Iowa city council debates proper time in meeting agenda to “undo the curse that was just put on our city.”
An Iowa man has kicked off controversy over religious freedom in the small town of Ottumwa, Iowa by opening a city council meeting with a prayer to Satan, which then kicked off a debate about the proper time in the meeting agenda to undo the “curse.”
I love that Satan is little more than “fuck you” to established systems and norms.
I mean, that is kindof Satan’s whole deal.
Naw. In Christian theology…. Satan is god’s henchman.
You’d think these law and order type Christians would love his loyal and dedicated service…
Satan is a title. Before the King James Version, the title of Satan was used like a black hat in an old western movie. It’s not any one person or entity, it is whomever acts as the opponent for the specific story.
The KJV wanted to make the Bible more approachable for the average person, because the Church of England had a very “it’s only for the rich and powerful” vibe that it was trying to shake. One of the ways it did this was by simplifying some concepts like Satan, condensing the multiple Satans into a single recurring entity.
That’s also why the KJV leans so heavily into the thee’s and thou’s. That was informal language at the time, mostly used by the peasant class. And if you’re trying to make a book more approachable to the peasants, you write it in peasant-speak. Ironically, we tend to think of “thee” and “thou” as sounding extremely haughty, but it’s because the peasants always emulated the rich. The rich used “you” and “yours” instead, so that’s what the peasants eventually gravitated towards to try and sound proper. And now to modern speakers, “thee” and “thou” sound like they’re from an era of kings and queens, so we tend to associate them with royalty instead of the peasants who actually spoke it.
You’re thinking of Lucifer, who is often God’s henchman before he rebels. His whole schtick was that God would tell Lucifer to go tempt some mortals, to see if they pass His purity test. And Lucifer, being God’s most perfect creation, was immediately disarming and charming. Nobody would be tempted by a dude who obviously looks like a devil. God basically sent Lucifer (the world’s most solid California 10 with a disarming personality) down to earth, to tempt the dirty mortals (who pulled teeth to try and cure the common cold, and had probably never seen anything above an unwashed Iowa 1.5).
That’s an interesting interpretation of Lucifer given he’s the Serpent in the garden which is supposedly after his fall…
But then again what isn’t contradictory about the Bible?
If God is almighty and all-knowing why did he let in there or even let “fall”?
The obvious answer is: it was orchestrated.
All that to say god had more than one henchman.
Which isn’t untrue. Not that most Christians understand this.
The KJV was also meant to be aligned with Anglican theology over Catholic theology (namely papal authority… which anglicans held belonged to… the king….)
That would imply these people knew what they were preaching and not just parroting a pop culture chimera of a relgion
Now, I’m no religion expert, but isn’t Satan the first cast out angel of heaven, doomed to rule over hell for all eternity? Doesn’t sound “henchman” to me. Sounds more like the guy who can’t leave his job getting all the clients the other guy doesn’t want to manage.
Not trying to be snide when I say: read the Book of Job. In it, God and Satan are work colleagues discussing what to do with Job.
Cartoon fanfic here: https://youtu.be/6E2pvA0hZKw
The original Bible doesn’t mention any kind of Satan.
It’s an adaptation from the later Quran terminology shaytaan or al-Shaytan, which means demon, devil, evil spirit, anything that is against God.
In the Quran the first shaytaan is also said to be Iblis, the first fallen angel (equivalent of Lucifer, as the origin story matches up quite closely).
Later Bible translations adopted this terminology as the name Satan, but in reality it’s more of a title as above explained - it can be applied to any hell-dweller who’s gone against God.
Then of course this morphed into many meanings… so there’s multiple ways to interpret it:
all in all, it’s basically the worst religious insult one can use.
Christ’s cum-dumpster, that’s the worst they’ve got?
I mean, being named the ultimate enemy that must be vanquished at any cost IS pretty much up there with the worst possible insults.
It’s not worst in the sense of being the most vulgar, most outrageous statement. It’s the worst in the sense of it being the highest insult of one.
I mean imagine if I stated that in the name of all Europeans, YOU are public enemy number one. That you’ve done egregious acts against all Europeans that must not be tolerated, that must be avenged at all cost. That from now on, all Europeans have the right to exterminate you.
It is a pretty high insult, isn’t it?
I’ve been called worse. sniffs haughtily
More akin to the guy who thought he could do the job better then his boss quit in a huff and opened his own business. Then proceed to just get bought out by his old boss and now is fucked twice.
And at the last, the boss planned it all happening because he’s a sadist who wants to fuck every thing over.
Satan sounds like my kind of guy 🥳
Yeah, he’s glorious isn’t he?