Writer C.S. Lewis said the devil’s best trick was convincing us he did not exist. Picture: Thinkstock Source: Supplied
IN 1971, Gerald Mayo, a prisoner in Pennsylvania, sued Satan and his staff in a US District Court, alleging that the Prince of Darkness had many times caused misery and placed obstacles in his path.
The judge noted that the case was appropriate for a class action but dismissed proceedings on a technicality – no official precedent for suing the Devil existed and there was no sure way court papers could be served on Satan.
In the new film Suing the Devil, a law student decides to sue Satan for $8 trillion.
Satan, played by Malcolm McDowell, appears, with 10 top lawyers – “devil’s advocates” – to defend himself.
“The world is full of losers,” Satan says outside the court. “How many people are going to sue me and blame me because they can’t get their act together?”
It’s a fantasy. Satan surely does his best work by remaining in the dark and encouraging the widely held notion that he doesn’t exist.
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The film’s writer and director Tim Chey said: “At a time when 65 per cent of American Christians don’t believe the devil exists, the film aims its guns at Satan’s strategy” – to remain unbelievable.
Lucifer, the devil, or whatever you call him has been conjured up in a variety of guises by theologians, poets and prophets.
Just when he became God’s adversary rather than God’s archangel creation, servant and messenger is hard to pinpoint.
Seemingly, God permitted the serpent devil to tempt Adam and Eve and made a bet with him to test Job’s loyalty. Later, in the New Testament, Jesus sits in the wilderness and is tempted by Satan.
But we don’t regard the existence of the Devil, demons, and demonic possession seriously in the Western world.
The popular view is that evil, or sin, is the privation of good. But the experience of serial killers, the gas chambers of Auschwitz and the horrors of Rwanda suggest it is more than this.
The Apostle Paul, writing in the book of Ephesians, explained that the real battle for the souls of men is in another dimension intersecting our own physical world: “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,” he wrote.
Writer C.S. Lewis stated the devil’s best trick was convincing us he does not exist.
Lewis warned of what he called “the two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils”. One error “is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them”. If that is so, why does God allow an evil entity to have influence in our lives?
Lewis surmised God created all things with free will to do right or wrong.
This was necessary because it not only made evil possible, but also love, goodness and joy.
The Dark Power went wrong, according to Lewis, because he thought he could be God. And that is the same great evil he attempts to teach humans.
<a href="http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/sunday-heraldsun/on-the-horns-of-a-devilish-dilemma/story-e6frf92o-1226118743701tag:news.google.com,2005:cluster=http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/sunday-heraldsun/on-the-horns-of-a-devilish-dilemma/story-e6frf92o-1226118743701Sat, 20 Aug 2011 09:55:59 GMT 00:00″>On the horns of a devilish dilemma
