Every year my town holds a contest to see which house has the best Halloween decorations and, let me tell you, some homeowners go absolutely nuts erecting complicated displays ranging from cutesy to downright terrifying. The contest also almost got somebody killed. Last year, the husband of one of my food pantry volunteers fell off the roof of his house when taking down his ghosts and goblins and landed on his head. Miraculously, he survived without serious injury.
“Cops think you pushed him,” I told my volunteer.
“I wasn’t even home!” she cried.
“What a lame alibi. All that tells them is you had it done. Probably checked your banking records first thing.”
“I’d never hurt my husband.”
“When you say ‘I do’” I said. “You not only become a spouse, you also become Suspect Number One.”
“You’re horrible,” she said, kind of laughing.
“Cherchez la femme.” Yeah, my sense of humor can be pretty dark.
The volunteer eventually left (On good terms) so, when I ran into her a couple of days ago, I asked if her hubby risked putting up another display up this year. “Oh yeah,” she said, “But nothing on the roof!” So, last evening, I decided to drive past her house to see what All Hallow’s Night offerings they came up with this year. To my surprise, it had a religious bent. On the lawn were all sorts of monsters and demons but, higher up on the house, were gleaming angels in white – sort of like a mishmash of Hieronymus Bosch and William Blake.
Looking at the decorations, I remembered something a guy named Gregory of Nyssa wrote long ago; that God will eventually save Satan himself. Now, I know this idea will cause the heads of some Bible thumpers to blow clear off their necks, but nowhere in scripture does it explicitly state that Lucifer is forever condemned to an eternity of fire. And, if God is perfectly good as Gregory believed, then The Most High would have to save his greatest enemy or He would not be perfectly good and therefore, not God. Pointing this out just pisses a lot of Christians off because, if Satan can be redeemed then all of us will be, and that just messes with their childish Fast Pass notions of Heaven being some kind of exclusive club. The soteriological logic of paroling the Devil is, however, inescapable.
But wait a minute, isn’t Satan some kind of super powerful evil dude who’s a quadrillion times worse than any human? How can he be saved? When you think about it, anything created – and angels are created beings – are equally inferior to God. To us, Satan is fearsomely huge but, compared to the vastness of The Creator, he might as well be an amoeba. Lucifer might scare us but to God he’s not even a minor annoyance. Infinity not only contains the finite but blows it completely away. Satan, when you think of it, knows he has no chance and that’s probably why he’s so cranky. You know how you hate when your spouse is right? That’s how Satan feels on steroids. Even though it may take an impossibly long time, eventually, he knows he’s going to cave in – but he’ll still carouse out late with the boys until he finally comes to his senses and crawls home. And something tells me God has a lot of patience.
When another Hieronymus Bosch. the fictional hero of Micheal Connelly’s detective novels, is asked why he’s so dedicated to pursuing killers whether the victim was a movie star or a prostitute he always replies, “Everybody counts, or nobody counts.” For me that’s always been the draw of the series’ tarnished and battered homicide cop. Even though Bosch is an agnostic the simple belief that drives him, at least to my ears, is an echo of the Gospel’s promise, that everybody counts. That, in the end, justice will prevail and no soul shall ever be lost. Of course, people cling to the belief that many reprobates – usually people they don’t like – will languish in an eternal hell but, as I’ve written before, that idea is both logically and theologically bankrupt but, calling on Scripture, you have to ask yourself why St. Paul – the greatest authority in the New Testament other than the Gospel itself – never mentioned the alternative to believing in Christ was an eternity of torture. Must’ve slipped his mind. What Paul did say, however, was, “When all things shall be subdued unto Him, then shall the Son Himself also be subject unto Him who put all things under Him, that God may be all in all.” Not some things. All things – including Satan himself.
I’m not saying we or Old Nick are going to have and easy time of it. Justice will be done. Personally, I’m not looking forward to having all my shortcomings spelled out for me but, I imagine it’s kind of like therapy. If you’ve ever been on the couch, you know digging through your past can be painful, but the payoff is worth it. If we are to face a fire of sorts, and if God is truly all good, then it’ll be purgative, not an eternal punishment. Then again, it’s probably a smart idea to live a good life so as to keep your roasting time to a minimum but God, like the father in the parable of the Prodigal son, only wants us to come home. Driving away from the Halloween display, I was reminded that we are all indeed doomed – to be happy.
No wonder Satan’s pissed.
