Serpent in the Sacristy

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Shedding my Skin

by Serpent

Shedding my Skin
Photo by Jan Kopřiva / Unsplash

I am a member of the Satanic Temple. I am also a regular congregant at my local parish church. Is this a conflict? You betcha.

I love the work of Stephen Bradford Long and resonate with much of what he has written. Several years ago, he wrote about why he was still a Christian despite also being a Satanist. But over time, the dichotomy couldn't hold and he decided to no longer call himself a Christian. He didn't believe, no matter how beautiful some aspects of the myth and the symbolism might be.

I've been walking a similar road the last several years. I have a strong scientific background; believing in Christianity has always incorporated an element of "suspension of disbelief" even from a young age. I went through a phase trying to rationalize a literal young-earth reading of Genesis with the age of the universe, much to the patient chagrin of my very-Christian but very-physicist physics teacher. I eventually accepted that Genesis couldn't be literal, but contained truths filtered through the limited understanding of the humans who wrote it down. But the essentials, I still believed: God made the world, Satan and sin broke it, Christ redeemed it, and these frail bodies contain immortal souls which will live in Heaven with Him.

It's a beautiful story. It has a protagonist, an antagonist, conflict, story arc, and resolution. Some modern interpretations of both Christianity and Judaism cast God as a beneficent, loving being who wants good for all the universe. I love the underlying theme of sacrificing whatever it takes for the good of the ones you love.

But I also saw the ugly parts. The loving God who orders the people He loves to commit genocide on other people He supposedly loves (but also hates?). The loving God who creates a moral order to the universe that condemns much – if not most! – of humanity to eternal damnation and torture. The omnipotent God who somehow yet cannot stop evil, or doesn't want to. The Satan figure who is God's enemy, ready to devour the unwary faithful, yet also welcome in the courts of heaven and idly dicing with the Heavenly Father over the fate of poor mortals.

You can contort yourself through a lot of this. Many people do; I did for many years. Truth distorted through the lens of the imperfect writers. Divine motives beyond our knowing. Above all, an ingrained faith that the broad strokes must be true, even if the details seem a little fishy. It's like an Impressionist painting: look at the big picture, not the individual brush strokes. But in the back of my mind, I knew I was ignoring what I didn't want to see.

One of those broad strokes is the immortal soul. I could ignore how the miraculous healings of the past somehow disappeared as medical science became better able to document conditions and cures. I could ignore how much demonic possession looks like mental illness. Because I wanted to believe in eternal life. I wanted to believe in reunion with loved ones departed. Because I didn't want to believe that they're gone forever. There are core aspects of who we are, and those things must carry forward in some fashion. Right?

But as several people close to me had neurological conditions – some ultimately fatal, some not – I watched the very real ways in which those core aspects of who we are can change and be lost when gray cells get damaged. It's not just there or not across the point of death. A woman can forget her husband. A kind, gentle man can make rape threats. If that "immortal" core is so changeable with the flesh, what evidence do we have that it isn't really the flesh after all?

When I started questioning the immortal soul, the rest came tumbling down like a house of cards. I realized that the only thing left holding up my Christian faith was a need to believe that was true.

For a while, I was totally unmoored. I was depressed, to the point that my wife suggested I find a therapist again. I questioned everything in my life.

And then I found Satan.

There are so many stories with characters who read as heroes and villains in their own day, but read very differently with modern sensibilities. John Wayne is clearly intended to be the hero of every movie he's in, but ask a Native American whether they think he's a hero for fighting off the vicious Injuns. The core message of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer appears to be that no matter how rude and denigrating your coworkers may be, they'll stop making their comments to your face if your skills are vital to their continued employment.

The Bible is no different. Read without the presupposition that God is the hero of the story, the Creator of Hell, the Commander of Genocide, the Architect of Sin begins to look pretty malicious. Meanwhile, the supposed villain of the story is reviled for... getting humans to think for themselves? Asking God questions about why He believes things are true instead of merely taking Him at His word?

Now, let's be clear. The Satanic Temple does not believe in a literal Satan. I have not lost a shred of my scientific, skeptical mind. But as I was unmoored, I found the Seven Tenets of the Satanic Temple to be the purest expression of what I still believe that I've encountered. The Satan of TST is a rebel, a questioner, a seeker after truth. He wants to find the truth, even if the truth isn't comfortable.

Decades of belief in Christianity primed me with a fear of Satan. Even years after I'd concluded he probably didn't exist, I was reluctant to identify myself with that particular mythic figure. And there was still a nagging fear that God might be real, and this was just a crisis of faith that was going a smidge further than the past.

I had occasion to visit my church one night. I walked into the darkened sanctuary, stood before the presence lamp, and said out loud, "If You're there, and if You don't want me to be a Satanist, now would be the time to tell me that."

You'll be shocked to hear the lamp didn't answer me. And neither did the One it supposedly represents.

Very well, so be it.

Hail Satan. Amen.