Matt Dillahunty of Atheist Experience fame has more than once asked a caller, “How did you determine that God is the good one and Satan is the bad one?” That question was made particularly relevant after I was sent this picture (from, interestingly, Texas):
Satan: Good Witch or Bad Witch?
When I first read this, there was another text message below, which led my screen to cut off just the red-background text naming the church. All I had was the text about Satan being the first to demand equal rights. Of course, combined with the identity of the sender (who would never disparage equal rights doctrine) I interpreted the statement as decidedly pro-Satan. Then, when I scrolled up to see messages above this one I caught the text “Emmanuel Missionary Baptist Church” and my certainty was suddenly decimated. Now I’m of the opinion that it’s likely an anti-equal rights message, but, perhaps in part because of my initial perception, I simply can’t convince myself I should be sure.
A classic case of good witch or bad witch.
When did Satan demand equal rights?
I wondered that my own self.
But since he’s imaginary, his history is imaginary, and if someone wants to reimagine Satan’s conflict as being sourced in wanting to be equal to the Christian god… meh. It makes as much sense as anything else.
A more traditional take, from AllAboutGod.com:
So … that’s not about equal rights as we think of it today. Satan wanted to be equal to a god, but he didn’t care if anyone else was equal to that god. But just as the Magna Carta gave rights only to the noble class but is rightly regarded as an important step towards political and legal equality before the government, it seems reasonable to say that Satan pushed for “equal rights” in the same way that the nobility covered by the Magna Carta pushed for “equal rights”.
Now, AllAboutGod.com is looney tunes – the next segment of their site goes like this:
So I’m not endorsing what they’re saying, just recognizing that what they’re saying is a pretty common Christian set of beliefs about Satan, and then pointing out that these relatively common beliefs are amenable to the “equal rights” interpretation of Emmanuel Missionary Baptist Church.
As a completely separate bit about the site AllAboutGod.com, later in that article about Satan it says this:
Emphasis mine.
Someone call Alanis Morissette, I think I found her missing irony.
I am remembering what I concluded about Satan almost 50 years ago,
there is nothing in the Bible that can really be identified as Satan,
TheChurchFathers™ just made him up.
(give me a break, I was 13 years old)
Accidental Honesty?