Dragons

The Devil Don't Lie

Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”

The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’”

“You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” — Bible, Genesis 3: 1-5

The Tree in question was probably something more akin to Yggdrasil than the apple tree in your grandma’s garden.

Generally speaking, the Devil doesn’t lie.

Not outright anyway.

Personally I’m not even sure that he can. The fallen angels are still angels after all, and angels were created to be creatures of Truth. I believe they are just fundamentally incapable of uttering words which are technically untrue. Hence the Devil and his minions have always been legalists. The law, with its loopholes and numerous uncharitable interpretations, is the perfect vehicle for lying whilst telling the truth.

Consider the above. Think about it. Is there any lie in it? In the strict, technical sense of the word?

I don’t think so.

Instead what the Devil gives the woman are a bunch of questions. Qualifiers. Half-truths and unexamined assumptions. That’s the sort of stuff the Devil traffics in. Outright lies? Blatant falsehoods? Never. He can’t. And besides, even if he could that sort of stuff is for amateurs. Deception… real soul crushing deception… well… that sort of thing is always almost true anyway. So outright falsehoods aren’t even desirable. If I lie to you and tell you the sun is purple that’s pointless. Nobody would believe it. You can see, clearly, with your own eyes that it isn’t. But if I instead lie to you and tell you that the sun, warm and beautiful as it is, is one of the highest manifestations of the Divine genius in creation, and, therefore, would it be out of the question to consider worshiping it…

Well.

A lot of people will believe that one.

And believe it all the way to Hell.

Because what I said contained no lie. None whatsoever. The first part, that the sun was a beautiful manifestation of Divine genius, is surely correct. The second part? Ah, that’s where I became clever. For if you notice I never said you should worship it. I just asked a question. I asked you, without giving you the answer, if it would be out of the question to consider worshiping it. The fact that such a question was asked in bad faith or that it planted a seed of idolatry in your mind… I mean… that’s not my fault. Is it? I just asked a question. Nothing more.

Nothing more.

Such are the whispers of the forked tongue.

He will not saddle up beside you and say, outright, that your husband is cheating on you. No. That would be a lie. But he will approach you when you are stressed and alone in the middle of the night and ask you… Hey… how sure are you that he’s actually out with the guys? I mean… you have gained weight after all. Since the baby. Everybody can see it. Could a man even be blamed for looking elsewhere when his wife is in such a state? Cranky and irritable as you have been? Do you think maybe he’s considering a divorce? Do you think he still loves you? You’ve been feeling that he’s been a bit cold lately… right? Ah. Probably nothing… Never you mind.

And thus the wrecking ball which will break yet another American family is set in motion.

All of it without a single lie.

Just statements of fact and leading questions. And with such simple tools all manner of suspicion, self doubt, anger, and mistrust are sown.

The serpent is crafty. Craftier than any of the animals God had made.

“Did God really say…”

Did he?

What Satan follows with is wrong and he knows it, but, again, as it’s asked in the form of a question it can’t technically be considered a lie. Eve is quick to point out his error. No, God did not tell them to abstain from all the fruit. Just some of it. Just the fruit of one tree. Ah, but this has got her thinking. Right? How strange that all the other fruit would be okay to eat but not this one. How… irrational. What reason could there possibly be? And… my… doesn’t it look good?

“You will not certainly die…” he continues. Which, again, was true. God’s warning that death would follow their disobedience was not an idle one… but it also wasn’t a guarantee. The early church fathers, many of them at any rate, agreed that, had Adam and Eve simply come forward and apologized, said they were sorry and repented instead of running off to hide, then God could have kept Eden intact. Satan has qualified God’s statement. He hasn’t outright denied it. His line of attack is not a direct, “Pssh… no, you won’t die. That’s crazy!” It’s far more subtle than that.

In fact.

It’s almost exactly the same.

Basically one word’s worth of difference.

Certainly.

You will not certainly…

Of course the Devil knew full well that repentance is hard, especially for someone who’s never had to do it before, and so the odds that they would figure it out before being cast out of paradise were quite small.

Leaves that part out though doesn’t he?

Half-truths. Obfuscations. Qualifiers.

Those are his weapons.

Never outright lies.

You see… the war in Heaven was a war fought with words.

Don’t misunderstand me here, for from our human frame of reference that sounds a lot less intense than the reality would have been. We, whose speech is diminished and flawed, are like to think that things like missiles and guns are far more deadly weapons than words. But for the angels it is not so. No, their words are pure. Pure absolute manifestations of raw Will and the battle of words between them like the fiery breath of dragons.

That’s actually technically true, by the way. For the angels, the higher ones anyway, literally are dragons.

Again, another thing they don’t go over in Sunday School.

You see, the words Saraph and Saraphim, one of the classes of the higher angels, share their etymology with the word “Serpent.” In Hebrew the words שָׂרָף מְעוֹפֵף‎ … which, when anglicized, are pronounced: sārāf mə‘ōfēf, mean, literally, “fiery flying serpents.” Saraf. Saraphim. Flying serpents… which are fiery.

Sounds a lot like a dragon to me.

And I’m not making this up. In medieval Christianity the identification of Satan with a dragon was taken completely for granted. Of course, as I’ve written about before, the identification of the Devil with a snake or a dragon is present in the Bible at both the beginning and the end of the text, but modern people tend to want to make that into a metaphor. Not so the medieval man. He believed that Satan, with his forked tongue, was an actual, literal dragon, set on the devouring of souls. The Devil was one of these sārāf mə‘ōfēf. A fallen Saraphim. A dragon. Just like he’s depicted in The Book of Revelation.

Back of a Saint Benedict’s Medallion. Catholics still keep these today, but often have no idea what they mean. The letters inscribed on the cross, CSSML NDSMD, stand for “Crux Sacra Sit Mihi Lux: Non Draco Sit Mihi Dux.” Translated: May the Holy Cross be my Light: Let not the Dragon be my Guide.

Now of course many of the other Seraphim did not fall. They remained as they had been created. Holy and pure. And so if one imagines the War in Heaven as a battle of dragons whose very words are actual power…

One would not be so far off the mark.

Listen, it’s even in their names.

For the Devil set himself up as God’s equal. And Michael, the name of the angel which cast him down, means “Who is like God?”

Imagine it. A flash of fire above a forked tongue. The hot breath belching out the blasphemous claim. “I am like God!”

And then a roar. A bolt of power resounding through the skies with the coming rebuttal. “WHO IS LIKE GOD!?”

And with this blow the snake fell. Fell like lightning to the earth.

Many people assume that when God cursed the snake to go on it’s belly he was removing its legs, as though in Eden all serpents had been almost like lizards.

Not so.

God was removing its wings.

Feathered Serpent - Tomb of Nefertari (18th Dynasty, Egypt)

And that my friends is what we are up against. Christianity is a battle against dragons. The words of the dragon are still potent but thankfully in his fallen state the power of his words, like ours, are much diminished. Remember that before he fell Adam was given the power to name the animals. Think about that. Think about what that might mean. Naming the animals.

It’s not so unlike causing them to be.

There’s a reason dragons have been worshipped the world over.

Knowing the nature of your enemy helps a lot because so long as “The Devil” is just a vague general concept about an ill-defined force of badness in your mind you won’t recognize his attacks. No, he is a dragon that had its wings ripped off. A being that once aided in the creation of the cosmos by merely his words alone. His words were then and are now his weapons and he, being an angel, cannot technically lie.

Ah but he is oh so crafty.

“Look… it’s just a clump of cells.”

True. Absolutely true. Of course, Satan omits that you and I and every other non-fetal human are also just clumps of cells. Leave that part out. Just repeat, over and over again, “just a clump of cells, just a clump of cells, just a clump of cells,” and let the Woman’s mind begin wander. Let her imagination do the work. “Would it really be so bad if you killed it?” Just a question. “Your life would be easier.” Factually true. “You’re not ready to be a mom.” 100%.

The Devil is present in the man who manipulates the democratic process by showing you scary images to shock you into a bad decision. He’s in the woman at the HR meeting who has developed all manner of cutey euphemisms to avoid talking about the evil her company does by name. He’s in the politician who came up with the phrase “medical assistance in dying” as a replacement for the word “murder”. He’s there in the fellow who excuses rape as simply “boys being boys.” Obfuscation and re-definitions. Half-truths and statements without context. Leading questions asked in bad faith.

“Do we not have to stand up to terrorists!?” “Are we just going to let them take our freedoms!?” “How hard is it to just be a decent person!?” “Who are we to judge!?”

And just behind all these questions are doors to every kind of death.

But the Devil don’t lie.

And that, on the day of judgement, will be his defense.

Like a lawyer, a prosecutor (indeed, the word “Satan” means, “the accuser”), he will play it all very by the book. “Point,” he will say, “point, if you can, to the law I broke. Where did I ever tell a lie? Whom did I ever kill? What, and from whom, did I ever steal? I just asked questions. I just… talked. They… those people… they did all of the dirty stuff. The blood is on their hands, not mine! I never strangled a man. I never robbed a pensioner of his 401K. I never started a war or set armies on the march. What is my crime!? Tell me Jehovah, if you can! For what am I guilty and for what am I accused!?

Please allow me to introduce myself
I'm a man of wealth and taste
I've been around for a long, long year
Stole many a man's soul and faith
I was 'round when Jesus Christ

Had his moment of doubt and pain
Made damn sure that Pilate
Washed his hands and sealed his fate

Pleased to meet you
Hope you guess my name
But what's puzzlin' you
Is the nature of my game

Stuck around St. Petersburg
When I saw it was a time for a change
Killed the Tsar and his ministers
Anastasia screamed in vain
I rode a tank

Held a general's rank
When the blitzkrieg raged
And the bodies stank
Pleased to meet you
Hope you guess my name, oh yeah

Ah, what's puzzling you
Is the nature of my game, ah yeah
I watched with glee
While your kings and queens
Fought for ten decades
For the gods they made

I shouted out
Who killed the Kennedy's
When after all
It was you and me
Let me please introduce myself
I'm a man of wealth and taste

And I laid traps for troubadours
Who get killed before they reach Bombay

Pleased to meet you
Hope you guess my name.

And God will point at that time to the cross and answer him. “You have not loved. For that you are guilty.”

And that is why the Devil howled.

The sacrifice of Jesus, the coming of the New Testament, showed what the Old Covenant was always supposed to be about. The 10 commandments, all the strange rules, the dictates about how you treat the poor and the foreigner… all that was just meant to be a teacher. A pedagogue as Saint Paul said. All of that stuff was just to model for you what love looks like. But you Satan… you missed the forest for the trees. Clinging to the letter of the law you did not see it’s spirit, and twisted and perverted it into the greatest of evils.

For Love cannot be written down.

It goes beyond words.

Love goes beyond even the realm of the angels and that is why all is passing and has now passed into the hands of Men of Women. We who shall judge angels. For God has become one of us and taught us Love greater than even the angels could understand and we have become wiser than they.

And when the Devil saw it, when he saw what Christ had sacrificed he knew.

He knew he’d got it wrong and that he was damned.

That all his words games would not save him.

“May the Holy Cross be my Light: Let not the Dragon be my Guide.”

Amor Vincit Omnia.