The Devil

During a Baptism, the priest makes the sign of the cross on the forehead of the person being baptised and says:

“Do not be ashamed to confess the faith of Christ crucified”.

And everyone present says:

“Fight valiantly as a disciple of Christ
against sin, the world and the devil,
and remain faithful to Christ to the end of your life”. (7)

We shall think more about Baptism later on, but for now we need to face up to what is meant by the Devil. 

In the Bible there are a number of references to the Devil or Satan.  In St Luke’s Gospel we read how, at the start of his public ministry, Jesus went into the desert and was tempted by the Devil who put thoughts into his mind.  Jesus resisted every temptation but it is plain that the Devil didn’t leave him alone, for at the end of these temptations Luke notes that the Devil “departed from him until an opportune time” (NRSV, Luke 4:1-13). 

The thought that there is an evil being at work in the world tempting people is not a cosy idea at all and there are plenty of people who reject the idea. 

You’ve probably heard of the Chronicles of Narnia – a series of stories written for children by C.S. Lewis.  The first of the stories was The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Besides writing stories for children, C.S. Lewis was a scholar at Oxford University and a brilliant writer on issues related to the Christian Faith.   He was concerned with the difficult issue of accounting for the presence of suffering and evil in a world that was created by a good and loving God.

C.S. Lewis believed in the existence of the Devil but thought that many people don’t believe because their image of the Devil is of a figure with horns and hoofs, wearing red tights. (8)(9) The trouble is that in laughing at the idea of such a comic figure people will think they have dismissed or perhaps disproved the existence of the Devil.  Of course we are right to avoid these silly images of the Devil but we shouldn’t think that we thereby remove the reality to which these images point.  Having said that we certainly shouldn’t have an unhealthy interest in the Devil and see the direct activity of the Devil behind every problem and all suffering. (10)