would know that. 

Moreover, why did Michael and his army of loyal angels need to fight the war?  God is all-knowing, and so God would not need those angels to prove their loyalty.  Surely God, having infinite wisdom, could devise a solution that would not condemn Satan and his followers to eternal damnation but, instead, would redeem them.  Such a solution would not compel Michael and his army to fight a war against their fellow angels led by Satan.  Even Christians who interpret the Book of Revelation literally, and therefore they believe that an actual war occurred in Heaven, they insist that Satan is not God’s equal, that Satan’s power is not absolute, and that Satan is destined to lose everything.  Why, then, would anyone choose for himself an obviously doomed future?  Satan is supposed to be brilliant.  Satan’s choice to rebel against God does not make sense. 

Furthermore, a literalist interpretation of Revelation 12:7-9 portrays God the Father, the Creator of all, as oddly ignorant, remarkably negligent, and almost powerless when a third of God’s angels become angry enough to rebel against God (against God!) and attempt a war.  This literalist interpretation results in strange answers and unanswered questions, all of which insult the common sense of the story’s characters and likewise insult the common sense of Revelation’s readers.

When a dream consists of symbols, those symbols need to be understood in order to interpret the dream correctly.  The author of Revelation directly stated that the red dragon represents Satan, the devil, the ultimate adversary and tempter “who leads the whole world astray.”  And the description of the newborn son obviously represents Jesus Christ.  Other symbols in the story are less clear, however.  For example, the dragon has seven heads, each wearing a crown, and the dragon also has ten horns.  A traditional Christian interpretation is that the seven heads with crowns represent seven kingdoms intent on persecuting Christianity, but nobody knows for certain if those kingdoms existed when the Book of Revelation was written or, instead, they would exist in a vague future.  Did those kingdoms exist in heaven?  Were those kingdoms expelled to the earth when the dragon was expelled?  And what do the dragon’s ten horns represent?  The author of Revelation never explains those features.  Perhaps he did not know.

The Book of Revelation was written in koine Greek.  The word angel comes from the Greek word ángelos— ἄγγελος —which means “messenger.”  This is because angels deliver messages, usually from God.  The name Michael comes from the Hebrew phrase mi ka’el— מי כאל —which is actually a question asking, “Who is like God?”  The Greek word for war is pólemos— πόλεμος —which means conflict or battle, but this word does not necessarily refer to a war in which anyone gets killed.  It can also refer to a war that is fought with ideas.  The English word polemic comes from the Greek word pólemoikos, which is related to pólemos.  A polemic is an argument about a controversial topic, usually involving religion or politics, in which the argument asserts ideas that support one side and criticizes ideas that support the other side. 

Revelation 12:7-9 does not say if anyone was killed in the Heavenly war; instead, it says that Satan (“the great dragon”) and his angels were hurled down to the earth.  In ancient warfare, when an army lost a battle, that army was usually annihilated—all of the soldiers were killed or became slaves.  If God somehow needed an opportunity to completely annihilate Satan and his rebellious angels—and prevent them from becoming demons who would later torment humans—then Michael’s victory was that opportunity.  Yet, in the story, God does not annihilate Satan and his angels.  God is not mentioned at all.

Revelation 12:7 says: “Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back.”  Which side struck first?  The sentence strongly implies that Michael and his angels struck first, and that means Satan and his angels were defending themselves.  This becomes another moral contradiction when Revelation is interpreted literally.

The story of the war can make sense, including moral sense, if Satan symbolizes the human ego but in the form of a dragon, just as the serpent in the Garden of Eden can symbolize the human ego.  The red color of the dragon symbolizes anger, an emotion often associated with the ego.  Perhaps the so-called angels of Satan were not demons but only messengers, or maybe not even messengers but mere messages, symbolizing the variety of ways the ego can affect life on Earth and cause unnecessary suffering.  Perhaps the war did not involve any destruction in Heaven but, rather, was created by God as a war of ideas to be fought on Earth, making Earth a place where souls in human form can grow spiritually. 

Heaven is a realm of unconditional love and immortality.  By contrast, the human ego comes from a lack of unconditional love, which is why the ego is driven by fear and selfish desires for material things.  For these reasons, the human ego cannot exist in Heaven.  In comparison to Heaven, material things are illusions and lies, and this is why the ego always lies, because it is driven by lies.  This is why Satan and his messages (symbolized in Revelation as his “angels”) were hurled to Earth.  They cannot exist in Heaven.  God created them for Earth, to be challenges and spiritual obstacles for the inhabitants of Earth to learn from.

Unconditional love and selflessness, in direct contrast to fear, selfishness, and lies.  Who is like God?  The answer is obvious—and “Who is like God?” is what the name Michael means, which is why the Archangel Michael symbolizes the forces that expelled from Heaven the selfishness and lies of the human ego, symbolized by Satan.  Michael struck first, not as a military decision, but because Michael represents truth, Satan represents lies, and truth must exist before lies can exist.  The outcome of that war of ideas was never in doubt because God arranged it.  The teachings of Jesus and how Jesus lived his life are the Christian truth.  That is why the red dragon wanted to devour Jesus as a newborn, because devouring Jesus would prevent his message from reaching any people.  His message, if heard and practiced, would endanger the human ego.

What do the seven heads of the dragon represent?  Only God knows, but we can speculate.  Decades after the Book of Revelation was written, Christian theologians compiled a list of the worst sins they could think of—pride, envy, gluttony, greed, lust, sloth, wrath.  These are called the Seven Deadly Sins, known as “deadly” because these sins encourage other sins.  Each of the seven is related to the human ego.  Perhaps the seven heads of the dragon represent “deadly” sins such as these.

(Hindu theologians compiled a similar list, called the Six Enemies.  The six are kama, which means lust; lobha, which means greed; moha, which means attachment; krodha, which means anger; matsarya, which means jealousy; and mada, which means the ego.  An additional enemy sometimes added to this list is alasya, which means laziness.)

In Revelation 20:1-3, an angel from Heaven seizes the red dragon, binds Satan with a chain, and locks him in a sort of prison called the Abyss.  Satan is kept inside for 1,000 years, unable to deceive any nations.  After that imprisonment, however, Satan “must be set free for a short time.”  The author does not explain why.  In a literal interpretation, releasing Satan from prison makes no sense.  In a symbolic interpretation, it can make sense.  The period of time may not mean exactly 1,000 years but, instead, it may symbolizes a very long time; and during that time, people may become complacent and start to trust in their egos again.  Trusting their egos is represented by releasing Satan from captivity.  Then there are consequences.  Eventually, however, Satan and those he deceived are defeated.  In Revelation 20:10, Satan is “thrown into the lake of burning sulfur” to be “tormented day and night forever and ever.”  Symbolically, the human ego at that point either no longer exists or it becomes controlled.  Deprived of personal power, the ego is no longer the tormentor but tormented because it has no place in the personality of a soul.  It has become unnecessary in helping the soul to achieve spiritual growth.

·  What the Holy Quran says about Satan. 

In the Islamic story of angels, God created angels from light but God also created another group of supernatural beings, called jinns, that God made from smokeless fire.  In folklore, when a jinn interacts with humans, that jinn might be helpful or hurtful or neutral.  Many cultures, especially before modern times, have believed in the existence of beings who possess special powers that humans treat as magical, including becoming invisible.  Such beings include genies, nymphs, and fairies.  Humans sometimes associate jinns with such beings. 

In Islam, Satan is believed to be a jinn.  In Arabic, he is called Shaitan or Shaytan— شَيْطَان —which means Satan, as a title.  In Islam, Satan also has a personal name, Iblis— إِبْلِيسْ —although his name in an earlier time might have been Azazil. 

In the Islamic story of Creation, God creates the first man, Adam, from clay, the dust (soil) of the earth.  Then God commands the beings of Paradise (Heaven) to bow (prostrate) before Adam as a show of reverence.  All of them do this except Iblis.  Iblis justifies his refusal by insisting that he is better than Adam because God made Adam from clay but God made Iblis from fire.  The seventh chapter of the Holy Quran, a chapter called “The Heights,” records this event:

This refusal by Iblis is an example of what the ego does.  The ego lies by claiming to be better, and it may invent a reason to justify this.  “You created me from fire and him from clay.”  This is a reason, but a reason that consists of lies: the lie that fire is superior to clay; the lie that God is mistaken in commanding Iblis and others to prostrate before Adam; and the lie that superior beings (if Iblis is truly superior) should never humble themselves before lesser beings.

Iblis, because of his arrogance, is expelled by God from Paradise (Holy Quran 7:14).  That expulsion symbolizes that the ego, and its lies, cannot exist in Paradise (Heaven).  Apparently, Iblis worries that his expulsion from Paradise will destroy him, and so he asks God for a delay.  Iblis asks that his end be delayed until the end of human time when all dead humans will be resurrected by God.  God agrees.  Iblis then says that he will ambush humans with sinful temptations.  Most of them, he says, will fail and will not be grateful to God (Holy Quran 7:15-18).  This stated intent of Iblis is another example of the ego.  The ego hates to be corrected, and when it is corrected, it wants revenge—in a form of “I’ll show you!”  In revenge for being expelled from Paradise because he refused to prostrate before a human, Iblis vows to show God that most humans are not worthy of Paradise.  Iblis becomes Satan, the ultimate adversary and tempter of humans. 

The same chapter of the Holy Quran continues with the story of Adam and his wife.  God warns the innocent human couple not to eat the forbidden fruit, which comes from only one tree that they should not even approach.  And, unlike in Genesis, God warns the human couple about the existence of Satan and his lies.  Satan even tells them, “I am truly your sincere advisor.”  (Holy Quran 7:21.)  It is the ultimate lie, and fully worthy of the ego.

·  How to protect yourself from Satan. 

You are not evil, but the source of evil is within you.  And evil is a choice.  Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are not the only religions to warn us of this.  Confucius asked the rhetorical question, “If you attack your own evil rather than the evil of others, won’t you overcome wickedness?”  (Analects 12:21.)  Gautama Buddha described the problem this way: “By oneself is evil done; by oneself is one defiled.  By oneself is evil left undone; by oneself is one purified.”  (Dhammapada 165.)

Your ego is what endangers you.  When you control your ego, it can help you to understand the behavior of other people and why they make the choices they do.  When your ego controls you, however, you become vulnerable to believing in the ways of evil and to doing evil.  That is why Satan is a symbol of the ego.

In the vast majority of the world’s religions, there is no religious requirement for you to believe that Satan exists as a supernatural being.  And among those religions, there is no religious penalty if you do not believe that Satan is a supernatural being. 

Nevertheless, treating Satan as nothing more than a symbol of the ego may upset some people who insist that Satan is a supernatural being.  They worry that treating Satan as not supernatural may somehow ignore the threat he poses.  Actually, the opposite is true.  When you treat Satan as a supernatural being to be hated, to be deeply hated, then you are giving yourself permission to feel hatred—and hatred is what a supernatural being of evil would want you to feel, because hatred encourages fear, violence, and sin.  For centuries, religious people who assumed that they were doing God’s work by hating Satan have committed countless abuses and atrocities against other people, innocent people, declaring that the victims were atheists, heretics, witches, children of evil, children of Satan.  Those religious people were actually doing Satan’s work, not God’s work.

This does not mean that religious exorcisms to cast out demons should stop.  Exorcisms by professional exorcists should continue because, whether or not demons actually exist, the mental health of countless people have benefited from such exorcisms.

Whether or not Satan exists as a supernatural being, the most prudent way you can protect yourself against Satan is to remember that your own ego is vulnerable to temptation, that your own ego torments you, it lies to you, and it lies even to itself.  God loves you despite your sins or faults or mistakes.  Trust in God’s forgiveness and mercy, not in any hatred of Satan.  If you want to strengthen your spirit against temptation and against sin, then strengthen your conscience with forgiveness and unconditional love for others and for yourself.  For when your love becomes unconditional, you can trust your conscience to be your moral guide.