THE DEVIL IS A REAL POWER: WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR EVIL AND SUFFERING Discuss from a Christian viewpoint.
‘THE DEVIL IS A REAL POWER: WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR EVIL AND SUFFERING’
The devil in Christianity, also given the names: Satan and Lucifer was first created as an angel an ‘Anointed Cherub’ anointed means to be set apart for Gods Divine purpose alongside other meanings similar to this. However Lucifer wanted exalt himself above God rather than just be an angel of God. Consequently after he and some of his followers tried t over-throw God’s authority God cast him out of heaven and is now is roaming the earth so some branches of Christianity teach. In brief, Satan is a fallen angel who rebelled against God.
During the middle ages the church put great emphasis on the devil being a real power. He was often exemplified as having horns and goats hind quarters and carrying a pitch fork and having a forked tail. Features that carry an air of bat like wings and talons, goat like features were in the bible the goat is seen as less important than sheep, said that man will place a sheep on his right side whereas he will place a goat on the left; it presumably headed for eternal damnation. Menacing images like this did the job of frightening people to go to Church. The churches way of coercion people: to make them believe and behave – control.
Even today some groups of Christians still take the Devil as being an, ‘actual power’ a real physical being. Christians with these traditional views still in place, are those of whose entire lives are revolved around ‘resisting Satan ‘. In this respect music, video games and any there possible influences which they believe to contain satanic ideas are banned. A common example of such acts and beliefs which happened not long ago was the controversy on the Harry Potter series. Some Christians deemed the novels to contain occult or satanic subtexts. Over all everyone has free will to judge whether the devil is real or not; nevertheless some Christian groups teach that he does while others teach that he does not. We are well advised to be on our guard. The Bible says in Ephesians 6:11-12 that we should: ‘Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.’ The teachings of the Roman Catholic Church teach that Satan is a real power, likewise Evangelicals teach the same thing. They take the bible literally and the devil is five times resisted and exorcised. On of the tales in the bible that shows Satan is when he goes to test Job. He goes to God and says Job only believes in God because is life is made really easy by God and he thinks that if things began to go wrong for Job (the devils doing) the devil could get Job to curse God to his face: ‘curse you to your face’. In reply God tells the devil that he can do whatever he likes but he
