The devil in Christianity Essay Example

The devil in Christianity Essay The devil in Christianity, also given the names: Satan and Lucifer was first created as an angel an Anointed Cherub anointed means to be set apart for Gods Divine purpose alongside other meanings similar to this. However Lucifer wanted exalt himself above God rather than just be an angel of God. Consequently after he and some of his followers tried t over-throw Gods authority God cast him out of heaven and is now is roaming the earth so some branches of Christianity teach. In brief, Satan is a fallen angel who rebelled against God.During the middle ages the church put great emphasis on the devil being a real power. He was often exemplified as having horns and goats hind quarters and carrying a pitch fork and having a forked tail. Features that carry an air of bat like wings and talons, goat like features were in the bible the goat is seen as less important than sheep, said that man will place a sheep on his right side whereas he will place a goat on the left; it presumably headed for eternal damnation. Menacing images like this did the job of frightening people to go to Church. The churches way of coercion people: to make them believe and behave control.Even today some groups of Christians still take the Devil as being an, actual power a real physical being. Christians with these traditional views still in place, are those of whose entire lives are revolved around resisting Satan . In this respect music, video games and any there possible influences which they believe to contain satanic ideas are banned. A common example of such acts and beliefs which happened not long ago was the controversy on the Harry Potter series. Some Christians deemed the novels to contain occult or satanic subtexts. Over all everyone has free will to judge whether the devil is real or not; nevertheless some Christian groups teach that he does while others teach that he does not. We are well advised to be on our guard.The Bible says in Ephesians 6:11-12 that we should: Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devils schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. The teachings of the Roman Catholic Church teach that Satan is a real power, likewise Evangelicals teach the same thing. They take the bible literally and the devil is five times resisted and exorcised. On of the tales in the bible that shows Satan is when he goes to test Job. He goes to God and says Job only believes in God because is life is made really easy by God and he thinks that if things began to go wrong for Job (the devils doing) the devil could get Job to curse God to his face: curse you to your face. In reply God tells the devil that he can do whatever he likes but hecannot kill Job. In the end Job carrys on believing in God and does not say what Satan predicted. In this passage the devil is described as a presence proof that he really existed, he causes suffering on propose. He is expressed as being evil and powerful and has control over what happens to people and how he can meddle and cause mayhem and trouble, tempting people away from God. He is also shown as tempting Jesus himself, again in this passage he is shown as a physical presence. In several other places in the bible Satan is shown in other forms such as a Dragon or a snake that the very beginning when the original sin happened.Those who still believe that the devil is an actual power assume that the devil rules a host of his fallen angels his demons. They spend their days causing physical and mental afflictions. Jesus often cured such people in exorcism and some religions still believe in it and attempt to cure it likewise. In addition to this they say that Satan rules over governments, religions and sciences that go against Christianity and its beliefs: humans evolved from apes. Furthermore it is taught that the De vil and his followers are able to posses and control humans; for this reason the Catholic Church occasionally performs exorcisms and some evangelicals do so regularly. Satan is also responsible they believe for granting spells and magic powers to sorceress and witches, this belief has been thought since the middle ages.Alternatively more commonly today not all Christians believe that Satan is a real person. Some people say hes a poetic way of explaining how people feel pulled in different directions want to do wrong. It is a way of explaining why we sin that it is just in human nature to do wrong after all no all are perfect. In addition Christians, whobelieve this, agree that the devil could not possibly exist if god is omnipotent and loving. If God is all that than we wouldnt let such an evil creature be created or even exist, hence forth the devil cannot be a real being. The question that comes up from this agreement is why is their suffering in the world then. no one knowns the certain answer to that however there are reasonable proposed answers: maybe God has a loving purpose to out suffering. Or otherwise for all the sins we cause and hurt we cause to one another maybe god chooses to be powerless. Third possibility maybe God knows so much he can see the whole picture. Lastly: maybe its our view of God thats wrong? Arguing against this comes the passage: Lucifer was created perfect in all his ways, but iniquity was found in him. It was not put there by God. Lucifer created it. (This is found in Ezekiel 28:15) Like man, the angels were created perfect, and with a free will.To conclude this essay I make the judgement that Lucifer does not exist in a physical form. I see the bible as a set of guidelines rather than text that recollects what has actually happened. In this respect I think that the bible was written to help people understand and teach people things that now we can understand more clearly through science; if you told someone straight on some of the facts andscience we known today to a person from Jesus time they would not understand; through stories however you get the ideas and teachings and information across more simply. For example the original brothers Grime stories have been written more simply for younger eyes to understand, and the big proper ones are left until they grow up. Over all my belief is that although I may refer to things as being the devils doing in truth I do not believe that he is a real being just an expression to help teach and understand evil and wrong doings and actions like deceit, intentional suffering, tempting.