Sunday, January 31, 2010

What's Satan's deal?

It may strike one as rather morbid--if not superlatively dark--that my first blog post should be on the archetypal lord of all evil. I can, however, assure all readers that the devil is not an entity that I allot much of my thinking time to; I merely happened across this thought several minutes ago and, as it is the first that has struck me as a good blog post, I decided to share it.
Now with that rather lengthy, and mostly likely highly unnecessary introduction, I will get to the point of this post.
If Satan has had all eternity (or even the last few million years, depending on what you may believe) to think (this post also assumes that you take the Devil to be an intelligent individual being, those of other opinions need read no further) why would he spend his time spreading sin and unhappiness throughout all humanity? If it's true that he is eternally damned to his state of...well...damnation...and has no hope of returning to "heaven" or "the presence of God" it follows that there's the guarantee that he'll be getting no reward, so some would say he spreads evil because there's no point in him doing good. But this would assume that there is no intrinsic reward for doing good, which--I hope--most people know not to be true. So the question--however ridiculous it may seem--is posed: why doesn't the demonic under-lord and his minions spread good instead of evil, thereby at least giving themselves some remote satisfaction in their own existence? The only logical answer one might be able to give (while still maintaining the existence of such a being) is that he MUST spread evil, in order to maintain balance, in which case he is disqualified as an intelligent individual entity capable of choice.
I'm not really looking to state anything here, or come to any sort of conclusion...I'm just saying.