What Would Satan Do?

Many Christians, when asking themselves how to deal with a particular ethical or moral issue ask themselves "What would Jesus do?" And then try to reason a solution that applies to the Christian moral teachings. Such a process should bring us to identify the morally correct solution to a problem. Whether it does or not is another question, one that we won't tackle here.

This is an exploration of how an incarnation of evil - Satan - might create an organization designed to capture souls. Like any other supernatural being, the existence or non-existence of Satan can be neither proven nor disproven. For purposes of this essay, we will assume that such a personification of evil does exist, and ask the question, "What would Satan do to capture the greatest amount of souls? What would Satan do to reap the most evil in the world?" Our purpose is to see if we can identify things that would alert us to things that would lead to an incorrect moral solution to a particular problem.

 The word 'satan' in Hebrew means 'adversary' and, except for the Books of Job and Zecariah and possibly 1 Chronicles in the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible, is not a supernatural being. There are, however other references to an incarnation of evil in the Old Testament, as well as in the books of the Hebrew canon that are not part of the Christian canon. Christian theology also equates the "Morning Star" or Lucifer as it was translated from the Latin Vulgate into the King James Version of the Christian Bible referenced in Isiah to Satan. There are, of course, other references to an incarnation of evil.

The idea of Shayṭān - an evil Jinn - or Iblis - the devil - is used in Islam, as the personification of evil. Jinn are a collection of what can be equated to the concept of fallen angels. They are the source of the western idea of "genii."

Satan, by whatever name, is known as the "father of lies," and the "tempter of men" and other titles and names. There is dispute as to what his characteristics are, but they are not relevant to the subject of this essay.  It is only necessary to assume that a personification of evil exists and that his purpose is to seduce men into commiting evil. For our purposes here, we will leave "sin" undefined, and instead concentrate on outcomes that can be considered evil.

To truly accomplish this task, it will be eventually be necessary to establish a definition of evil. This is a topic for another essay. For now, we can just use the idea that the result of evil is unnecessary harm to the self, other human beings, other living things or the world in general caused by the intentional or negligent actions, or inaction, of humans. This is an imperfect definition, but it will do for now.

This is an exploration of how an incarnation of evil - Satan - might create an organization designed to capture souls. I am using the word organization here because it encompasses more than a church or religion. It is probable that political parties, national governments, even fraternal organizations may have an ultimate evil outcome that we need to watch for. But for our purposes here, I will focus more on religious groups than others

The first thing we must acknowledge is that Satan is not limited to a single effort or organization. It is very possible, even probable that there would be multiple different organizations, each targeting a different audience. These organizations may have similarities, or they may be very different in their superficial appearances.

These organizations would have to be plausible to their target audience as something good. As someone once told me, the best lies contain mostly truth, so we can expect that the father of lies would create an organization that contains a lot of things that are true, and even good.

Another aspect of a good lie is to appeal to the pre-existing prejudices of the target audience. Especially if these prejudices can be learned and are not frequently examined, but merely accepted as conventional wisdom.

Perhaps only a small portion of what they do or produce would be directed toward the evil end, and that carefully concealed or masked, perhaps packaged and presented to make it look like supreme goodness.

If this organization can have leaders or doctrines that are not questioned; that are taught by rote and never examined critically. Such an organization might even teach that its members have free will, but that the only true course it that set by the leadership. If this organization can shut down its members critical thinking, or even discipline, ostracize or remove members that ask too many questions, it becomes much easier to conceal the evil. Even better would be a situation where the leaders themselves don't question  and doctrines, but simply teach the prejudices and falsehoods handed to them by their predecessors.

Lastly, such an organization would attempt to remove the focus from itself and strive to instill in its members that other organizations or groups are the evil ones - in some cases, perhaps correctly so, to further deflect critical inquiry into the organization itself

While we might view a Satanic cult that openly worships the incarnation of evil as such an organization, its appeal would be limited to rebellious youth and would not be an effective tool for Satan.

No, our false religion would do everything in its power to convince us that it is the one true religion, and that no other religion could possibly be true. It would teach many true and correct principles, it would publicly espouse righteousness and virtue, while condemning and excluding others for minor and insignificant differences, and it would lead its members to evil in small, imperceptible steps aimed at convincing the members that the evil it does is good and the good done by others is evil.

The only ways we have of identifying these organizations is to refuse to surrender our duty to question and to examine critically; to actively look for internal inconsistencies in doctrine and practices; and to examine the product the organization produces to see what kind of fruit it produces.

We'll look at more specific tools and guides in future essays, and perhaps we may examine specific organizations, but the critical element to watch for is any organization that asks for or requires blind obedience or loyalty, that excludes groups or people based on personal characteristics they don't have control over, or that focuses much of its energy in finding fault with other groups or individuals..