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From: amigo2@ihuxq.UUCP (John Hobson)
Newsgroups: net.religion
Subject: Good and Evil (partPart 3)
Message-ID: <463@ihuxq.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 5-Jan-84 15:44:04 EST
Article-I.D.: ihuxq.463
Posted: Thu Jan  5 15:44:04 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 6-Jan-84 02:55:04 EST
Organization: AT&T Bell Labs, Naperville, IL
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Dave Norris, in his "L-O-N-G reponse to Tim Maroney" mentions
Satan's temptation of Jesus in the desert.  I have a few thoughts
on that which I would like to throw out.  This can be considered
Part 3 of my Good and Evil series.

The account we have is condensed and stylized, but the realities
are still clear.  After Jesus fasted forty days and has meditated,
presumably on his coming redemptive work, the Devil makes three
suggestions about the best way to get the job done.  Christian
piety usually hands Satan the short end of the stick, but its worth
the time to turn the tables and give him his due.

In the first place, the story does not cast the Devil simply in the
role of the bad guy.  On the old Christian theory that the Devil is
a real being--a fallen angel, in fact-- he couldn't possibly be all
bad.  Insofar as he exists, his being is one more response to the
creative delight of God.  Being as such is good.  There is no
ontological evil.  (Whether or not the Devil actually exists is
another question, about which you will have to suit yourself. 
About the possibility of his beeing, you have no choice.  He is
neither more nor less likely than a rabbit.  A priori objections to
his existence are simply narrow-minded.)

Furthermore, the story does not require that we consider all of his
behaviour bad.  Perhaps even his motives were good.  After all, his
suggestions to Jesus are by no means either unkind or unreasonable.
What is wrong with suggesting to a hungry man at the end of a long
retreat that he make himself a stone sandwich if he has the power
to render it digestable.  It is perfectly obvious that Jesus ate
again sometime, either on the forty-first day or shortly
thereafter.  He did not aquire his reputation as a glutton and a
winebibber by fasting for the next three years.

Likewise, it was not necessarily mischevious to urge Jesus to jump
off the temple and make a spectacular landing.  As the Grand
Inquisitor pointed out, people need some proof of power if they are
to believe.  Even the suggestion that, in return for Jesus'
loyalty, Satan would hand over to him all the kingdoms of the world
is not, on the Devil's terms, such a bad idea.  It is simply a
rather sensible with-my-know-how-and-your-clout-we'd-really-really-
do-some-good kind of offer.  After all, God, who was supposed to be
running things, wasn't doing a very obvious job of it.  Since, in
his own terms, Satan was still Prince of this world--allowed by
divine courtesy to keep his dominion after the fall--perhaps he
could be exceused for hoping for a little more cooperation from the
Son of God than he ever got from the Father.

In any case, the clincher for this argument that the Devil's ideas
weren't all bad comes from Jesus himself.  At other times, in other
places, and for his own reasons, Jesus does all of the things the
Devil suggests.  Instead of making lunch out of the rocks, he feeds
the five thousand miraculously--basically the same trick, but on a
grander scale.  Instead of jumping off the temple and not dying, he
dies and refuses to stay dead--by any standards, an even better
trick.  And finally, instead of getting heimself bogged down in a
two man presidency with an opposite number he is not really
sympathetic with, he aces out the Devil on the cross and ens up
risen, ascended and glorified at the right hand of the Father as
King of Kings and Lord of Lords--the best trick of all, taken with
the last trump.

No, the differences between Jesus and Satan do not lie in what the
Devil suggested, but in the methods he proposed--or, more
precisely, in the philosophy of power on which his methods were
based.  The temptation in the wilderness is a conversation between
two people who are talking right past each other, a masterpiece of
non-communication.  If you are really God, Satan says, do
something.  Jesus answers, I am really God, therefore I do nothing.
The Devil makes what, to him at least, seem like sensible
suggestions.  Jesus responds by quoting Scripture at him.  The
Devil wants power to be used to do good; Jesus insists that it
corrupts and defeats the very good it tries to achieve.

It is an exasperating story.  Yet, when you look at history, Jesus
seems to have the better of the argument.  Much, if not all, of the
mischief in the world is done in the name of rightiousness.  The
human race adhers devoutly to the belief that one more application
of power will bring in the kingdom.  One more invasion, one more
war, one more escalation, one more jealous fit, one more towering
rage--in short, one more twist of whatever arm you have got hold of
will make goodness reign and peace triumph.  But it never works. 
Never with persons, since they are free and can, as persons, only
be wooed, not controlled.  And never even with things, because they
are free, too, in their own way--and turn and rend us when we least
expect.  For a long time, man has been in love with the demonic
style of power.  For a somewhat shorter time, he has enjoyed, or
suffered from, the possession of vast resources of power.  Where
has it gotten him?  To the brink of a choice between thermonuclear
annihilation or drowning in his own garbage.

However we may be tempted, therefore, to fault the Divine style of
power--however much we may cry out like Job against a God who does
not keep hedges around the goodness he delights in--however angry
we may be at the agony his forbearance permits, one thing at least
is clear.  The demonic style of power, the plausible use of force
to do good, makes at least as much misery, if not more.  Satan in
the wilderness offers Jesus a short cut.  Jesus calls it a dead end
and turns a deaf ear.  The great, even well-meaning, challange to
the hands-off policy comes and goes, and God still insists on
running the world without running it at all.  The question is put
loud and clear:  Why in God's name won't you show up?  And the
response comes back as unsatisfying as ever:  To show up would be
to come in your name, not mine.  No show, therefore.  And, of
course, no answer.

Part 4 in a few days.

				John Hobson
				AT&T Bell Labs
				Naperville, IL
				(312) 979-7293
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