What did the devil ever do that was so bad?

[Kendodd]

My 13 year old asked me this, I struggled to answer and couldn't actually think of anything particularly bad (gave Eve an apple?) What did he do? Does he torture people in hell? I really don't know what it says about him in the bible.
He'd been doing RE (or whatever it's called now) and said that God did loads of terrible stuff but somehow he's the good guy.

We're not a religious family.

I think it’s really telling that his name (Lucifer) means “morning star” / “bearer of light” and many of his other names have to do with light, knowledge, science, etc. and that these things are set up in opposition to the Christian faith. His wrongdoings seem to be related to wanting to share knowledge with humankind rather than keeping it all for God. Doesn’t sound so evil to me!

Oh and the minor thing of saying women will suffer in childbirth

Which I think resonates to this day in, well, the UK for sure.

There is a somewhat controversial belief called the Serpent Seed or Dual Seed-line held by certain (fringe) Christian sects.

According to them, the knowledge / fruit in the story is actually a metaphor for sex.

The story goes that Lucifer - jealous of Adam & Eve - set out to corrupt God’s “perfect” creations. According to them, the forbidden fruit / knowledge offered to Eve by Lucifer was sex, who then in turn educated / had sex with Adam.

They believe this because:

1. Adam & Eve lived happily in Eden completely naked until they “ate the fruit” which then caused them to become ashamed of their bodies & cover up - this supposedly shows that it was a bodily / physical act.

1. Adam & Eve had no children while they were living in Eden which indicates that they were virgins / had no knowledge of sex. Cain, Abel & the other children were born after Adam & Eve “fell” & were banished from the garden.

1. The theory purports that Cain is the son of Lucifer & Abel the son of Adam. Lucifer therefore has a bloodline through Cain & it’s this corruption that is supposedly why humans have the propensity to do bad / evil / inflict misery on others.

1. After Cain killed Abel, he was cursed / marked & some - not all - believers of this theory believe the mark to physical i.e. race.

Hence having sex is sinful in the Catholic church.

The Catholic Church does not say having sex is sinful, in fact the catechism specifically states that sex is “noble and honourable” within marriage and that “spouses should experience pleasure and enjoyment of body and spirit.” The Catholic Church however does define parameters for which sex should occur & it’s only sex outside of these parameters that is considered sinful.

This is why Catholics object to birth control, because the only reason for sex is pregnancy.

This is incorrect as well. The Catholic Church teaches that sex has two functions - to be both unitive and procreative.

1. Unitive - sex should be used to create & maintain a loving & lasting bond between two people within the confines of marriage. Marital rape therefore would be a sin because it is not unitive even if it was procreative.

1. Procreative - this means that couples are only meant to be open to the possibility of pregnancy during sex NOT that sex is only for pregnancy - there’s a difference. So a couple should not do anything to artificially impede or frustrate conception (so yes no birth control) but it’s perfectly moral to have sex even when there’s little to no chance of pregnancy, examples would be:

1. Sex during the non fertile periods of a women’s cycle, which is why the Church allows natural family planning or the old rhythm method (not sure what it’s called now). So even though a couple are trying to avoid pregnancy, it’s perfectly licit if they are willing to accept a pregnancy should it occur.

1. Post menopausal sex, we all know a 70 year old women is not going to get pregnant but she can morally have sex with her husband as an expression of love (unitive) & as long as she’s open to the possibility of pregnancy if God intends it (procreative... & a flipping miracle if it happened).

Sorry to derail your thread OP, I’m an ex Catholic who is very anti the Catholic Church now & find misinformation about it actually undermines the legitimate complaints!!

God loves us and wants us to live in the happiest, best way created for us. Satan attempts to undermine this - by tempting Eve, Job, Jesus and others in the Bible, and continuing to tempt us thereafter.

DecemberStar, you should get your bible out and read the book of Job. It's a very inspiring story. It inspired me to be an atheist.

God had Satan kill Job's animals, his servants then his wife and his children to see what would happen. God was betting Job would stay loyal no matter what so it was fun to slaughter the people around him to see if he would break.

I reckon schools should do that story for a change from always doing the nativity. There'd be more parts to play too. 10 children if I remember rightly and all those servants.

God loves us and wants us to live in the happiest, best way created for us.

He's not doing a very good job of it.

As they say, history is written by the victors.

I don't believe in any of this rubbish, but find it interesting to look at it differently.

The God character was an evil controlling monster, and Lucifer (which means "light bringer") rebelled against him, but was defeated by the mindless hordes created by the God character.

When the God character created some more ignorant sheep to be manipulated to follow him without thinking, Lucifer tried to lead them to knowledge by encouraging them to eat the apple. The God character didn't want his underlings to have independent thought and so cast them away, and has been punishing their progeny ever since in a massive fit of pique. But as the victor he was able to get Saatchi & Saatchi, or maybe Cambridge Analytica, to promote his version of the story which has become "truth" amongst those who don't question what they are told.

Given the state of the world right now, it makes far more sense than the more commonly accepted version.

And given that the Devil is, I believe, supposedly responsible for maybe 10 deaths in the bible, but the God character is responsibly for literally millions, I know which one I'd consider the most evil!

Er but we have free will. We are not doing a very good job of it

That's always the "get out clause" isn't it? "Free will".

Only Eve wasn't congratulated for "free will", was she.

It's all so much bullshit that I find it so hard to believe that anyone with a brain would believe this shit!

Interestingly, Judaism doesn’t really have a devil figure actually. Most Jews believe that God did create evil; He just wants people to choose to steer clear of it.

For those saying that the Bible is not to be taken literally, instead it should be 'interpreted'. I wonder, where are you getting that from exactly?

When the various books of the Bible were written, they absolutely were intended to be taken literally by the people of Israel and Judah.

If you are going to stand by the Bible, then you need to at least own it, and thats the bad as well as the occasional good.

Have a read of 'Who Wrote the Bible' by Richard Elliot Friedman. Absolutely fascinating and very clearly shows the early Bible was written by a number of different priests, at different times and conforming entirely to their own self interests (which is why stories are often repeated in the early Bible, with different protagonists or a different emphasis on who actually was the key player, Moses vs Aaron etc).

All these priests wrote what they wrote with the clear intent that it would be viewed as literal truth by the people.

Its only as our morality has matured in recent times that we now choose to see the majority of the stories as 'allegory'.

My 12 year old told me yesterday that the Devil couldn’t be evil as he punished evil people.

Some Christians had quite a different view of God and the devil. Satan is largely absent from the Old Testament, references that have been attributed to Satan are usually retelling or references to other culture stories.
Gnostic Christians generally believed in a vengeful Old Testament god and New Testament nice loving God. If you look outside the Canon eg to the Infancy Gospel of Thomas or the Gospel of Judas you’ll see much more blurred lines.

Most of what we think we know about the Devil has very little to do with the Bible but rather popular culture, Dante’s inferno etc.

Unlike many earlier religions mainstream Christianity has a sharp distinction between good and evil not generally reflected in much of spirituality or psychology. However, such a black and white view was and is useful for social compliance and is reflected in most legal systems.

The devil is basically everything that isn’t God. The same way anything that isn’t Christian is Heretical. So really the only bad thing the Devil ever did is not try reflect God.

Wow, this thread just goes to show how little people know the Bible, but I guess if you don't think there is a God and you like to be scathing about people who do believe, you wouldn't read it.

This link gives quite a few examples of things the devil does in the Bible. www.crossroads.net/media/articles/what-does-the-bible-say-about-the-devil

There's a bit more than encouraging Eve to eat a piece of fruit, which was never described as an apple and is a metaphorical story anyway.

Mainly the devil wanted to overthrow God and he failed, so he has spent the rest of time telling lies and deceiving people to try to keep them from having a personal relationship with God and all the wonderful things that come from that. If you don't believe, you won't come across him because he has no interest in you. But I have personal experience and others I know have personal experience of how he steps in when he knows you are close to making a commitment to God.

He is very real but he is not dangerous because he was defeated many millennia ago. He is definitely not empowering or a force for any kind of good. And like C S Lewis said, his greatest achievement is that no-one believes in him any more.

To add to this: are the devil, Satan and lucifer all the same person? I think lucifer becomes the devil / Satan? But are the devil and Satan interchangeable?

"There's a bit more than encouraging Eve to eat a piece of fruit, which was never described as an apple and is a metaphorical story anyway."

Without that act you have no original sin. You just wrecked Christianity. Well done

Some of us read the whole thing.

@Walkintal

BTW the knowledge given by the apple was about sex. Hence having sex is sinful in the Catholic church. The only consequence of eating the apple was the Adam and Eve felt guilty about being naked and covered up. Hence Mary was born from a virgin as was Jesus, so free from original sin. This is why Catholics object to birth control, because the only reason for sex is pregnancy.

Sorry to resurrect (Gasp!) this thread but I was reading this through with interest. And.....nope, the tree has nothing to do with sex. That's probably what our Victorian ancestors and my old granny wanted me to think. And it's nowhere in the writings of the RC.

What the Catechism of the RC church actually says (and you can read it here: www.usccb.org/sites/default/files/flipbooks/catechism/102/) is that 'The "prohibition against eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil" [...] symbolically evokes the unsormountable limits that man, being a creature, must freely recognize and respect with trust.'

So, a bit more broad than just sex, eh?

Oh, and there is nothing sinful about sex in the RC, either. There USED TO BE total misunderstandings about this, but I have never come across this and have lived in different countries and parishes..... But I think there is still a lot of prejudice and 'hearsay' about these issues out there.

The devil initially deceived God’s creation and brought death into the world. God created us to be eternal beings. The Devil tried to tempt Jesus to go against the Fathers will and sin. That would’ve meant Jesus wouldn’t be the saviour of the world.

The devil hates God and His creation so he likes to kill, steal and destroy everything He can. Marriages, identities and lives in general.

The best thing the devil did was convincing people he doesn’t exist

Satan leads people away from God. He wants to be God himself and to force / tempt people to live in a way that will make than miserable as he is.

In Mormonism everyone existed in The pre existence, there was a council in heaven where god laid out his plan and needed a saviour. Lucifer volunteered and said he would bring all souls back to god and he would be glorified and Christ said he would be the saviour and give everyone free will and the glory be gods. God liked that idea better (I'm guessing haven was a bit crapped after creating all his literal sons and daughters) and christ was chosen. Lucifer didn't like this and railed up support and there was a "war in heaven" ending in lucifer being cast down and called the devil along with 1/3 of the hosts of heaven being cast out too. They are all jealous and angry as we have bodies and they don't.

It's a messy story full of plot holes. Mormons call each other brother and sister as they believe they are all literal children of god.

So that who lucifer is and the demons I guess although it's never said as that. God sent people to Adams like Peter, James and John (even though they weren't born yet) to teach Adam Mormon temple rituals.

I've always thought why was the devil so hated for his plan, it wasn't a bad plan, surely god would want all his children to come home.

The book of Job is allegory, not to be taken literally. Genesis is the same. The law in Leviticus was taken literally by the Jews, but has never applied to Christians.

Jesus said, "I am the law and the prophets," negating the legalism of the Old Testament. In fact, Jesus was crucified BECAUSE he defied the law, and by doing so, challenged the religious order of the time. The high priests of the temple in Jerusalem, the Sanhedrin, were the ones who persuaded Pontius Pilate to have crucified. Nevertheless, I have not seen a religion thread on MN yet where the Mosaic law wasn't used to bash Christians.

It’s a good question from your son. I think the act of asking it is probably more important than an answer- if you don’t believe in the devil it’s little more than a hypothetical.

I wasn’t raised religious and I’m an atheist so a lot of religion doesn’t make any sense to me at all. I don’t see what’s bad about knowledge so the whole fruit thing never made sense to me anyway.

Christian leaders used to tell their followers that other people's gods were demons to stir up hate.

I highly recommend the book Satanic Feminism