According to many believers, today, there is a spiritual war going on between God and Satan. This idea, however, is unbiblical. Nowhere in the word of God do we find a spirit being rebelling against God. There, simply is no evidence in what we read in the Bible for such a rebellion. Satan, the spirit being, is a misunderstanding of Biblical truth, committed by lazy-minded scholars. The whole idea was made up by someone, who was, apparently, an authority figure, and the tradition of Satan, the spirit being, was born. Afterward, lazy-minded scholars, simply, accepted the teaching of tradition without investigation, for had they investigated this idea, they would have certainly come to the conclusion that Satan, the evil spirit being, doesn’t exist. One may ask, so what? What real harm does it do? Doesn’t fear of Satan keep folks in line? Doesn’t the idea of Satan serve the purpose of the Gospel? In a word, “No!”
Jesus told us: “the Truth (not a myth) will set you free” (John 8:32). Christianity’s doctrine of Satan is not only a myth, but the myth slanders God. Consider, for example, that God created man, but, according to the myth, Satan had no claim upon mankind. Man, so to speak, was the child (creation) of God (Genesis 1:27). Why would a good Father give up his responsibility as a parent and surrender his children (mankind) to an evil being called Satan (in the myth)? Does this sound like something any good parent would do? Would a good parent surrender the guidance of his children to a child abuser? …to a liar? …to a murderer? What kind of parent would do such a thing? Certainly not you; certainly not me, but each of us slanders God, our Creator Father by saying he would do what we couldn’t bring ourselves to ever do, because we love our children!
We justify the doctrine by saying, “Oh, but God has a good plan for your life” (Jeremiah 29:11). After we’ve run the course he set for us, he’ll bring us to himself, and we’ll live in paradise! …and this is supposed to justify his behavior of abandoning his parental responsibilities by giving us over to the authority of Satan (the mythical “god of this world”; 2Corinthians 4:4). Moreover, the creation of Satan demands the creation of hell, a torture chamber for all those who won’t forgive God for being a de facto parent. What’s wrong with this image?
The problem is found in the beginning of the myth. The only rebel in the Garden of Eden was Adam. He is the enemy (Satan) of God. Now Adam **IS** the legitimate heir of humanity, not God. Indeed, God is our Creator, but he made us free. We, in Adam, chose not to walk with God. We kicked God out of our lives. We don’t want his participation. He is not welcome (Romans 1:28)! These are the words of a rebel, a man who wanted to know good and evil without God’s input. “I’ll tell **you** what’s good for me, and what isn’t!” (Genesis 3:1-5). While it is true that we are the children of God by creation, Adam is our father by blood. We are descended from him, and legally we are his, not God’s! Adam is responsible for all the evil that has happened to mankind, not God. God was pushed out of the picture. He has no legal right to us, unless he takes back the freedom he gave to man. God is able to do anything, because he is Almighty God, but if he takes back Adam’s freedom in order to save his descendants, what’s to say, after he gives freedom to those he has rescued, that he won’t take away our freedom as well? We have to be assured that God is for us and not against us. He is after all much more powerful than we are.
Why is there evil in the world? Adam is the author of evil, and he is responsible for bringing all the evil we experience into our lives. Does God see it? Yes, he does, but he has no legal reason to interfere on an individual basis, just as one ‘righteous’ nation has no legal right to interfere in the judgments of another sovereign nation upon its own people. What the Lord has done is permit man to go his way and learn the consequences of the choice he has made (Jeremiah 2:19), violence, depravity unlawfulness, wicked behavior etc. At the proper time, which was planned from the beginning of Adam’s rebellion, Jesus was born and the offer was renewed. The choice Life or death was set before mankind in the example of Christ: a relationship with God, or rebellion, light or darkness, the Tree of Life (Christ) or the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil (life without God). We already know the consequences of Adams choice, therefore, choose life (Deuteronomy 30:19), but this new life is not according to the physical life given Adam. God has begun a new creation in Christ, and the life we receive from him is spiritual life, and everlasting.
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