For Hallowe’en: From the Devil’s Point of View

Source: Eric Dietrich

Let’s begin at the beginning. Eve, or the woman, is walking around the Garden of Eden. It’s a nice day . . . of course. The snake says to her: “Did God really say you were not to eat from any of the trees in the garden?” Eve replies, “We may eat the fruit of the trees in the garden. But of the fruit of the tree in middle of the garden [aka, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil], God said ‘You must not eat it, nor touch it, under pain of death.’” Then the snake said “No! You will not die! God knows in fact that the day you eat it your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods, knowing good from evil.” The rest is history. (Using the New Jerusalem Bible, Doubleday. The address of Doubleday is important: 666 5th Ave, NYC. . .)

First, the snake was right. Genesis 3 makes it clear that the woman and the man do eat from the forbidden tree and they do not die. That’s what the fall is about. Secondly, the knowledge of good and evil is worth having — humans wouldn’t be human without it. So, the snake was right about that, too. And thirdly, it was God, not the snake, who put the forbidden tree right in the center of the garden. Imagine if when you were 8, your mom put a jar of cookies on the floor, right in the center of the room and forbid you to open it and eat any cookies, and then punished you severely when you did. That would be cruel beyond limits. And such a mother should lose the custody of her child. By the way, it is just tradition that says that the snake is the devil — there is no extra-biblical evidence for this. And why did the writers of Genesis pick on innocent snakes? But back to our musings.

The Book of Job is also relevant here, and telling. Satan is featured. Again, it is straightforwardly mere tradition that identifies Satan with the devil. In the Book of Job, there is clear textual evidence that Satan is not the devil, but is rather God’s BFF. (The following is from Excellent Beauty: The naturalness of religion, and the unnaturalness of the world, published by Columbia University Press.)

“Job is a wealthy, pious man living in the land of Uz. But Satan thinks that Job’s piety results from his successes in life, which have been bestowed and protected by God. (Satan is most decidedly not the Christian Devil, but is rather an esteemed member of God’s divine court. The Bible, or at least the Old Testament, is clear about this. It reports in the Book of Job that Satan comes and goes as he pleases, for example. Satan is, in fact, God’s cosmic prosecutor—think of Satan as God’s attorney general.) Satan points out that it is easy to be pious when everything goes your way. Satan then suggests to God that Job would lose his piety were all Job’s riches and joys destroyed. To prove otherwise, God hands Job over to Satan. And Satan makes Job’s life a living hell (to use a phrase). Job loses nearly everything: his sons, his cattle, his health. Job, of course, on top of all his other suffering, is quite confused as to what is going on. He considers the idea that he wasn’t pious enough and hence had to be punished by God. But he rightly rejects this. Job also toys with the idea that God is his enemy. A notion that has some credence, obviously, since we, the readers, know that God gave Job to Satan just so Satan could test him—clearly not the behavior of a friend. So, Job sits there, covered in boils, ashes, and dirt, suffering, bereft of most of his friends and family (who have been killed by Satan or have abandoned him) and his livelihood (as mentioned, his cattle have also been killed), wondering, Why?”

In this story, God is worse than Satan (who is obviously not that good), for it is God who turns Job over to Satan just to prove a point. Basically, God and Satan make a bet about Job’s piety. God wins, it turns out, but only by threatening Job in the form of a tempest.

Why do the writers of Genesis and the Book of Job paint such an ambiguous picture of God’s and the devil’s behaviors? The answer to this is in our very human psychology.

Humans often distinguish between the merely bad (a bad day at the office, say), and evil (the very bad — the September 11 attacks, for example). Even cancer is often placed in the former category. The latter seems reserved for intentional action.

Is the devil responsible for the September 11 attacks? Some Americans think so. But many do not. They think that evil humans were responsible for the attacks. Moreover, this question about the devil and the September 11 is complicated by the fact that the attackers thought they were righting grievous wrongs in so attacking the U. S. So, whose devil is the real devil? Maybe neither.

As I’ve mentioned before in this blog, we humans have a penchant for noticing the bad because in our heads, the bad is stronger than the good — you are much more upset about losing $50.00 than you are about winning $50.00 (see “Bad Is Stronger Than Good,” Roy F. Baumeister, Ellen Bratslavsky, Catrin Finkenauer, Kathleen D. Vohs, Review of General Psychology, 2001, Vol. 5. No. 4. 323-370.)

Here’s a better, more relevant example of how the bad is stronger than the good. “Dante's Divine Comedy is considered one of the greatest works in world literature. Yet few can name all three of its books, and fewer still have read the whole thing. Most people who read it read only the Inferno, and in fact, the structure of the Inferno, with its ever‐deepening circles of Hell, is a mainstay of common culture. Why do the other two books, the Purgatorio and the Paradiso, receive far less attention? It's because with their respective images of waiting interminably and of peace and plenty, they aren't vivid and exciting; they're boring. But gruesome horror is vivid and exciting. This is what the Inferno contains, indeed, mostly consists of. So now the question becomes: why is gruesome horror exciting?” (This is from Dietrich and Hall, “The Allure of the Serial Killer,” in Serial Killers and Philosophy, edited by Sara Waller, Wiley-Blackwell 2010; The Philosophy for Everyone Series, general editor, Fritz Allhoff.)

This very same pro-Inferno sentiment in us probably explains the popularity of Hallowe’en in the countries where it is popular, like the U. S.

So, what if the devil is just us . . . as we prove on Hallowe’en with masks and costumes?

Or what if the devil is us plus just very bad luck — the outcome of unhappy chance — like getting killed by random in a common U. S. mass shooting? This would explain why the writers of Genesis and the Book of Job paint such an ambiguous picture about the behavior of God and his best friend forever: The Devil.