him all of thekingdoms of the world in all their magnificence and he said to him, “All this Ishall give to you if you will prostrate yourself and worship me.” At this Jesus saidto him, “Get away Satan it is written: ‘The Lord you God shall you worship andhim alone shall you serve.’ “ (Matthew 4:1-10)One does not need to go far to see just how interested in Satan mankind is. Books, bothfiction and non, are written about him, songs are written about him, movies are based on him andthe internet is overflowing with Satanic sites. The human fascination and attraction with the evilone according to Dr. Elaine Pagels in her book, The Origins of Satan , is based on “the way heexpresses qualities that go beyond what we ordinarily recognize as human. Satan evokes morethan just the greed, envy, lust, and anger we identify with our own worst impulses, and more than what we call brutality, which imputes to human beings a resemblance to animals. Thousands ofyears of tradition have characterized Satan as instead a spirit. Originally he was obey of God’sangels, but a fallen one. Now he stands alone in rebellion against God and in his frustrated ragehe mirrors aspects of our own confrontations with otherness.” (xvii) In the past 30 years a cultish group calling themselves the Church of Satan has emerged. A member of the Satanic Church, Don David Scott, defines Satan as such, “the opposition to allJudeo-Christian ideals and ideology. Satan is the personification of evil where evil means fleshy,unspiritual and ungodly. Satan represents the fulfillment of the fleshy life, the enjoyment of thehere and now and the liberation of the psyche from the chains of Judeo-Christian guilt...He is themighty adversary of the inhuman death-cult religions. He is the light springing from the darknessof history. He is the true friend of man kind.” (2) The Church’s founder, Anton Le V...
