Satan permeates our altars with songs of victory.

In our simplicity, or culpability, we personalise evil
give reality to Satan, with forked tail and tongue;
give personality to our worst instincts;
spiritual impulsion to our failures.

Satan's work excuses our faults;gets us off the hook.
It is a common concept woven through Biblical texts
and thus valued, fought for, by literal religions,
giving credence to eternal spiritual warfare,
when this is but an analogy of our condition.
Not God and Satan locked in conflict for our world
but the battle of good and evil within each soul.

Evil slides silently beneath our guard
when we fail to love others as ourselves
to respect and value them as we would be valued.
When we gossip or disparage what others do.
This is the faucet from which springs war,
destruction, slaughter, and pillage.
All that was ever evil sprung
from an unkind word.

Yet that very drive ensures our survival,
often at the expense of others in creation.
We shall overcome, as a species, race, or nation
and, often, sadly, as a religious group.
For Satan permeates our altars
with songs of victory.

There is no validity in a Devil's fight with God.
The evil that we do lies dormant within us all.
We can submit to the call of pride and prejudice,
and the self-centred exploitation of others
or turn to the better way that Jesus spoke of.
It is our decision.
That is the challenge of being human.

Mankind's progress has been driven by actions seen as evil, in their time.
It is the very traits which have been seen as "of the devil" that have taken us
from stone-age man to internet users and explorers in space.
It is those who have bucked the system
who have moved the system on.

The world of Jesus and of Medieval man was infested by such demons,
tempting people to stray beyond the fixed boundaries of convention.
Much of the Evangelical church today follows the same path.
It is in these backroads that Satan reigns.

There is scarcely a culture, tribe, or society to be found
that does not have some concept or fear of an invisible evil power
which threatens the well-being, security or eternal destiny of mankind.
We may see Satan as a metaphor for the evil within the human psyche,
Satan's reality is psychological and moral within humanity,
not a corporeal being lurking in the unseen world.

The great fear in denying Satan's reality is that, if he exists,
our denial has, itself, already undermined our defences.
It is a fear exploited by those churches with a commitment to spiritual warfare.
It is a fear that can cripple the joy and wonder of our existence,
focussed on constant fear of the spiritual unknown,
of being "caught out" by Satan.

Jesus is said to have said "get thee behind me Satan",
in his, unwitnessed, temptations discourse, nt Mt Chapter 4
and this is often taken as a proof text of his belief in the Devil.
Yet Satanic influence remains merely an excuse for
the unhelpful or evil ways of this world.

The tools of Satan, of evil, remain those exposed by Matthew:
Financial wealth, Miracle working, and Earthly rule; Power and Glory.
These still lead us from the Godly path to fulfill our own desires,
but have a very human origin, not one of any personalised evil.

Earthquakes, storms, and drought are truly natural phenomena
or the product our human misuse of world resources,
not the work of an external spiritual being,
as some, sadly, still seem to envisage.

Satan is, in the Bible:

Abaddon
Accuser
Adversary
Angel of light
Angel of the bottomless pit
Anointed covering cherub
Antichrist
Apollyon

Beast
Beelzebub
Belial
Deceiver
Devil
Dragon

Enemy
Evil one
Father of lies
God of this age

King of Babylon
King of the bottomless pit
King of Tyre

Lawless one
Leviathan
Little horn
Lucifer
Man of Sin
Murderer

Power of darkness
Prince of the power of the air
Roaring lion
Ruler of demons
Ruler of this world

Satan
Serpent of old
Son of Perdition
Star

Tempter
Thief
Wicked one