Satan was introduced to test Job, and then Job’s suffering is justified by the Lord’s omnipotence, not omniscience or omnipresence. This is the argument laid out in the Bible as to why one should fear God. Did Job have to curse God for Satan to make his point?
Satan Allowed to Test Job
6 Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came among them. 7 The Lord said to Satan, “From where have you come?” Satan answered the Lord and said, “From going to and fro on the earth, and from walking up and down on it.” 8 And the Lord said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, who fears God and turns away from evil?” 9 Then Satan answered the Lord and said, “Does Job fear God for no reason? 10 Have you not put a hedge around him and his house and all that he has, on every side? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land. 11 But stretch out your hand and touch all that he has, and he will curse you to your face.” 12 And the Lord said to Satan, “Behold, all that he has is in your hand. Only against him do not stretch out your hand.” So Satan went out from the presence of the Lord.
42 Job replied to the Lord:
2 “I know that you can do anything and nothing that you plan is impossible. 3 You asked, ‘Who is this that darkens counsel without knowledge?’ Well now, I have talked about what I don’t understand— awesome things beyond me that I don’t know. 4 Listen now, and I will speak for myself; I’ll interrogate you and then inform me. 5 I’ve heard you with my ears; and now I’ve seen you with my eyes. 6 As a result, I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes.”
For those out there who only read headlines, the short of it is that many Satanists are rarely actually worshipers of Satan like a deity, many of them are just proactive atheists who have adopted the most abhorrent religious identity possible to Christians to provide necessary pushback against attempts at making the USA a Christian nation.
The same people who scream relentlessly about supporting the constitution for issues like gun control, seem just fine with abandoning the 1st amendment’s Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clauses. So Satanists are forcing Christians to declare their choices out loud. If you’re going to say the law should allow religion to be part of government, then you have to be fine with all religions being involved, OR you have to admit that you don’t respect the USA’s founding principles and documents. You can’t have it both ways.
There is not so much Satanism being promoted here as much as a spotlight on hypocrisy and I’m all in for it.
I don’t know if CoS is tax exempt, TST is 100%. CoS may even disagree with being exempt, they are pretty contrarian seemingly as a founding principal (no shade, all respect).
I really like the efforts to help against these horrible fat right policies and showing the double standards. But calling yourself a satanist when you actually don’t worship satan is just lame.
Prosperity given by divine, therefore the rightful and just, stands in the direct oppositition of every single base belief of Satanism. Human is a the center, there is no divine. Satanism equires respect for others to be given, and expected from others. Boundaries to be respected. Advances need permission.
Will of god, the prosperity, is just an excuse to forego any compassion for others. Therefore respect.
If you break boundaries, show no respect, you are to be destroyed.
Even the magic to achieve goals, desires and such. Even this stands against the prosperity by divine. Satanism discards divine intervention. It is a human action.
I’m a Satanist and affiliated with neither CoS or TST. The leadership of TST are not good people. One of them tried to make himself the god of a cargo cult and the other has a history of making racist, antisemitic and ablist statements. He also owned a website about eugenics until 2018.
That video I linked to is long but it is very well sourced and I hope might give you a bit more insight into who you’re supporting if you choose to join or donate to them. There’s a lot of comments under the video from ex-TST members, including Ministers and Chapter Heads who’ve been badly burnt by TST.
No. They are saying if group A, who has a long history of widespread pedophilia protection is going to get in, group B, who’s biggest issues are these, isn’t worth proactively trying to stop, especially when they both align on the principal at hand.
My take on that is that is that its entirely possible to disagree with and not support any number of bad groups. I definitely wouldn’t want my kids exposed to either group.
The issues raised in this story are to do with education, but the issues with both groups are concerning and go beyond education. I’m not sure not opposing one of them because they’re not as established as the other or less awful than the other is really valid. Being less awful is not equal to not awful at all.
They don’t want to be their either, the point is to force the state’s hand to either back off on religion in school, or have them pass unarguably unconstitutional laws and then rake them over it. There is also no perfect hero, or solution, so I am willing to not appose an organization that is working towards getting both parties kicked out, despite being run by assholes. They are just assholes, the other are monsters.
No, they’re not just assholes. If they were just that, nobody would give a shit. I understand what you think they’re doing and I understand why you think it’s a good thing. As I said to someone else, there’s literally no way for anyone to summarise everything. You can either watch it or not, I can’t make you.
It’s an oddity of the whole situation that 90% of the ‘ordinary’ members of TST are good people who want good things, but the owners of TST (and they are the owners, TST is also a registered business as well as a tax-exempt religion) are really not and they have absolute control over it.
If someone happens upon this around 7pm ET (USA - i think thats 11pm UTC) tonight (5/17) and can remind me, me and my ADHD would greatly appreciate it.
Sorry to ask, but could someone summarize the video? Cannot watch it rn, and will probably forget later.
That said, all organizations face this kind of “what’s the orgs vision or character” challenge. Thats why good leadership is important. Sometimes it’s best to cut loses and reorganize, and also market how you’re different now.
Supporting eugenics in any form is unconscionable, but people make mistakes and can grow from them. There are examples of KKK members who became activists in other direction, and we shouldn’t lock people in to their past bad decisions. I encourage the idea of “reformed racists”.
As asinine as I think the idea of “Satan” is in general, I see value in contenders and challengers to established religious authorities. As a rule, we should remove religion from policy making.
Honestly, that feels impossible - there’s just so much there’s no way to summarise it neatly. And it goes way, way beyond just the racism eugenics, antisemitism etc. There’s the way TST are using the law as a weapon, the numerous comments about how women are treated the higher up the org you get. I really don’t know how to summarise it all.
Up voting for linking to Dead Domain. It’s a good video with a lot of time taken to go over the various issues. Certainly doesn’t cover absolutely everything, but does a good job showing why TST ends up being more marketing than actual good.
A less problematic Satanist org fighting the good fight would be nice
This is the way. We need a religion to rally around to push a left agenda the way the right does. They want to twist the constitution by manipulating their beliefs to their agenda, so can we.
Fuck church of satan, apparently TST leader/s is/are a somewhat shitty person? IDK, haven’t looked, don’t care, the temple collectively is still pretty based though.
Good on you. It’s always refreshing to hear from Christian folks who have a strong enough moral compass to steer away from (let alone actively support direct opponents of) some of the more zealous or bigoted views which unfortunately seem to be growing stronger in the Christian community as of late.
I say this from the outside looking in, as I’ve never been associated with any church myself, so this viewpoint of mine may just be the result of an increasingly active vocal minority.
But I’m very curious to hear your experience as someone within the community; have you yourself seen growth in these types of zealous or bigoted views in the past several years within the Christian Community? Things like stronger, more vocal, or even unwavering support of anti-abortion or anti-LGBTQ laws/practices?
I’m a United Methodist and former clergy, and the last 5 years have been whiplash.
We’ve spent 50 years trying to make the denomination more inclusive and accepting towards homosexuals, but for some organizational reasons (primarily a heavy-African vote in the worldwide governing body of the church) it’s been difficult, and the more “traditional” wing of the church has been dragging us backwards.
We have our global conference (basically the legislative session of the church) every 4 years. In 2012 it got very heated. In 2016 the debate got downright nasty to the point where they had to calm a special session just to debate homosexuality in 2019 simply so the church could move on with the rest of the conference.
2019 was really, really bad. The traditionalists got their way on every issue.
The biggest blow was changing how church trials worked. As it was, “practicing” homosexuals were barred from the clergy, and officiating over a gay marriage was a de-frockable offense under church law. But that wasn’t that bad in reality, because Methodist Clergy are very educated and overwhelmingly disagreed with the rules, so when it came to a church trial the jury (made up of other clergy) refused to punish. In 2019, they changed the rule to remove clergy’s option to not punish.
The only ray of hope was the recommendation of a path to allow individual churches to leave the church but keep their land. It was basically the admission that the church was going to go through a schism. It looked for all the world that those who wanted to be more inclusive would have to start a new denomination.
But then the weirdest thing happened.
The ultra-conservatives were still mad even though they’d won. They were so mad, in fact, that they wanted to get rid of those who had opposed them. But there was no way to kick out churches who weren’t controlled by Fox News. So they huffed and puffed and got so angry they decided to start their own super-bigoted Republican church anyway. They called it the Global Methodist Church since they figured the rest of the world would follow them and they left the denomination starting in 2021 when the path for disaffiliation opened up. In all, they got about a quarter of the US churches - mostly small rural churches that depended heavily on funding from the larger organization they were leaving…
A few weeks ago the 2024 conference was held. Due to Vivid it was the first real conference we’d had since 2016.
Gay marriage, gay clergy, and accepting homosexuality as being a-OK all passed with over 90% support. Everyone who had voted against it before had either left the denomination or been so repulsed by the fringe actors who had that they changed their position.
Wow. Yeah that sounds like a rough ride, I’m sorry you and so many others were dragged through the coals like that for so long. It sounds like things were at a point where a split like that was probably necessary unfortunately, maybe even entirely unavoidable from the sound of it.
Thanks for sharing your experience, and congratulations on a more unified (and moral) stance on these issues. I hope your church can finally and more easily move forward without the weight of the interference, pressure, and influence these fringe actors had been exercising in the past several years.
I broke down in tears when the changes passed. Just a few years ago we were positive we’d have to leave the denomination to get change, but then the bad actors left instead, so the thousands of congregations “in the middle” that didn’t want to leave their historic denomination didn’t have to, so in the end way more churches are officially accepting of homosexuality.
The new rule for marriage is 2 consenting adults, where it used to be a man and a woman. So we also managed to officially prohibit child marriage in the church. On the US side that was mostly from high school kids getting married because the girlfriend got pregnant. The church will no longer recognize or participate in those marriages.
It also clarifies that clergy are free to perform or refuse to perform any marriage ceremony of 2 consenting adults, so homophobic clergy aren’t required to perform the ceremony. I’m fine with that, because a preacher performing a wedding should support the marriage, and a gay couple should know that the person performing the ceremony is supportive of the union.
I can only imagine the feeling of having such a weight lifted off your shoulders and conscience. It must feel almost like a fresh start, because in a way it is. Or at least that’s how it sounds to me, being able to progress in a meaningful way without such major hindrances.
I’m glad to hear you got to see such a favourable outcome after such a long and turbulent period, and I’m genuinely happy for you and your church, that you get to make progress in making your community better for everyone. It sounds like you all have the best of things to look forward to already, but I wish you all the best anyway.
Good news has been a bit hard to come by lately, so it’s extraordinarily refreshing to hear some for a change. So cheers, and thanks again for sharing.
Don’t really need the Satanists. Just tell conservatives that anything they want to mandate that is Christian can also/ will be done for Muslims. Notice how the war on Chirstmas always heats up around the time Ramadan coincides with it?
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