Could it be …Satan?

As a member of Generation X, I was culturally raised by Saturday Night Live. The Dana Carvey skits where he played the Church Lady were entertaining and funny, often calling out very public corruption. Why would this be the topic for a spiritual Baha’i blog? What’s practical about paying attention to Satan?

In part this post was inspired by a conversation with Christians in a Bible study group where the Church Lady was named as a means of attacking true spirituality. Perhaps. In general, popular culture is not especially helpful, and has largely undermined our connection the the spiritual and the Creator. Yet this very sarcastic skit, and the character of the Church Lady, has a certain old time purity from simpler times. Today the Church Lady could help us look at the challenging concept of Satan, which is all over the Bible. The concept is also in Baha’i scripture.

Shall we manifest hatred for His creatures and servants? This would be contrary to the will of God and according to the will of Satan, by which we mean the natural inclinations of the lower nature. This lower nature in man is symbolized as Satan—the evil ego within us, not an evil personality outside.
– ‘Abdu’l-Bahá – The Promulgation of Universal Peace, p. 287.

Christians have helped me understand the importance and the relevance of symbols employed in the canonical Bible, like Satan, and the Church Lady helps us also have fun with the symbol, and not fall into fear due to superstition. Evil, like the dark, has no independent existence. Evil is just an abstraction for the absence of good, and has no existence in and of itself.

Briefly, intelligible realities such as the praiseworthy attributes and perfections of man are purely good and have a positive existence. Evil is simply their non-existence. So ignorance is the want of knowledge, error is the want of guidance, forgetfulness is the want of remembrance, foolishness is the want of understanding: All these are nothing in themselves and have no positive existence.
– ‘Abdu’l-Bahá – Some Answered Questions, #74.

This seems difficult, because evil seems so plain and clear, yet like the dark, it vanishes with a little light. Darkness doesn’t need to be carefully deconstructed. It just goes away in the presence of good. So Satan doesn’t have a positive existence. Yet Satan becomes very real and manifests in the hearts of people, when they let it.

The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either — but right through every human heart — and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained.
– Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago

So, let’s not devalue the usefulness of the concept of Satan, of it’s influence potentially on each of us. It could help purify our hearts by searching them and rooting out the satanic spirit which is self-aggrandizing, selfish, and deceptive. The satanic spirit in us will seek leadership, power, money and status and neglect the true purpose for which we were created.

So, that urge that prompts us, could it be …Satan?!