Who
is the
Devil?
Holy Scripture tells us of the Devil.
Piecing the story together over the Hebrew Bible, the Gospels, the Epistles, the Revelation, and the Holy Quran, we can figure that the rebellion of the Devil (called Satan, Lucifer, or Iblis) against God centers around his dislike and distrust of the “mud-molded” creatures (we human beings) that God demanded all in heaven bow down to.
The Quran tells us:
“Behold! We said to the angels: “Bow down to Adam.” They bowed down except Iblis: he said, “Shall I bow down to one whom you have created from clay?” He said, “Do You see? This is the one you have honored above me! If you but respite me to the Day of Judgment, I will surely bring all his descendants under my sway—all but a few!” (Allah) said: “Go your way; if any of them follow you, verily Hell will be the recompense of you (all)—an ample recompense. Lead to destruction those whom you can among them, with your (seductive) voice; make assaults on them with your cavalry and your infantry; mutually share with them wealth and children; and make promises to them.” But Satan promises them nothing but deceit.” (Surah 17:61-64, Abdullah Yusef Ali translation)
This scene is replayed throughout the Quran, emphasizing Satan's original refusal to bow to human beings, and instead seek their destruction. (Surah 20:116, 18:50, 7:11, 2:34)
Satan's rebellion is found in the Bible, too. (Rev. 12:7-11)
The story of Satan's rebellion is found in the verse just after the verses describing Mother Mary and her Child.
Comparing the two Scriptures, Holy Quran and Revelations, we see a connection:
Satan is in the Quran disgusted with human beings, particularly with the mud-molded Adam.
Satan in Revelations attacks a woman in childbirth—the symbol of humanity's humanness.
Why did Satan, God's favorite angel, refuse God's command?
Why did he instead lead a whole rebellion in heaven, rather than acknowledge the beauty of Mother Mary, giving birth to Christ?
What was it about human beings that Satan found so repulsive?
It is the same thing God rejects when He originally breathed His life into the dust of the Earth, and made us:
That there is something wrong with the dust, the dirt, the mud.
The Flesh.
God ennobled the dust by making us of it.
Not the fire and raw energy of a perfect angel!
But something of the soil, of our home, the Earth.
It is Satan's hatred of the Flesh—and his determination to use it to ruin us all—that God's Spirit overcomes in uniting with the Flesh in the Person of Jesus Christ—Who is our Elder Brother, One Whom we can follow and become—not to worship Him as we would the Father. (Rev. 19:10, 22:9)
God (Spirit) has been many times at odds with the Goddess Earth, the Goddess Mud.
It is Satan who furthered this division, stirring up trouble between the Ancient Hebrews and the Goddess-worshiping peoples around them.
Satan capitalized on the division between Spirit and Body—and pushed each away from the other!
Satan raped the Earth and poisoned Her—out of his hatred for the reality of our human, dust-bound existence.
Satan did this, as the Dragon in Revelations, to persecute Our Mother, and destroy Her Child Jesus—Who is each of us, when we follow Him. (Rev.12:17)
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Thus our sexuality, our appetites for food, drink, and the comforts of life—all these gifts of our Goddess Bodies which God allowed and helped shape—came under assault:
The Devil, going all about and deep into the earth (Job 2:2), poisoned the earth, and cursed our sexuality and all the rest of our drives and desires as embodied beings.
While God posited a sexuality that was sanctified—in holy matrimony or in voluntary, religious celibacy—the Goddess in us leads us to all sorts of sexual expression, both inside and outside marriage.
But the Goddess is simply the animal nature of us.
It is of the Flesh, and God loves us despite and because of our wayward, untamed enfleshed reality.
Otherwise, He would never have made us out of clay!
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It is the Devil who tries to ruin this—making of our Goddess tendencies a path away from God.
The Devil has poisoned our healthy appetites, for food, for drink, for clothes and comforts, by making them addictive.
The Devil has “devilized” our sexuality—exhorting selfishness in us as we relate to one another.
We meet casually, and find it hard to find something lasting.
Even when we find lasting love, too often these relationships have abuse on one or both sides, verbal, physical, even sexual abuse.
It is the selfishness that can sometimes come from a free sexuality that God abhors.
He does not want us to use each other—but rather, to love one another.
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There are many forms of family round the world and throughout time.
Many people to this day practice polygamy or polyandry, where one man has more than one wife, or where one woman has more than one husband.
The Mo people of China have for hundreds of years practiced a sexual and family lifestyle that has no place for marriage at all.
Yet, people of the Mo folk stick together—a wandering boy joining a lover's family, working alongside her on her ancestral farm, and being loyal to the matriarchy of her clan.
Many people today practice forms of sexuality that bond them to one another—and many times these folk will describe their “polyamorous” loved ones as their “family.”
God loves the kinds of sexuality that enables families to grow, communities to survive and thrive, and folk to remain loyal to one another.
God abhors selfishness, and using one another.
It is a subtle difference, then, between the family of the Goddess—and the cruelty of the Devil.
*
The Devil has poisoned the Goddess, and all of us, in our Goddess-Bodies.
The Devil exhorts us to exploitation and rape.
The Devil wants us to become like him—selfish, vain, uncaring.
The Devil tempts us take too much of the Earth, so that we become ultimately unsatisfied with what we taste.
The Devil takes things of comfort and pleasure in our Goddess-Bodies, and the fruits of Mother Earth, and makes them into vice.
Nature's bounty is ruined by our Greed, our Lust, our Gluttony.
As we compete with one another for Mother Earth's resources, we become Prideful, Envious, and Wrathful.
And a spiritual Sloth, or Laziness, can be more deadly even the Sloth of the Body!
The Devil thus infects what is good in the Earth with his jealousy and vanity and selfishness—making us addicted to pleasures, rather than simply enjoying them.
The Devil has made the dirt of the Goddess “dirty.”
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But is there a way to enjoy the Bounty of Mother Earth, but not become sick and drunk and addicted?
Many people feel the answer is No.
They exhort themselves and their families to live strictly, in temperance.
They abstain from sexuality, from alcohol and drugs, even from music and literature and television that seem too “of the World.”
The repulsion many of these people feel today about sexualities other than theirs is that they feel the others are “animalistic,” and, fearing what is natural in all of us, they condemn these sexualities and the people who embody them.
They see the Goddess in them.
But they think it's the Devil.
The Devil has become enmeshed in our attempts to find pleasure, love, and comfort—free of the Law of God.
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But Jesus Christ came to forgive all sin!
Christ raises us up—Body and Soul—to serve God.
Therefore, it is not our Bodies, our Goddess-Mother-Selves, that is evil or corrupt.
It is not enjoying food, or drink, or nice clothes or other comforts of life that angers God:
It is eating when others are hungry.
It is indulging in Roman orgies while Lazarus is starving and dying at our gates! (Luke 16:19-21)
It is not our God-given, Goddess-embracing sexuality that is evil or corrupt:
It is the desire we sometimes have to hurt one another with our sexualities that is evil and corrupt!
It is the Devil that has hijacked our natural Goddess tendencies—and made it almost impossible for us to raise this enfleshed nature up to God!
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It is clear to us in the All Faith Church of Liberation that the Devil has much power over this world.
It is his hateful creed that infects all attempts to discover ourselves, and forge our identities free of cruelty and guilt.
It is the Devil that has hated the Goddess in us, and works to frustrate the Voice of God which comes to us through God's Holy Spirit.
He works through the world's power structures, to strangle and starve the People of God!
As St. Paul writes: “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” (Ephes. 6:12 KJV)
Fighting the Devil is not fighting against our Bodies, our “flesh and blood,” but against the foul forces of human power that deny God and deny the God-Spirit in His People.
The powers that use armies, the media, education, the prison-industry, and the structures of underpiad labor to oppress the God and Goddess Selves of each of us.
The powers that, even as it is written in the Revelations, will do everything in their power to destroy the growth of Christ in each of us!
We do not wish to create trouble where there was no trouble before.
But we must confront the Devil in our world, who is a real live presence!
We must oppose the evils of denying folk food, clothing, shelter, safety, freedom.
And this world of the Devil is based on keeping people poor, ignorant, and confused—blaming one another for our common lot.
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But how do we confront the Devil?
Do we take up arms against him, and all those under his sway?
Or do we build for God's People—even in the shadows of the Babylonian Order—creating gardens and providing water and food and laundry and ministering to the spiritual, mental, legal, and physical welfare of God's People?
The answer lies in the Christ.
The Example each of us can follow—to overcome the Devil!