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The Devil's Greatest Trick
"The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist." So reads a catchy English translation of words written by the French poet, Charles Pierre Baudelaire.
Libertine that he was, Baudelaire never tired of mocking the pretenses of polite French society. I guess Baudelaire's irreducible Frenchness is one reason why I still struggle to understand what he really meant. After all, we humans do plenty of devil-making. In fact, I always thought that we should abandon the concept of Satan entirely: no Devil, no devil-making. Then I got the point: the Devil's greatest trick is that you're damned if you believe in him and damned if you don't.
My Catholic childhood was remarkably free from threats of hellfire. But I do remember a fun loving teacher's aid (in a public school, no less) who once told me that if you disrespected the devil, he'd come to get you. From then on, I became pathologically afraid of uttering Satan's name--a fear I confronted when writing this column. But in spite of my young age, I could stand back from this fear somewhat and see it as unhealthy superstition, on par with my firm belief that a zombie used my bedroom closet as a home-base for late night forays into the neighborhood.
I made this point about superstition, somewhat more subtly, to a Catholic bishop in the reception following my confirmation. He smiled and told me that the Church most certainly believed in Satan, a prideful fallen angel who had rejected God. I replied that believing in Jesus was all we needed.
As I grew up, I came to see belief in the Devil not just as superstitious but as destructive. Within the Christian tradition, defending the faithful from the wiles of Satan has often been a pretext for for persecuting those who appear to be different or "other." The list of victims is long and continues to grow. Even if retrospective repentance comes, Satan's name easily lends itself to false apology. "The Devil made me do it" might be a phrase popularized by Flip Wilson, but it's an excuse as old as time.
I cannot identify a single point when my thinking about the reality of Satan changed. But it was a function of growing older and confronting painful issues that were beyond my capacity to solve by my own will. I did not necessarily attribute this intractability to the work of the Devil, but I did come to realize that there are realities not subject to human control.
The idea of not having a Devil is appealing precisely if one acknowledges the reality of evil: if evil is fundamentally a human creation then it is also potentially subject to human power. But in creating such an anthropocentric vision of existence and ethical conduct, we human beings can unwittingly play the roles given in the Christian narrative of Satan's fall. Evil does lie in the human heart, but that evil reflects a larger, objective, Evil that continually eludes our grasp.
Christianity believes in a suffering God, who consoles and caresses us in and through the Incarnation. If one accepts this vision, there is a rough symmetry in perceiving a being called Satan who mocks and distorts the intimacy that God offers human beings. This intimacy is mocked and distorted in myths of inevitable human progress, in liturgies of acquisition and consumption, and in glorifications of the nation-state and ethnic identity.
But I also see Satan's hand in the devil-making responses to our mocking and distorting world. To combat idolatry, we can all too easily give the Devil a familiar human face. It might very well satisfy our anger to see Satan in the form of an AIG executive, but the register of Evil is more complicated, and subtle, than the calculus of liquidity, leverage, and loans.
We began with Baudelaire, and I doubt he would agree with much of the foregoing analysis. Yet he might still appreciate the paradox that Satan becomes most powerful when we see him everywhere or nowhere at all.
By
Mathew N. Schmalz
|
March 24, 2009; 1:01 PM ET
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Posted by: edbyronadams | March 27, 2009 11:09 AM
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Mathew N. Schmalz
satan is definitely real. I cannot see how anyone that believes that Jesus is God-Incarnate could doubt the existence of satan, considering that satan tempted Jesus.
As far as the "devil made me do it", what a cop-out. satan cannot make anyone do anything but he can come across as mister nice guy and deceive people.
We have free will, neither God nor satan can make us do things. The choice is ours.
satan is very upset now, since his time is short.
Take care, be ready.
Sincerely, Thomas Paul Moses Baum.
Posted by: ThomasBaum | March 25, 2009 2:23 PM
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I liked this essay. I don't know his name but Leszek Kolakowski quotes an old French priest (another Frenchman!) as saying: he could understand one not believing in God, but given the history of the first half of the 20th century what he could not understand was how one could dismiss the existence of the Devil.
I use the HF's term the Evil One . Like the old French priest, I do not doubt he exists.
Posted by: Mary_Cunningham | March 25, 2009 10:11 AM
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Both the concept of God and the Devil trivializes the good and evil inherent in human character and puts it outside ourselves. We have free will to act on our good or evil impulses and our environment reflects those choices.
Philosophies ancient and modern undercut the idea of free will, posing an outside, omnipotent God or the deterministic genetic machinery that imposes predestination.
Satan lives inside you. Learn to fight for yourself and for humanity.