Why is Satan supposed to be so bad? (God, believe, heaven)
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No. If you believe the Bible, then the only murderer, ever, and forever, was and is God. God kills. God invented death. God made the rules for death. Nothing can happen without God wanting it to so not a single death of a single person, animal or plant ever created on this earth has happened without God's sanction. Even "a person killing another person" is something allowable due to God's own laws, God's own rules, God's own creation and, according to many, God's specific plan, down to the letter. Down to, literally, the last hair on any given person's head.
Indeed, God ruled and created (again, if one believes the Bible) that death must occur in order for others to live. We can't not kill, if we want to live...because of God's decision (to institute death as "a punishment"...illogically, to plants and animals too although these didn't rebel), God's methodology and God's doing. No living thing on this entire planet can live without consuming something else that was once living, plant or animal. God created that killing IS REQUIRED of EVERY SINGLE living thing on this earth...man didn't do that. Plants didn't do that. Animals didn't do it. Satan didn't do it.
Even when "Satan murdered" or, if you will, "Cain murdered," that was God's creation, God's intention, God's plan, and God's method. Unless you believe Satan, man and so on can do their own creation outside of God's will, that we are equal to God in creative ability.
The only murderer, ever, and forever, was, and is, God.
Both Satan and Jesus had the same father- the same creator. Nature and human nature is basically evil. We are through the teachings of Jesus - supposed to over come nature and be super nature...in other words dominate evil. This is the game of life and our purpose - to become more than just mindless animals. "I will make them a little lower than the angels" - We as human animals have an evolutionary mission to rise above evil....first you have to understand what evil is and not to fear it...but manage it.
Satan is a metaphor for the yetzer hara...Always has been way will be...Our goal in life is improvement...
What a terrible verse to partially quote, a verse that has resulted in an enormous amount of anti-semitism over the last 2,000 years and the popular idea that the Jews are related to the devil! Let me give the verse before it, though the entire passage of 8:31-59 is unfortunately illuminating:
You are from your father the devil, and you choose to do your father's desires. He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies.
(John 8:44 NSRV)
The author of the Gospel of John was no friend of the Jews.
Putting aside the terribly anti-semitic nature of the Gospel of John and the terrible atrocities it helped usher in, the "murder" the author is referencing is probably that of Abel by Cain.
The Greek New Testament references this elsewhere:
The children of God and the children of the devil are revealed in this way:
all who do not do what is right are not from God,
nor are those who do not love their brothers and sisters.
For this is the message you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another. We must not be like Cain who was from the evil one and murdered his brother.
(I John 3:10-12 NRSV)
This ties in perfectly with the Gospel's anti-Jewish stance, for there had been traditions that Cain had not been sired by Adam, but by the diabolical angel Samael - basically Satan or the serpent. The Palestinian Targum (Ben Uzziel) mentions in Genesis 5:3 that Cain was not sired by Adam:
And Adam lived a hundred and thirty years, and begat Sheth, who had the likeness of his image and of his similitude: for before had Hava born Kain, who was not like to him; and Habel was killed by his hand.
(Targum Ben Uzziel Gen. 5:3)
This thread is followed elsewhere:
Having been made pregnant by the seed of the devil ... she brought forth
a son.
(Tertullian, On Patience 5:15)
First adultery came into being, afterward murder. And he [Cain] was begotten
in adultery, for he was the child of the serpent. So he became a murderer,
just like his father, and he killed his brother.
([Gnostic] Gospel of Philip 61:5-10)
And Adam knew about his wife Eve that she had conceived by Sammael the
[wicked] angel of the Lord, and she became pregnant and gave birth to
Cain. He resembled the upper ones [angels] and not the lower ones, and she
[therefore] said, "I have acquired a man, indeed, an angel of the Lord:'
(Targum Pseudo-Jonathan Gen. 4:1)
The serpent came into her and she became pregnant with Cain, as it says,
''And the man knew his wife Eve:' What did he know? That she was already
pregnant [from someone else].
(Pirqei deR. Eliezer 21)
These interpretations largely stem from the difficult passage in Genesis in which Eve is said to have gotten pregnant "with/with the help of the LORD" - either translation is possible, but the literal reading is simply "with".
The point is that there had been ongoing traditions that the Greek New Testament authors would have been very familiar with. Many of these traditions were not fringe ideas, but were fairly well known and accepted as part and parcel of interpreting the Jewish and Christian tradition.
The interpretation that the devil was a murderer appears to have stemmed from these traditions concerning the conception of Cain. Readings that the devil was a murderer due to his association with the serpent in the Garden were largely post-Biblical (see the 4th Century AD Apostolic Constitutions VIII 7:5). The only other reference I can think of offhand is from the Wisdom of Solomon 2:24, but it's not explicit that the devil is a murderer.
In Judaism there is no such thing as a Devil...That is a purely Christian invention...
There was no such thing as death until God created it. Until God made death, death did not exist. As His own invention, the first death ever was created by God.
Disobeying and rebelling against an infinitely good, just, loving, holy God? Yes--that is a worthy punishment for it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Vizio
Because you, as a finite, sinful being said so?
Here, let me correct that for you;
Quote:
Originally Posted by Vizio
Because I, as a finite, sinful being said so!
There, that's much better.
Shall we have a look at what your infinitely good and just god has been up to lately?
Quote:
Originally Posted by JerZ
There was no such thing as death until God created it. Until God made death, death did not exist. As His own invention, the first death ever was created by God.
In Judaism there is no such thing as a Devil...That is a purely Christian invention...
Correct. Christians tend to root around the Hebrew Bible to find references to support a later theological belief concerning the devil. This isn't to say that Judaism is a stranger to diabolical "angels" of various stripes, but the "Devil" as Christianity knows it is certainly absent from Judaism.
Correct. Christians tend to root around the Hebrew Bible to find references to support a later theological belief concerning the devil. This isn't to say that Judaism is a stranger to diabolical "angels" of various stripes, but the "Devil" as Christianity knows it is certainly absent from Judaism.
As well as Satan...And Lucifer doesn't exist...
We Jews also believe that it is we who are responsible for choosing to do bad, not some invisible entity...When someone says that Satan had tempted them what they are actually saying is that they had tempted themselves...Pretty much what the book of James states, which is the book that Martin Luther wanted taken out of the cannon....
There was no such thing as death until God created it. Until God made death, death did not exist. As His own invention, the first death ever was created by God.
It was Cain..
In other words....Man...
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