GBBW: Jesus is Tempted

and what's the deal with the devil?

YOU ASK: How do I talk to my kid about…Satan?

This week’s story introduces us to a new character - Satan!

Depending on your background, it’s safe to say this might not be an entirely welcome development. But we’re including some of Jesus’ ‘getting started’ stories right now, and after his baptism, Jesus heads out into the wilderness and is tempted by “the satan”.

(You can listen to our latest Ask Away episode to hear both my kids’ confusion at the appearance of this character and my own attempts to talk them through who or what this new guy is. It is clumsy.)

One thing that makes talking about “the satan” with our kids challenging is that despite the prominence the devil gets in certain church cultures and even our broader popular culture, he/it really doesn’t show up in the Bible all that much. And when he/it does, it’s not entirely clear what exactly he/it is. N.T. Wright, who knows about as much about the New Testament as anyone, writes in the glossary at the back of Matthew for Everyone, “The Bible is never very precise about the identity of the figure known as ‘the satan’ .“ So there you have it.

That’s a really good recipe for being unsure how to talk to your kids, isn’t it? When some people make the topic seem like it’s really, really important, but then the Bible doesn’t actually say much about it?

Here’s a good rule of thumb in those situations: if the topic in question was really so vitally important – like if you didn’t talk to your kids about it in exactly the right way then everything might completely fall apart and you’d be a complete failure as a parent – then God would have said more about it. If it really mattered that we know exactly who/what “the satan” is then God would have told us. Since we don’t have that kind of detail, it must not be all that important. This is part of what trusting God means: trusting that God isn’t going to leave us hanging out to dry when we’re trying our best.

In other words, we can relax. When our kids are curious about topics like “the satan” we can say, “Yeah that is weird, huh? I’m not really sure.” (this is, more or less, where I start on Ask Away this week)

For a curious kid, though, here are some thoughts.

It’s a spectrum

First, “the satan” is represented biblically on a spectrum from single, powerful being, through multiple demonic spirits, all the way to purely metaphorical force like Evil, to some combination of the three.

It’s oppositional to God

The main thing “the satan” character represents is something that opposes God and opposes God’s people. Satan actually means ‘accuser’, and when he/it shows up in the Old Testament (In Job, one vision in Zechariah, and one verse in Chronicles. Yes, that’s the whole list) it’s often as a sort of prosecuting attorney, bringing accusations against God’s people in a sort of imagined Heavenly Courtroom.

In the New Testament it’s much the same, he/it is something standing in the way of what God is up to, like…

• when Jesus calls Peter ‘satan’ because Peter is trying to convince Jesus to maybe avoid this whole dying on a cross business.

• Or in Revelation, when John sees “the satan” as the shadowy force behind the oppressive and unjust systems of the Romans, with their Emperor who wants to be seen as a rival god to the true God.

• Or, when Jesus sets people free from possession by demons who are under the direction of “the satan”, restoring those people to the full life God intends for humanity.

• Or in this week’s story, when “the satan” is a person having a conversation with Jesus about maybe taking a shortcut here and there on the way to the Kingdom of God.

Even in just these examples we see three separate, but related, options for who/what “the satan” is:

1. Is Satan… a single personified being?

That’s certainly how this week’s story of Jesus’ temptation seems to portray him/it. Although even then it’s not clear if Jesus is talking to a horned guy in red pajamas with a pitchfork, a hazy angel-vision, or a voice inside his head.

2. Is Satan… a metaphor for the forces or impulses that oppose God?

This is how Revelation seems to talk about him/it, more as an impersonal, or semi-personal, force – like what we might call “Evil” – than a single person roaming around.

When Jesus calls Peter ‘satan’ this is also what he means. We shouldn’t imagine that Peter has been temporarily possessed by a demon; no, he’s standing in the way of God’s purposes, tempting Jesus away from what he knows he has to do, and so is metaphorically ‘satan’.

3. Is Satan…a stand-in for a variety of real, invisible, evil beings?

This is what the stories of demon possession might point towards, that there are real spirit-beings that are loosely under the command of, or maybe are represented by, the figure of “the satan”, or Beelzebub (which means literally “Lord of the flies”).

This idea was kind of in the water in the Ancient world. Most people would have taken for granted that evil spirits, or at least trickster spirits, were real things people needed to guard themselves against.

What if the variety means we don’t have to choose?

Given that there’s a variety of ways we might think of “the satan”, and variety of ways biblical writers think about it/him, the important thing is: we don’t have to choose.

Ultimately it doesn’t matter what, exactly, “the satan” is, because every single one of the stories above have the same clear and shining point, a point that has nothing to do with who/what “the satan” is.

The point? God and Jesus are more powerful than the forces that oppose Them, whatever form that opposition takes. Evil exists in the world. Forces – whether human, or spiritual, or systemic, or some combination – are going to work against the world God dreams of, and the people who are trying to follow and trust God.

Those forces might be too powerful for us, but they’re not too powerful for our God. And we can trust God, because God has promised to protect and free us from the power of “the satan”…whatever he/it is.

This is a weird one, y’all! What do you think? Do you have an approach with the kids in your life? (Mine is largely to not to, honestly. Unless it’s directly part of a story.)

For those who really want a deep dive on this topic, the book by John H. Walton and J. Harvey Walton, Demons and Spirits in Biblical Theology, will give you more than enough to chew on.