The Satanic Christian
Over the years, I've had several arguments and discussions with various people purporting to be Christians, all of them exhorting me to accept their particular brand of faith. Some of these exchanges have exposed some truly remarkable beliefs, one of which I will attempt to reconstruct here. The dialogue that follows is largely a composite, but it's accurate in its essential arguments.
A: You must accept Christ as your personal saviour in order that you may have everlasting life.
B: Hmm. Let me see if I understand your argument here. Are you saying that I should accept Christ because it's the morally right thing to do, or because everlasting life would be a nice thing to have?
A: What, you don't WANT everlasting life?
B: Well, not particularly, but let's say I did. The question is, is accepting Christ something which would be morally good to do, or is it merely an instrumental means towards the selfish end of everlasting life?
A: Let me put it this way: If you want everlasting life, and I can't imagine that you wouldn't because no sane creature would willingly acquiesce to the end of its own existence, then you must accept Christ in order to get it. Morality doesn't enter into it.
B: I see. So it's essentially a bargain kind of deal, is it? I accept Christ, and in exchange, I get everlasting life?
A: Yes. And a very good bargain, too, if you ask me.
B: That may well be, if in fact you want everlasting life. But let's suppose that Satan came to you with an identical offer. "All you have to do," says Satan, "is believe in me, and I'll give you everlasting life of whatever sort you desire. One eternal orgasm, if you like, or neverending chocolate cheesecake that you'd never get tired of. Absolutely any pleasure or indeed ALL pleasures you can imagine." Of course, you've read the book of Revelations, so you ask how can he guarantee everlasting life when you know he's going to be defeated at the end of time? "Easy," says Satan. "Time travel. Just before the Final Battle, I will send you back in time to the beginning of our arrangement, so you go through an endless loop of pure pleasure. I can even arrange for it to be different for you each pass through Time, so you'd never get bored. In essence, you've got an infinite amount of time for eternal pleasure. What do you say?"
A: Well, I'd say no. Everyone knows Satan is a liar.
B: Okay. Now suppose Satan came to you with this very same offer, that is, everlasting life in exchange for your allegiance, only he did it disguised as Jesus.
A: I think I'd be able to tell the difference.
This last line is almost verbatim from one of the email exchanges, and it really blew me away the first time I read it. Satan, the Prince of Darkness, a fallen angel with all the supernatural powers so entailed, THE deceiver of all deceivers, and this poor fool figures all he has to do is watch for the cloven hooves.
Not long after the discussion the inspired the above dialogue, I mentioned it to another email correspondent, who also described himself as a Christian. He tried to defend the other fellow's argument along these lines:
C: Well, yes, Satan is a BRILLIANT liar, but there's one thing he absolutely cannot say, and that would be to acknowledge Jesus as the Saviour and son of God. So anyone who does acknowledge Jesus cannot possibly be Satan.
This struck me also as a rather ridiculous argument. Is there some sort of supernaturally binding trademark protecting the name "Jesus" from misappropriation by competitors? We puny mortals need a commandment to remind us not to take the Lord's name in vain, and yet we do it all the time; it shouldn't be too difficult for a supernatural specialist!
Anyway, I guess you can see by now why I feel that at least some "Christians" are in fact Satanists.