Dear Isabel,
My teenage son has a fairly new friend who calls himself a Satanist. What does that even mean? Should I be worried, or is this just a case of a teen rebelling and trying to get a rise out of adults? My son has always been kind and had pretty low-key ways of setting himself apart from me and his dad: wears all black, has a few piercings, stuff like that that we consider “battles not worth fighting.” (Besides, it seems to be his generation’s equivalent of my own goth phase.) Now I wonder if there is something really sinister going on, and I’m not sure how to find out.
Dabbling in Demons?
Dear Dabbling,
To find out, you’re going to have to ask them: your son and/or his friend. I can give you a bit of a road map and I hope ease your anxieties a little. I’m no expert on Satanism (though read on), but I know there are several religions that call themselves Satanic and mean very different things by it.
Some Satanists accept the Christian idea of Satan as the embodiment of evil, the being who tempts us to do bad things. (The Muslim Iblis has a somewhat similar biography and role.) In worshipping Satan, they are worshipping evil: vices like cruelty and greed are the qualities they admire. I don’t know how common this really is, but it’s one definition.
Then there is The Satanic Temple, whose adherents also accept a certain Christian conception of Satan, but argue that that Satan is admirable. This is the Satan of Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost, whose pride and resistance to God’s authority got him cast out of heaven, but who is a sympathetic and in certain respects even an admirable character. The Satanic Temple aspires to anti-authoritarianism, rational thought, religious liberty, and individual integrity. In short, they think that at least in one traditional concept of Satan (Milton’s), Satan was made to embody admirable qualities like these. They don’t worship Satan, because they don’t believe in supernatural beings or magic.
Another major strain of Satanism in the United States, the Church of Satan founded by Anton Lavey, also sees Satan as more of a metaphorical figure than a real being. However, in their view, Satan embodies extreme individualism, a la Ayn Rand. They might not worship a supernatural being, but the things they identify as worthy are self-centeredness and pride.
Ironically, shortly after I committed to answering your question, the congregation where I serve was publicly accused of being “a church of Satan” for its support of transgender people. It is 100% true that we support transgender people. But of course, our motivation for doing so is not to be evil, but to be good. And that goes to the heart of the matter: Satan has so long been God’s opposite number that he has come to symbolize whatever is the opposite of a particular person’s concept of God. If someone’s God is about compassion and surrendering our strength in order to care for the oppressed and marginalized, then Satan stands for greed, cruelty, and oppression. On the other hand, if someone believes that a being they call God despises and condemns transgender people, then it is those who oppose that god and his followers who are being moral. In that situation, being called Satanic is an unintended compliment.
So I encourage you to set down your worries and assumptions, sit down with those teens, and ask them what they mean by Satanism: that is, what they hold dear, what they hold sacred, what they rebel against, what they affirm. “Satan” is just a label, if a deliberately provocative one; when you know what the label stands for, you’ll know whether the self-described Satanic friend is someone to fear or someone to admire.
Wishing you well,
Isabel
Next week: When you’ve left the church but miss the emotion and spiritual conviction of your churchgoing days