On how relationships are like Satan

Today I want to talk about Satan. Well, on how Satan reminds me so much about relationships. It’ll come as no surprise that my spiritual teachings have been mostly from the Judaeo-Christian faith, so it’s understandable that I use this analogy. To the uninitiated, the story of Satan is like this: God (the creator of absolutely everything) made this really powerful angel, who later came to be called Satan. He gave him the best of everything and was his favourite son. God said to him that the only person above him was God himself, and so he had to obey and worship God same as the other spiritual creatures God had made. It was a pretty sweet deal for Satan to be the favourite son of God… But then this Satan dude got to thinking ‘hey, why should I have to obey?’, ‘what gives God the right to decide what is good and bad for others? that seems unfair’, and ‘why does he have to get all the worship of others? I want some worship too’, and finally ‘what will happen if someone does disobey God?’… And so he came about to answer some of his questions by some very intelligent means using the newest of God’s creations, whom God claimed were in his image and likeness: humans.

Thinking beyond what is good for you

You know when you first meet someone and become attracted to them and everything they do seems right. You love their smile, what they smile about, how they interact with you and respond to you, how they think, how they behave, how they make you feel, etc.  Awww, it’s all so sweet. And you love spending time together, sharing, enjoying adventures in the present, telling tales of the past, and planning futures together. But then something happens. Maybe it’s that too much of a good thing makes our brains want to find a fault in the reality of things. Satan, our predecessor, had it all but he started to wonder, “is there even more?” Soon he started to want these (supposedly) even better things even though he’d never had them and certainly wasn’t suffering without. I mean, why does the “honeymoon” phase of relationships have to end?

Envy

There are no two equal relationships in the world and no two equal lovers in relationships. Everyone has different backgrounds and different expectations of the future. There is looking forward with desire to the future, and there is looking sideways with desire (and maybe contempt?) to others’ present. The last of these is called envy. Sometimes in relationships, even great romances, the lovers can begin to notice other people who are in love, or even other people who have loved you or whom you loved once, and begin to feel less than these others. But why? Wasn’t the relationship great to begin with? Yes, in the same way Satan already had a pretty awesome life before he decided he’d rather be like God instead. It’s one of the most absurd things on this universe to ignore what you have for the stupidity of wanting to have what others have. What often happens is the same as when you get distracted on the road when you see something “interesting”: you crash your own car for something so insignificant. Satan lost his paradise kingdom for desiring something other than what that paradise had to offer him.

Slander

Christians believe that the first lie told was the lie told to Eve by Satan disguised as a serpent. He said to her, “your God has lied to you”. That, however, was a lie. Eve ran with that lie because we human beings are incredibly good at believing lies - it’s almost as if we crave it! The hardest thing in a relationship isn’t believing a lie, no, that’s the easiest thing; the hardest thing is trusting enough to believe the truth. Losing trust, I believe, is the only thing irreparable in any relationship.

Doubt

There are so many unknowable things in this universe, the most unknowable one to us humans are other human beings’ intentions – and yet it is what we most commonly claim to know so well! There are no proofs, confessions, eyewitness accounts, promises, or alibis that can convince an untrusting mind. Satan could have killed Adam and Eve if he wanted to, he could have attempted to overthrow God’s regime, but instead he did something more subtle that had the same effect: he created doubt. Adam and Eve had all the proof in the universe that this God dude had only good intentions and he’d only ever been good to them by giving them all this really cool stuff (the earth and animals and everything to care for), but Satan made them doubt God’s intention and his word. They didn’t have proof that God was bad, but they came to doubt his “goodness”. How often in relationships do we see conflict created not by proof of wrongdoing but of doubt? We can doubt our partner’s faithfulness, their intentions for the future, the nature of their past, the intentions of their current actions... But why? Why do we do this to ourselves?  I don’t know what the answer to that is. But oh how convinced I could become that relationships are the work of the devil!

J