“And you know what is now restraining him, so that he may be revealed when his time comes. For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work, but only until the one who now restrains it is removed. And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will destroy with the breath of his mouth, annihilating him by the manifestation of his coming. The coming of the lawless one is apparent in the working of Satan, who uses all power, signs, lying wonders, and every kind of wicked deception for those who are perishing, because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. For this reason God sends them a powerful delusion, leading them to believe what is false, so that all who have not believed the truth but took pleasure in unrighteousness will be condemned.” 2 Thessalonians 2:6-12
Today’s text raises a big question: Do you have to believe there is a “Satan” to be a Christian? Let’s look at that.
At first sniff you ought to notice the words “have to.” We should always be wary of such words when applied to our side of the faith. They often turn the good news into bad news and make the faith about us rather than about what God is up to for us. In this instance, let’s not get caught up in the rules and get to the heart of the matter – does the Christian faith require a corresponding bad guy to be true for us?
My sense is there is a broad continuum among Christians on this question. On the one hand, there are those who are generally skeptical about anything in the Bible that looks like myth or metaphor. They have no need whatsoever to believe in a nasty bad guy in a red suit with a pitchfork and horns sitting on a throne in the fiery pits of hell. Much less the same bad guy showing up on our shoulder tempting us to do naughty things while the angel on the other shoulder attempts to reign in the worst of us.
And on the other hand, there are those for whom Satan is every bit as real in their lives as Jesus. Satan talks to them, tempts them, lies to them. Satan speaks through their television sets and movie screens. Satan speaks the common sense language of modernity to constantly call their faith into question. Satan uses their addictions to ruin their lives or the political power that Satan gives to allow dark and evil people to ruin the lives of their people. Satan is the enemy, Jesus is the Victor, and life is a battleground.
And then there is all the rest of the people who don’t think too deeply about such questions.
It is crystal clear that the Apostle Paul lived with the assumption that Satan wielded the “evil anti-force” that would distract people from faithfulness and distance them from Christian community. The faith isn’t about Satan for Paul. Paul doesn’t talk about spiritual warfare in every paragraph, but in key places in key letters like Romans and the letters to the Corinthians and here in Thessalonians, Paul lifts up the name of Satan as a foe to be destroyed.
Martin Luther would find it ridiculous that a modern person could dismiss Satan from their thinking as “out-dated.” Luther freely employed Satan language in talking about the worldly opposition to the kingdom of God. One tradition says that the devil was so plaguing Luther while he wrote in his room in the Warburg Castle that, at one point, Luther threw his ink pot at the devil to drive him from the room.
Are these simply conventions of language or evidence of psychological imbalance or are the “modern among us” missing something important by dropping the devil from their thinking about the faith? For such thinking assures us of two things that are both true – that Jesus ultimately wins in the end, and that the life of faith will feel like a battle between now and then. This is most certainly true.
Let us pray: Gracious Lord, the simple truth is that sometimes we are victims of our times, of our learning. Language changes, how we look at the world changes, culture changes. We know you and your love for us never changes but how we think about that seems to. Today not all people view life as the kind of spiritual battleground described in the Bible. Help us see what we need to see, to know what we need to know, to be faithful even in such changing times. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
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