Hear The Roar

Be sober and vigilant. Your opponent the Devil is prowling around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, steadfast in faith, knowing that your brothers and sisters throughout the world undergo the same sufferings. The God of all grace who called you to his eternal glory through Christ Jesus will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you after you have suffered a little. To him be dominion forever.  Amen. (1 Peter 5:5B-14)

I’ve always wondered if God can be everywhere at once with time and place being no barrier, then how can the Devil do the same?   For everyone to hear the roaring lion, we and everyone else on God’s green earth must be in the presence of the Devil more-or-less at the same time.   That would seem to give the Devil – the fallen angel whom opposes God – the same or similar power as God.  No way!

In fact, this possibility makes me question the existence of the Devil – a human-created force or creature to explain evil and why we can be so bad – downright terrible and sometimes horrific.  While I lean or shy away from the idea of the Devil, even though he (she, it?) is prominent in the Gospels, I’m forced to confront the Devil’s possible existence by Pope Francis who recently wrote “Rebuking the Devil.”

The Pope tells us the Devil is real.  He said: “The devil is alive and well and working overtime to undermine the Roman Catholic Church.”  The Pope also said: “We should not think of the devil as a myth, a representation, a symbol, a figure of speech or an idea. This mistake would lead us to let down our guard, to grow careless and end up more vulnerable,”  

Every-once-in-a-while I hear a prowling and roaring lion.  It comes from my inside reminding me that I’m about to choose between good and evil – to comfort or to hurt.  My lion’s growl is a warning sign that I must carefully heed.  It’s not the Devil or a demon. 

I prefer to think of that lion as Aslan, C.S. Lewis’ representation of Christ so prominent in his classic “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.”  So, I don’t fear the lion as the Devil.  I welcome the lion as Christ.  We all should.

Consider the book “The Devil You Say! Man and His Personal Devils and Angels” by Father Andrew Greeley (1976) – a book I wager almost no one has ever read.  Greeley ends with “The Prince of Darkness is fear.”  Perhaps that’s why Jesus often said “Do not fear.”

According to T.J. Wray and G. Mobley in “The Birth of Satan: Tracing the Devil’s Biblical Roots” (2005): “…Is Satan real? The theological and scriptural arguments for and against the existence of Satan are as vast and formidable as are the variations in persona; beliefs concerning Satan.  Yet whether Satan is to be taken as a metaphor, as a symbolic, or literal being, Satan is real in the sense that evil is real.  Indeed, the fearsome red demon who pursued so many of us in our childhood nightmares pales in comparison to the real and palpable evil at work in the world today in the form of murderous regimes, maniacal and serial killers, and suicide bombers.”

The message to us: “Be sober and vigilant!”  Also, hear the lion roar.

Deacon David Pierce