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How I Learned to Appreciate Satan
07/11/21 • 09m
Trickster deities are found in almost every culture on the planet. And, judging by their affinity for challenging borders, it’s not hard to see why. Cultural critic and translator, Lewis Hyde, defines tricksters as “boundary crossers, characters who find the limits and violate them.” Tricksters “seek out the joints of this world—sometimes to disrupt them, sometimes to move them, and sometimes just to keep them limber.”[1] In other words, tricksters are the rub.
In his book, Obí Agbón: Lukumí Divination with Coconut, Miguel “Willie” Ramos discusses the Lucumi orisha, Eleggua, who in many ways is the epitome of the trickster. Ramos describes Eleggua as the “orisha of the crossroads, controller of the world’s affairs.”[2] He is an “agent provocateur…continuously test[ing] all beings, celestial and mundane, to ensure that the weakest links in the system are corrected or eliminated.”[3] I have heard Eleggua described similarly as a valve moderating the flow of blessings (ire) and difficulties (osogbo). Like a valve that needs constant lubrication in order to function properly, if Eleggua is not attended to, he may become stuck in one of the two positions, leading to an unmanageable flow of either one. A constant flow of blessings may lead to a person becoming too comfortable in their life, becoming unmotivated, arrogant, disconnected from the problems of the world. On the flip side, too many difficulties, and a person may give up on life or become mired in depression. Ramos discusses how Eleggua may simply “step aside” when a devotee is disobedient, “allowing the forces of osogbo, which may include disease and death, to disrupt the violator’s life incessantly.”[4]
A person must learn from Eleggua’s teachings in order to maintain balance and harmony.[5] When there is disharmony, Eleggua “must teach and encourage the proper routes that all beings must pursue.”[6] Like all tricksters, Eleggua teaches lessons by placing stressors at strategic junctures in a person’s life. This makes perfect sense, since growth often comes from our engagement with eustress, or positive stress, stress we can handle and learn from. Bones become strong when we apply pressure. Muscles grow in size when we apply resistance. Solving difficult problems increases our intellect and resiliency. Good stress is good for us!
Ironically, Christianity has often demonized the very influences that help us grow by equating the origin of perceived negative experiences with satanic forces. Because Christianity has historically interpreted devils as beings to avoid rather than work with, personal suffering and hardship have often been interpreted as having demonic, and thus unacceptable origins. Distractions during prayer, wandering eyes, even tiredness have all at one point or another been considered the result of sinister impulses that must be destroyed. They are seen as without purpose. Compare this to how the trickster, Eleggua, is understood in the Lucumi religion: as a necessary, if challenging force to be honored and respected. In Lucumi, the trickster has a purpose.
Of course, find yourself in the comments section of any social media feed devoted to the orisha, and you will inevitably encounter trolls referring to the divine emissaries as satanic forces of evil that should be avoided at all costs. Just as Christianity has historically interpreted points of tension in a person’s life and spiritual practice as having no positive effect, Christianity has gone even further by labeling as “demonic” spiritual entities beyond the scope of its own cosmology. This arrogance is particularly evidenced in Christianity’s stigmatization of other culture’s Gods, and especially those considered “trickster deities,” which is ironic, as Christianity has embedded within its cosmology one of the most recognizable cosmic tricksters the world has ever known.
The Devil is a trickster whose function is to test the will of spiritual aspirants by bringing to the foreground the blindspots on a person’s spiritual journey. Humans have had to negotiate their blindspots since the dawn of time. We humans have eyes in the front of our head, and are therefore biologically designed to see only what is in front or slightly to the side of us. No matter how enlightened we are, no matter how prepared for any journey, we will always chart our paths with limited perception. The Devil, the one who lives just outside our periphery, exposes what is hidden in our blindspots, and in doing so expands our vision.
The exposing of our blindspots is rarely a pleasant affair. The gift of sight given to Adam and Eve resulted in a life of relative hardship and toil. And, although we may experience the Devil as a frustrating and intolerable force in our own lives, it is a force through which God exposes our errant behaviors. In other words, just because we dislike the Devil’s presence does not mean that it shouldn’t be there. And, we have the Bible as evidence of this fact.
One of the most explicit examples of Satan-as-trickster occurs in the Book of Job. As the story goes, a council of heavenly beings, including Satan, came to speak with God. Noticing Satan standing among the others, God asks what he has been up to recently, to which Satan replies that he has simply been wandering the earth, “going back and forth upon it.”
“Then the Lord said to Satan, ‘Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil.’
“‘Does Job fear God for nothing?’ Satan replied. ‘Have you not put a hedge around him and his household and everything he has? You have blessed the work of his hands, so that his flocks and herds are spread throughout the land. But now stretch out your hand and strike everything he has, and he will surely curse you to your face.’
“The Lord said to Satan, ‘Very well, then, everything he has is in your power, but on the man himself do not lay a finger.’
“Then Satan went out from the presence of the Lord” (Job 1:8-12).
As in much of the Old Testament, in the Book of Job, God appears more human than ethereal. Here, God is portrayed as a loving parent. But, in the book of Job God is the parent who says, “Oh, not my child!” Satan challenges this view, and asks God to allow him to intervene in Job’s life, to test whether Job is as loyal a servant as God thinks. While we may not see them as equals, God and Satan are in dialogue, though it is a dialogue with intent. Like the trickster, Eleggua, to test is Satan’s nature, and being such as it is, God allows Satan to perform his duty. Satan asks permission, and gets it, which tells us in no uncertain terms that it is God who ultimately pulls the strings.
Lest one think that the above example is an outlier, let us remember that the serpent that tested Adam and Eve, the serpent who is widely understood to be Satan, was also created and put in place by God. God, who “made the wild animals according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and all the creatures that move along the ground according to their kinds. And saw that it was good.”[7] The serpent, as hard as it may be to accept, was among them, and was good.
Then, of course, there is Jesus’ trial in the desert, when he “was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the Devil.”[8] This encounter was not accidental. Just as the serpent in the Garden of Eden was not created in error, the Spirit of God did not take a wrong turn. Jesus was intentionally led by the Spirit of God for the expressed purpose of being tested. Why should we think our being tested is otherwise governed?
If we read the Biblical stories as lessons through which we learn to navigate our lives, it becomes clear that being tested by God through Satan’s intervention is a fundamental aspect of our spiritual growth. In almost all cases where Satan tests humans, his actions propel characters into a new awareness. Job’s subsequent difficulties, each one piling upon the previous, would make any person question their faith. And yet, where previously he had only heard stories, in the end Job sees God. In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve are given knowledge of good and evil, a dualistic vision that, while veiling them from the inherent oneness between themselves and God, forces them to become proactive in their reuniting with their divine origin.
The devil also reveals the deeper character of those he engages with. Although Jesus may have been self-aware enough to have never been at risk of falling for the Devil’s temptations, readers of the Bible are often less one-pointed in their faith. Through Jesus’ temptation we are given insight into both the character of Jesus, as well as the quality of character that is expected of us.
So, why do we still feel as if Satan’s presence is an error, as if Satan is crashing the party? When the snake enters the scene in the Garden of Eden, we’re disappointed. Who invited this guy? We might think to ourselves, What if the snake never showed up? Wouldn’t life be that much better? But, the serpent is present, and for good reason. God put the serpent in the Garden of Eden for the same reason God allowed the Devil to test Job, and for the same reason God’s Spirit brought Jesus into the desert: because there is use-value to the experience of being tested, which is a subtext that is either overlooked or intentionally ignored, because God’s hand in Satan’s presence in the world is a reality many people find either too difficult to accept or outright blasphemous. And yet, Biblical descriptions of God’s nature so obviously tell a different story.
The Bible describes God as being all-knowing,[9] all-powerful,[10] and all-present,[11] which, by definition means that there is nothing that exists outside the sphere of God’s control. In fact, it’s this incomprehensible quality of God that underscores the entire monotheistic project. God has no rival. And yet, time and time again we encounter people who want to put God into a hemisphere of good, and relegate all that is disliked into a hemisphere of bad. Historically, this has played out in the God vs Satan / Good vs Evil trope into which so many have fallen, a not so surprising duality humans inherited from their ancestors in Eden. But, what if we actually respected the limitless nature of the omniscient God? What if our temptations, our deviations, and our missteps, what if even these were sanctioned by God? Would we still be so quick to condemn what lurks in the shadows? 🌴