“Yeah. The curse of doing graduate work is that in order to obtain the degree we have to obsess with speaking carefully.”
He laughed as if that were a joke.
“That can eat up a lot of valuable time,” he told me. “Time that should be properly used giving glory to God. You agree?”
Wait a second. Did he just take a shot at my education? I think he did. Awesome. Admittedly, my education is not without fault. For one thing, it was terribly overpriced. So his shot was not without merit. But hey, at least at this point I knew our conversation was going to be interesting.
I attempted to defend myself by suggesting that anyone willing to spend most of their life in higher education, learning as much about Christianity, her doctrines, her history, and the God she worships, would, as crazy as it must sound, be time well spent.
“Such service,” I explained, “is itself a form of prayer. Actually, it was a Nazarene professor who instilled that notion in me. Plus, Augustine and Aquinas argued along those very lines, and that’s coming from two of the most influential theologians our church has ever produced. Do you not agree?”
He quickly attempted to assure me he was not trying to demean my studies, but was only pointing out that “education doesn’t always translate into the kind of love Jesus requires of his disciples.”
“Well,” I conceded, “there is no disagreement on that point.”
“Right.”
“Right. Okay, so, my question is this: Why is it the case that some Christians are aware of the presence of Satan in a way that others are not? I mean, is that a gift? To feel the presence of Satan?”
With a hearty and incredibly patronizing laugh he responded, “Talking about speaking carefully, I’m not sure I would call that a gift. Though there’s all kinds of gifts in the church, and I guess you could say that some people, more so than others, are more properly in tune with what the forces of evil are up to.”
“You mean like messing with CD players?”
“What’s that?” he asked, as he had to think about it for a second. Suddenly remembering he said, “Oh, yes. Well, sure. Sure. Why not? He’s trying to interrupt our worship service. Satan hates it when people praise the name of Jesus. He does everything in his power to stop it. Anything is fair game for the Devil.”
“Then why does he even show up?” I asked. “I mean, if he hates it so much, and he is powerful enough to apparently be in a whole lot of places, perhaps all places, at once, not to mention his uncanny ability to poke a stick in the wheel of technology, then it seems he would be capable of just not listening.”
“Well, that’s part of his punishment. He is forced to listen to God’s people singing the Lord’s praises.”
“Well,” I admitted, “I can definitely see how that would be a cruel form of punishment.”
He nodded. Unwittingly, I assumed.
“Could you point me to a text?” I asked.
“What’s that?”
“A text? Well, a text is another word for a book or a section of a book. I—”
“I know what a text is,” he interrupted. “I’m asking you what you mean by pointing to a text.”
“Oh, well, you said that part of Satan’s punishment is he is forced to listen to Christians sing God’s praises, so I was wondering if you could point me to a piece of Scripture, some authoritative text, that says, ‘And I will punish you by forcing you to listen to Christians sing choruses?’”
Defensively he said, “I think it is fairly common knowledge that Satan hates any kind of praising or worshipping of God. He can’t be in the presence of it.”
“So, what you are saying is that when your church starts praising God, Satan has no choice but to flee?”
“That’s right,” he answered.
“Well, and I hope you will pardon my inability to catch on, but if that’s the case, what was he still doing there halfway through the service?”
“Come again?”
“The CD,” I reminded him, “didn’t start skipping until halfway through the service, so I’m wondering why Satan was still there.”
“Well, now son,” he said with more than a touch of condescension, “I think you’re taking this all a bit too literally.”
Sensing the blossoming enmity occurring in our conversation, I responded, “I admit to not knowing the difference between taking something literally and taking something ‘too literally,’ I’m not entirely sure what that means, but that’s beside the point. Are you telling me you don’t believe in the existence of Satan?”
“Of course, I do,” he said. “You can’t be a Christian and not believe in Satan.”
That is a very fascinating theological claim. I was always under the impression it had more to do with Jesus, but before I could ask him about it he said, “That’s the first trick of Satan, you know?”
Oh, how I know. This will be the gazillionth time I’ve been told, “The first trick of the Devil is to convince you he doesn’t exist.” I can already tell that this is going to be an ongoing struggle I will have to face throughout my research.
“Yeah, that’s what I keep hearing,” I responded. “But back to what you said about me taking things literally. I’m a little confused because you said that part of Satan’s punishment is to be forced to listen to Christians sing, yet when Satan hears God being praised he has to flee, so I’m not sure how to reconcile that conundrum . . . and then the whole thing with the CD.”
“Right, so yes,” he replied in what was quickly becoming a frustrated tone. “Satan is being punished yet attempts to escape his punishment through either distracting us from our worship services or, if that fails, fleeing, but, you know, at the same time, everything that happens, or every little thing that goes wrong, doesn’t necessarily mean Satan is responsible.”
“Oh. That’s strange, because when the CD started skipping you attributed it to Satan. Was that a moment utilized in the service of metaphor or were you speaking literally? Because it seemed like the congregation understood it quite literally.”
“Well, yes,” he confessed, “it was Satan trying to disrupt our service.”
“You really attribute a scratch on a CD to Satan?”3
“Of course not,” he said. “But Satan definitely attempts to thwart our plans to serve God. That’s what Satan does.”
“I’m confused. Please forgive me for pushing this issue, but did Satan scratch the CD or not?”
“No, now look,” he said, growing exhausted by this line of questioning. “We don’t even know if it was a scratch. Who said it was scratched? There could of have been any number of reasons why the CD was skipping.”
“But any number of those reasons,” I kept pushing, “could be, ultimately, traced back to Satan?”
“Yes. Exactly.”
He was looking at his watch as if to let me know our time together was coming to a close. I knew I was losing him, and despite wanting him to clarify his rather conflicting responses, I elected to go all in while he was still with me.
“Do you think I could meet him?”
At this point, he was overtaken with annoyance. He asked if this whole conversation was a joke and if this was just a game academicians play with those who do the “real work” of making disciples.
I tried to convince him it was not my intention to play games. I told him I was only trying to make sense out of what I experienced in his