Satan – Fact or Myth?

Myth. I think Satan is a metaphor for the subconscious mind – the demon within us all.

So I’m setting this on the shelf.

It seems far too many gospel topics end up like this is my head! Shame we won’t have all the answers until we are out of the game.

Thanks, doug, for providing the link to the previous thread. Saves me the time in trying to find it. 😆

I don’t know, so I take the good from all interpretations – and I really do think there is good and bad in every possibility.

I feel a bit uneasy about this topic, but I am curious to hear your thoughts. Do you feel that Satan is real being (possible controlling armies of evil) out to ruin the lives and salvation of everyone on earth, or is it a myth/symbol of the natural human tendencies. We are told both about the “natural man” and Satan in the scriptures, so which is it that I need to overcome. If I have an army of demons AND myself to overcome, then it seems like a bit of a stacked deck.

Personally, I don’t believe that people should be expected to overcome the “natural man” or Satan to nearly the extent the Church says because many things they insist are terrible sins are either not really sins at all or else they are not nearly as serious as we have been led to believe. I definitely believe in evil spirits regardless of what any skeptics say but I’m not so sure if there is one demon to rule them all. How would most people ever really know for sure either way? I don’t really know what to believe about this idea other than I think the mythical Satan character is very much overused by the Church to try to scare members and as an excuse for their own failures. For example, in Thomas S. Monson’s talk in the last conference he made it sound like smoking, drinking, and pornography are all tools used by Satan to take over members’ souls and lead them down to hell.

The problem is that if members try some of these things against the WoW or don’t want to stop looking at porn and then find that their life doesn’t go into an irreversible downward spiral as a direct result of these supposedly terrible sins then many of them will understandably lose confidence in the Church for good reason and it doesn’t really have anything to do with Satan. But Church leaders don’t want to admit that maybe they have been pretending that some of these strict rules are much more important than they really are all along so if they see members that smoke, drink, and/or look at porn typically “fall away” from the Church then it must be a sure sign that they were deceived by Satan and it supposedly confirms that the WoW and their anti-porn crusade are more necessary and absolutely right than ever.

For me, I believe Satan is real (Lucifer). However, the myth has become bigger than the fact, and opposition in all things means that evil will certainly exist and God allows that for our mortal experience…but I guess that it all exists outside of the direction and control of just one being, Satan. He just gets blamed for it all.

For me Satan is taking the same path as all the “truths” I used to believe in.

f4h1

Jesus has to have a Nemesis otherwise what would be the point.

Perhaps the enemy to Christ is ourselves. Really that’s who we have to overcome in this life, isn’t it?