In summary, demons remain messengers and servants, but of a master of their own crooked construction. Because they have strayed from the Truth and twisted the good, they are naturally liars and vindictive. Incidentally, because demons are liars, exorcists are even trained to limit the questions that they pose to them, lest they be manipulated by their lies. Some demons pretend to be holy angels, saints or the souls of the deceased. However, they are all deceivers and corrupters. Unsurprisingly, they are frustrated creatures, because, in spite of their resistance and sedition, they are still God’s servants. Whether they like it or not, their creator still uses them for His divine purposes. Ironically, despite their reputation as rebels, the fallen angels remain God’s slaves. The Holy Scriptures state how God permits the devil to test us (Rev 2:10) and purify us (1 Cor 5:5). Even St. Paul was afflicted with a thorn in the flesh, a “messenger from Satan,” in order to keep him from “becoming conceited” (2 Cor 12:7). Evidently, Christians are also susceptible to demonic subjection. God uses His enemies for a greater purpose even though they may be unaware. The sufferings of Job, the sending of the angel of death in Egypt, the appointment of Judas, Caiaphas and all the calloused characters implicated in the crucifixion of our Lord exemplify both the Almighty’s sovereignty, and His desire that, for those who love Him, all things work together for the good (Rom 8:28). Likewise Christ commands “Do not resist the one who is evil” (Matt 5:39). However unwillingly, the devil remains a tool in the hand of his Maker, echoed by the Church that still sings: “Satan you wicked one, own now your master.”22 Though forever dismissed from his prestigious position in the heavenly courts, the evil foe is unable to cease working for God as a slave. Thus, all his tactics against the faithful backfire with counterproductive results. Many of those once diabolically possessed confess an enriched relationship with God after their liberation. In fact, Dr. Martin Luther referred to the devil as the best teacher of theology,23 because he drives despairing Christians to prayer and to the Holy Spirit. Like all Fathers of the Church Luther was not always right, but this concept expounds profound Christian genius. The devil cannot help but help us. By accusing us with the Law, God allows Lucifer to haul out the dark sinful critters and pests of our lives, only to be exterminated by the light radiating from our Saviour’s blood-stained cross while their carcasses are swept away by the unending flood of grace flowing from His empty tomb. Defeated, yet full of frustrated rage, the devil continues to lash out against the friends of his enemies. But with no hope for a final victory, all of his efforts are desperate reactions enacted with a weathered and pathetic tail hanging between his legs.
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Humankind’s banishment from the Garden of Eden may appear vindictive and evil at first: the act of an angry and malicious God. Yet Adam and Eve were not merely punished for committing some trivial wrong. Their poor decision-making has perilous implications for the destiny of all of us. They had broken off fellowship with God. Impure and unclean, God’s holy presence became a dangerous one for these first humans and all of their descendants. So God decides to do something radical. They had done enough. Consistent with His fatherly instinct of cleaning up a child’s mess, God exiles Adam and Eve from His garden—His table—for their own safety. He loves them so much that, against His very life-giving nature, He Himself heart-wrenchingly kills—sacrifices—one of the innocent beasts that He had just created in order to clothe them (I have a hunch that it was a lamb). Moreover, He curses the evil one and promises a saviour, as well as mercifully offering us His protective presence until our severed relationship with Him could finally be repaired on that first Good Friday. As strange as it may sound, God was compelled to hand us over to evil for our own good. For the Lord God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest Adam reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever” (Gen 3:22), the King of kings excommunicated him from His royal garden. This consequential decision reflects the deepest of love, for the one tree gave access to the other. Had our Lord not taken these extreme and painful measures, we would have obliviously continued nourishing ourselves on the tree of life which would have immortalized our sinful state. Our “out-casting” delivered us from living eternity as sinners. Instead, we were rescued from ourselves and offered the antidote for our sin through the gift of Christ via the pill of Holy Baptism. By His cross we now have access once again to the tree of life, which immortalizes our saintly state when we eat of its fruits from the table of His holy altar. On the Last Day, when we behold God and the harvest of joy amassed from our sowing of tears, all tiring trials and agitating questions will disappear from memory, relinquishing their importance, as all things pure become absorbed in divine glorious beauty.
Although suffering is a divine tool and gift, which, when understood theologically, makes a lot of sense, the devil induces us to despise it by employing a “human reasoning” that Martin Luther rightly called “the devil’s whore.” While our logic deters us from embracing it— after all, everyone aspires to be on the winning team—suffering and God are a necessary unity which, alone, provide elementary shape and honest meaning to human existence. The impassibility of God does not preclude the fact that He still hurts, and His Spirit still grieves. Even if Christianity weren’t true, it would still be the most enlightened religion. It uniquely resonates with the human condition, offering no beatific or idyllic vision of our depraved temporal existence. It boldly proclaims the unsinkable truth that we are, and remain, a broken race for which its creator suffers and dies. At the cross, God is emptied. His heart is pierced, drained, so that there would be room for us. Through the fountain of sweet water and the flood of quenching blood that spills from the Saviour’s open side (John 19:34), the Holy Spirit draws all who suffer to Him who suffered for them. Though separately they bear on their aching bodies the still throbbing marks of Jesus’ tender scars, together they rejoice in their common share in one holy mystical stigmata.
People who complain about a distant God who does not understand suffering need to be reminded that, remarkably, the very book He has authored includes incriminating material which, at first glance, seems to call into question God’s love. The complaints of Job echo emotions that all people feel. Yet these divine self-disclosures are not recorded in the Bible in order to cast doubt upon the impeccably merciful character of God. Rather they demonstrate that our transcendent God is also immanent, and is well aware of our utmost feelings and frustration with suffering, sin, illness and death; that hidden beyond the recesses of time, is a meaning and information to which we have not necessarily been made privy. Job never becomes aware of the life lesson underlying his suffering. But we do. And his experience has acted as a source of comfort to innumerable believers since. Despite appearances of the diabolical, God Himself is present, shepherding His people into His kingdom. Consequently, the devil is the chief victim of his own traps. “When the devil kicks, he is struck,” an Eastern patriarch once observed. Like each and every plan of Wile E. Coyote’s to catch his arch-nemesis, the Road Runner, explodes in his face, the crucifixion is the tumultuous trigger and culmination of conquest within the cosmological dual. The Almighty had reduced Himself to a worm and not a man (Ps 22:6), a strategic manoeuvre in the activation of the final snare for the evil one. He becomes the bait on the hook of the cross, luring the devil to take a fatal bite. Sparing His wandering sheep from a destiny that