Theology for the Masses

This post has actually taken a different route than I originally intended. [1] After examining the text, itself, I want to say that I think the Calvinist argument from this text has more legitimacy than I originally thought. However, I cannot affirm the implications of their arguments. I believe Calvinists and Arminians can both affirm the Calvinist reading to some degree, but I believe the implications of said reading is where we will part ways – necessarily.

The text is clear that God intended to ultimately bring about the salvation of Jacob’s house through the selling of Joseph into slavery. This is little different than God using the evil actions of Pilate to bring about the crucifixion of Jesus. In both cases God has a plan in mind and he uses the evil actions of men to work out that plan. The goal is always determined.

However, again, this does not necessarily entail that God determines the evil actions themselves. Notice in our passage, Genesis 50:20, that God has intentions that are his own (to bring about good) and the brothers have intentions all their own (to work evil). That God fully knows their actions and intends to use them to bring about his original plan is not problematic. God intended to have Joseph be the means by which Jacob’s household was saved. And God, possibly, even made Joseph ready to be the savior through suffering. But, the evil actions of Joseph’s brothers are their own and the text never connects God’s determination with their actions.

I truly think this distinction is subtle enough that almost everyone can get on board with it. For those who can’t…

Even if we fully affirm the suggestion that this passage points to God actually ordaining/determining the actions of the brothers, here are some consequences which I think are unavoidable and undesirable.

Necessary, Yet Undesirable, Implications of a Purely Calvinistic Reading of this Text:

First, humans are not to be held responsible for their immoral actions.

Why do I say this? Because in the context of this passage, Joseph’s brothers think Joseph is going to punish them for their evil deeds. But Joseph, in light of his understanding of God’s sovereignty and ultimate purposes of salvation, affirms that they will not be punished. They are not to be held responsible precisely because God was the determiner of their deeds. The responsibility of the human agents, then, is minimized. When God acts deterministically, in this passage, the human agents through whom he acts are not held liable. As Joseph says, “So then, don’t be afraid. I will provide for you and your children.” (vs. 21) He will not hold them accountable.

Second, in light of the first point:

If the determinist perspective is true, when a child is molested or a genocide breaks out, not only can we not hold the violators accountable for their actions, but we also must remind the victims that it was God’s action that brought this about and therefore they should not be angry at the oppressors.

These two consequences, to me, are the logical end of using this passage as a starting point for how God universally works. I say, rather, that this passage is an exception which proves the rule and should not be taken as normative.

Determination and What is Normative:

Finally, even if I’m wrong here – and Lord knows I always have the potential for that – there’s a sense in which there is still no need for this text to be normative. That is, it is hermeneutically fallacious to take a single text and make it normative for the way God must always operate. In other words, it is wrong to take a specific statement (especially a contestable one like this!) and universalize it. Both Arminians and Open Theists affirm that God does, in fact, determine certain things (such as the death of Jesus on the cross which happened before the foundation of the world!). But that these things are noted in this way suggests to me that they are not normative. Rather, God’s determinative actions are the exceptions that prove the rule.

Contextually, this means that the extraordinary act of God in saving Jacob’s family meant that He took an extraordinary amount of action in this event. He is demonstrating His providential hand in redemptive history by ensuring that Jacob’s family be saved. Therefore, as Greg Boyd notes, “Under these extraordinary circumstances it should not surprise us to find God involved in extraordinary ways. This text should therefore not be taken as a proof text of how God usually, let alone always, operates.”

Proving Their Point: What Calvinists Need to Textually Demonstrate the Superiority of Their Answer:

In the end, however, I would agree with anyone who says that I did not prove Arminianism from this passage! I have no problem with such a critique. As I said, the Calvinist reading is possible and even likely (on a restricted, localized level). But I believe they are imparting a larger theological/philosophical reading onto this text to come to the conclusion they have. For my part, I think the “text says nothing nearly precise enough to support a particular theory of sovereignty and human freedom to the exclusion of all other competing accounts.” [2]

If Calvinists want to prove their position from this text, to the exclusion of others, they need to provide the following evidence:

They need to provide a text which says explicitly that God caused Joseph’s brothers to have feelings of jealousy (or at least motivated their hearts to have those feelings – i.e. similar to the claims they make about Pharaoh in Exodus).

They need to provide a text which connects the God-determined jealousy with their actions of selling Joseph into slavery.

Demonstrate more clearly the hermeneutical leap from this localized event to a universalized truth

Demonstrate clearly how universalizing this specific story’s truth won’t lead to a lack of accountability for evil actions perpetuated by humans. (I know these Calvinists believe humans are accountable, but I want to know how they get around the lack of accountability in this, their classical text.)

Conclusion:

I actually don’t find the Calvinist reading here all that exegetically wrong. I think their implications from their exegesis, however, are where their errors lie. Did God sovereignly act in the events of Joseph’s brothers? Yes! He intended to bring good out of them. However, this in no way entails 1. That God determined their actions or the evil of their actions, or 2. That, even if he did determine their evil actions, God’s actions here are normative and universal. These are inferences that the text simply does not support. To me, these conclusions come about because of a larger philo-theological framework guiding their interpretation. Indeed, if they took their inferences to the logical conclusion, they end up with no human responsibility – which is exactly what Arminians/Open Theists have been complaining about for years.

In the end, I agree with self-proclaimed Calvinist Walter Brueggemann concerning this text, “This phrase has been endlessly problematic in theological interpretation, as it has lent itself to all kinds of scholastic notions of a blueprint for determinism…[yet] the Old Testament includes no notion of a plan in such a specific and rigid sense.” [3]   In other words, it’s not necessarily that the Calvinist’s exegesis here is lacking, but more that they read too much into this text – whether it be through reading their notions of soft-determinism onto a text which simply can’t bare that weight OR through universalizing a very localized incident.

1. I want to thank Hank over at Think Wink for his helpful response to my original post. I hope here to find some common ground, though, of course, there will always be some disagreement. Hopefully it will become smaller and smaller, though, as we analyze the text. [↩]
2. Walls, Dongell, 150. [↩]
3. Walter Brueggemann, Theology of the Old Testament. 355. I say self-identified b/c Brueggemann has called himself a Calvinist, but I’m not so sure most Calvinists will identify with him. [↩]

Introduction
In another post on God seeking his own glory, Tom and I had a wonderful discussion on some different texts that really had this issue at heart. One text that came up was Genesis 50:20 which reads,

As for you, you meant to harm me, but God intended it for a good purpose, so he could preserve the lives of many people, as you can see this day. (NET)

To give his take, Tom has written a two-post reply (the second post has yet to be put up as I write this). This is my response to what he wrote. My response is in two areas: a.) textual and b.) theological. I am going to put both responses here in this one post so forgive the length if it gets long. continue reading…

Keith Ward, in chapter 6 of Is Religion Dangerous, deals with the issue of morality and the Bible.  He addresses the charge that religious morality is based on an unthinking acceptance of old religious laws.  As his example, he brings up one of the most notorious of religious injunctions – Deuteronomy 20:15-18.

“But these instructions apply only to distant towns, not to the towns of the nations in the land you will enter. 16 In those towns that the Lord your God is giving you as a special possession, destroy every living thing. You must completely destroy the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites, just as the Lord your God has commanded you.  This will prevent the people of the land from teaching you to imitate their detestable customs in the worship of their gods, which would cause you to sin deeply against the Lord your God.

Geno-what did you say?  Isn’t that the very piece of evidence that we use to indict the Nazi’s, their attempted genocide of the Jews?  If we are to be morally consistent, shouldn’t we reject this piece of the Old Testament and anything/anyone that relies on this passage/the book/the collection of books that uses it.  Any religion that accepts this as part of their canon (read: Jews and Christians) are guilty of blindly basing their morality on old and outdated religious laws.  There are three ways that religious adherents have approached this problem. 

Approach One : The Morally Primitive Imagining History

This approach looks at the historical record first.  They notice that the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites keep popping back up in the narrative and the archeological record.  As such, the ban was not actually implemented.  Secondarily, they note that the text itself was “written” [1] around 700BCE, but are describing events that are much, much older.  Taking these two points in tandem, they hypothesize that scribes and priests wrote into the narrative God commanding the slaughter of “present day” rival groups to delegitimize any territorial claims they might have.  This moral tradition (that it is ok to slaughter your opponents wholesale for the protection of your group) is morally primitive and is later corrected by the Prophets. [2]  

Pros:

• The Genocide did not happen historically
• God is not a mass murderer

Cons:

• The Text is a pack of lies
• The authors of our text are a bunch of evil liars

Approach Two: A Unique Situation

This next approach bites the bullet(s).  They say – our text says that God gave the command.  However, this is a unique situation and not universally applicable.  God only intended it for the Israelites in this particular situation, which was necessary for the perpetuation of the Israelites.  We see that it is unique because of all of the other moral injunctions in the Hebrew Bible contradict “the Ban.”  This allows us to maintain the integrity of the text while cutting off this law from the others that we can abstract moral principles from.  It was said and it happened [3] but it was only for one situation and one time.

Pros:

• Maintains the integrity of the text and its authors
• The Ban was a one-time affair and not repeatable nor abstractable.

Cons:

• God is evil and bipolar
• We have mass murderers in our religious tradition.

Option Two point Five: A developing God

Ward does not mention this, but it is possible that God is developing along with his creation.  In order for him to know how and what to be and act, he must have something to act and be contrasted against.  After all, how can I know what red is if I have never seen it?  Likewise, how can God know what wrong is unless he has done it?  This is a Hegelian view of God.  Under this view, God had not fully developed his morals yet.  The narrative reflects God’s moral at that point in time.  Later on his morals developed and he understood that all life had value and that it was wrong of him to order the genocides.

Pros:

• God was not evil – only immature and is now mature through his interaction with his creation
• Maintains the integrity of the text

Cons:

• God is a developing being and is not always right and moral

Approach Three: Morally Primitive People Acting on a Self-Correcting Partial Understanding of God

This third approach tries to address the weaknesses of the other two.  It suggests that we have a roughly accurate reporting of what these people think was happening.  That is to say, the ancient Israelites thought that God wanted them to purge all peoples who threatened their identity.  After all, surviving and maintaining your identity was an incredibly difficult thing to do in the ancient world – something we cannot fully grasp in this blessed age of comfort and inconvenience.  They had part of God figured out – that she wants total devotion, but they also had part of him wrong – that he has deemed all human lives of worth and the wholesale slaughter of peoples is wrong.  In time, they would discover more and more about God and come to understand this, but at this time in their development, they had not reached this understanding.   There is some perception of the divine will, but a limited one.  Under this interpretive model, the Bible contains humanity’s developing understanding of God.

Pros:

• God is not evil
• Maintains the integrity of the text and the developing moral understanding of its authors
• The Ban was based on a partial but flawed understanding of God

Cons:

• The Bible is something to be wrestled with, not a direct perfect view of God and its interaction with history (can’t take it at face value)

Out of these three [4] views that Ward presents, I am uncertain as to which I follow.  My background tells me that all live is Gods and he can do with it as he pleases.  Based off of that, option two seems the most viable.  However, I also maintain that God is morally consistent and always has been.  This forces me to at least consider option three.  If I am forced to choose, this is the option I am going with right now, even though I am uncomfortable with how this view forces me to hold the Bible.  As Ward notes on page 138, “Believers have no magical route to moral certainty, nothing that undercuts the hard process of moral analysis and reflection.”  But it is the same for nonbelievers.  They have to give an account of how life can have meaning in the face of nothingness – or at least fleetingness.  If my flame flickers and then is snuffed out – does it really matter what it burned while it was here?  I am not saying atheists cannot give such an account [5] – only noting that it too is a path forged through analysis and reflection and is not self-evident.

1. that is, the “final” version was edited together around this time – not that these traditions were invented at this time. the traditions behind the text are much, much older [↩]
2. see Ezekiel 18:20 [↩]
3. or at least was attempted [↩]
4. four, if you add 2.5, the one that I added [↩]
5. even though I freely admit that I ultimately reject their account [↩]

To all the Christian Pacifists out there – How do you interpret Romans 13:1-7, especially verse 4?

Let every person be subject to the governing authorities; for there is no authority except from God, and those authorities that exist have been instituted by God.  Therefore whoever resists authority resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment.  For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Do you wish to have no fear of the authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive its approval; for it is God’s servant for your good. But if you do what is wrong, you should be afraid, for the authority does not bear the sword in vain! It is the servant of God to execute wrath on the wrongdoer. Therefore one must be subject, not only because of wrath but also because of conscience.

For the same reason you also pay taxes, for the authorities are God’s servants, busy with this very thing.  Pay to all what is due them– taxes to whom taxes are due, revenue to whom revenue is due, respect to whom respect is due, honor to whom honor is due. (NRSV)

I read this and I see a justification for violence, an avenger (ἔκδικος) that uses the sword (μάχαιπαν), by the state as God’s agent of punishment on Earth.  I’ve only glanced around at this, but ἔκδικος, from ἐκδικία, the word for vengeance, is the word for and avenger or punisher.  It only shows up elsewhere in Paul’s writings as an avenger of wrongs in 1 Thessalonians 4:6 where Paul is warning against exploiting other Christians because the Lord is an avenger of wrongs.  Μάχαιπαν, the word for sword, shows up both literally, such as in Acts 16:27, and figuratively, such as in Ephesians 6:17.  Also, worthy of noting, is that Rome was a perpetrator of all kinds of evil, and yet, Paul is still giving this advice.  Oppressive governments, through their physical acts of violence, are being called agents of God’s justice in the world.  Furthermore, the act of resisting these governments will incur God’s judgement!  What are we to do with this?  Is this a case of the religion of Jesus being pitted against the religion of Paul? The closest parallel I can think of is Matthew 22:15-22 – the whole “give to Caesar what is Caesar’s” thing – which seems to be in agreement with the above.  But then again how do we unify those teachings with the Sermon on the Mount?  Do we just not worry about the government and work solely through the Kingdom of God for justice in this world? (which is what I lead towards)

Additionally, as a historian, I see this section of Romans as Paul pleading for the Christians there and throughout time to not make themselves a target for Roman persecution thereby giving this fledging movement a chance at surviving.

What about you?  I am curious as to how other’s view this.  Is Paul giving in?  Is he being sneaky?  Should Christian pacifists be cool with governments, even oppressive ones, meting out punishments on God’s behalf in this world?  I am really interested in how some of our self-proclaimed Pacifists, such as Dave, Tom, JR, and Scott, deal with this.

Last week I linked to an article entitled “Is Yahweh a Moral Monster?” which was 30 pages long – much too long for most people to read.  Today the Codex has published a summary of the article which is about 90% shorter and still present’s the arguments contained therein with little commentary.  Check it out.

Read ::  Yahweh – A Moral Monster? Not According to Copan

Do you buy it? Let us know below!

A few days ago I linked to a an article that addressed the “evil” god found in the Old Testament.  Throughout history different Christians have dealt with the sanctioned genocides and murder of infants etcetera in a variety of different ways.  Some people say God can kill anyone he wants and have anyone kill anyone he wants because he is lord over all.  Others say that god as portrayed in the Old Testament is a different god than the God in the New Testament.  Quite a few Christian groups during the first few centuries after the resurrection were attracted to this idea.  Other people use this issue to deconstruct, discredit, and ridicule Christianity, constructing Christianity as a fragile house of cards as if criticizing one or several things throughout the 4000+ year history/literary development of our faith negates everything else.  With that said though, we Christians need to wade through these issues because we risk becoming that house of cards if we ignore or gloss over this problem. 

Over the last few months, Greg Boyd’s has started to look at these issues.  Tom alerted me to Boyd’s project yesterday; here is Greg’s description of the problem and his aims:

What intensifies this problem even more is that it’s not like Psalms 137 is an isolated case of celebrated violence in the Old Testament. It’s found all over the place! The worst episodes happened when the Israelites enter the promised land. As they approached certain cities, the Israelites were commanded — by God — to slaughter men, women, children and even the animals! Yahweh is aiming at complete genocide of the Canaanite people. Could anything be more antithetical to what we learn about God in Jesus Christ? Honestly (we’ve got to be honest here, even if it hurts) doesn’t this depiction of God look more like the God of Osama Bin Laden than the Father of Jesus Christ?

In my opinion, this is the most challenging objection to the Christian faith and most difficult theological question of the Christian faith. It’s a problem I want to wrestle with in my next few posts. But I want you to be forewarned: If you think I’m going to have nice and tidy answers to this question, you’re going to be disappointed. I don’t. I’m still in process, entertaining a number of possibilities.

So far Boyd has written thirteen posts exploring this topic.  I look forward to reading through them in the near future.

1. Divinely Inspired Infanticide and Genocide?
2. What’s at Stake in Trying to Explain the Violent God of the Old Testament?
3. The Violent Strand of the Old Testament and Our Picture of God
4. OT Violence and Christian Behavior
5. Could Old Testament Warriors Have Been Mistaken?
6. A Defense of Eller’s Thesis
7. A Critique of Eller’s Thesis
8. Craigie: The Problem of War in the Old Testament, Part I
9. Revealing the Horror of War: Review of Craigie, Part II.
10. A Negative Object Lesson: Review of Craigie III
11. “Shadow” and “Reality”
12. Review of Ehrman’s "God’s Problem"
13. The Teleological Exegetical Principle and O.T. Violence

Perhaps the best argument leveled against Judaism and Christianity is the angry child of a god that people construct out of choice samples of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament. These criticisms should not be taken lightly nor should the texts they reference be whitewashed. 

To this end, I came across an article via the Codex that I plan on reading tomorrow (for it is 2:11AM and early evening naps should be avoided, no matter how crappy one feels) entitled Is Yahweh a Moral Monster?:The New Atheists and Old Testament Ethics which takes a critical look at the claims of the “New Atheists” and attempts to construct and honest and workable Christian reply to such criticisms.  Take a look online via the link in the preceding paragraph, or download the 30 pages of textual goodness in this pdf. 

While you are reading that article, I recommend you also read the one which referenced it over at the Codex entitled Yahweh – a Moral Monster?, which begins a discussion on the Canaanite genocide.

In the book of Job, written sometime between the early sixth and late fifth century BCE, God describes Job as a blameless and upright man who fears God and turns away from evil.  What is such a man like?  If we were to be blameless and God fearing, what sort of things ought we do?

I don’t know about you, but growing up I often imagined good ole Job as a quiet, monkly figure who amassed wealth and other manifestations of favor from God through smart and godly business practices.  I imagined his actions as self-contained.  He surely was righteous because he did no wrong, a passive righteousness, a lack of sin.  Similarly, I conceived personal righteousness in the same terms – if I don’t actively sin, I am being righteous.  Always righteousness was framed in terms of protecting it from sin.

Job considers righteousness as something completely different. Job, in verse 14 of chapter 29, poetically links righteousness and justice, saying:

I put on righteousness and it clothed me;

     my justice was like a robe and a turban.

While it makes perfect sense in retrospect, it something that I never really considered before. Just as robes and turbans clothe a person, justice the the action of the righteous.  Lets look around this verse and see how Job was righteous.

• delivered the poor who cried and orphan who had no helper
• blessed the wretched
• caused the widow to sing for joy
• eyes to the blind
• feet to the lame
• father to the needy
• championed the cause of the stranger
• broke the fangs of the unrighteous (those acting unjustly, apparently)
• made the unrighteous drop their prey (those who were people oppressed) from their teeth

How different this is from what I used to imagine?  Job is not cloistered, separated from society, being a “perfect” individual.  Here he is actively engaged with those around him, helping those in need and opposing those who oppress.  He is righteous because he takes an active stance against sin in the world.  Thus, if we are to be righteous, we must conceive righteousness in the same terms – it is not enough to not actively sin, we must act for divine justice on earth.  It is not our righteousness that needs protecting from sin – it should be sin (or injustice in the world) than need fear our righteousness!

Addendum:  As Hank rightfully pointed out, I am not talking about how we obtain righteousness, instead I am talking about how we show our righteousness.  We are declared righteous by God through no deed nor merit on our part – but, we need to be righteous instead of trying to protect our righteousness.

here’s a thought I had a few days ago…

…rough and unexamined, off the top of my head.

your thoughts/critiques?

“The Kingdom of God is the only state that will endure eternally. Thus, any war undertaken by any other state to preserve itself is unjust because that state will not endure anyway. The only kingdom we can justly defend is the Kingdom of God, and the final, decisive battle for that kingdom was fought at the Cross. We already won. Thus, any war we undertake to preserve the kingdom of God is also unjust.”

* this does not include, obviously, wars fought to protect the powerless (if that has ever actually happened).

Wink, over at Parableman, has put up and interesting series that I have not had made the time to for fully read through on Annihilationism vs Eternal Conscious Suffering.

Here are the posts up so far:

1. The Annihilationism Debate
2. Infinite Suffering: contra tradition
3. Avoiding the plain meaning
4. Complete Harmony: contra Annihilationism
5. Infinite harm
6. Obligatory Grace
7. Annihilationism and Eternal Conscious Suffering (preview only, not final version)

While we are hawking the material over at Parableman, I’d like to point you all do a cursory discussion about Open Theism and the Hardening of Pharoh’s heart.

This morning Parableman takes a look at a serious and often overlooked aspect of Open Theism. It is Jeremy’s assertion that Open Theism implies that good humans changed the mind of a God who was about to commit acts of evil. This ramification of Open Theism is more threatening to the classical theology’s view of God than the idea that God is mutable.

Check it out here: Parableman: Open Theism and Divine Immorality

As I was studying me some Attic Greek tonight I was reminded of Hank’s retranslation of John 3:16. Hank did an excellent 5-part series on this verse and went through the translation process step-by-step. I would recommend reading reading through each of the five parts (one two three four five) to get a feel for the translation process.

His translation reads as follows:

“Thus in this manner God loved the world that he gave his one and only Son so that everyone that is believing in him will never perish but have life forever.”

I especially like two of his changes/emphases. First, Hank rightly translates the “so” in the phrase “For God so loved the world…” as “in this manner.” It describes how the love of God was shown to the world. God showed his love through a selfless sacrificial act.

The second aspect that I appreciated was Hank’s emphasis on the middle voice of ἀπόληται, or to perish. The emphasis on the middle voice demonstrates that the perishing was a result of our own actions. Restated, we perish ourselves. It demonstrates that although we have shot our selves in the foot, God action of love for us is his providing a way into eternal life despite our shooting of our own foot.

The only thing I would really change about his translation is restoring the subjunctive forms of “will never perish” and “have” in the last two clauses. The verbs are in the subjunctive form, which describe possible worlds, not actualized ones. Those that believe, by their believing enter into this possible world where they do not perish and instead have eternal life. This world is make possible by God’s giving of his son, Jesus.

My changes would read as follows:

“Thus in this manner God loved the world that he gave his one and only Son so that everyone that is believing in him might never perish but might have life forever.”

After reading the following from reading Brad’s post on predestination:

“According to Edwards, a human being is not only free to choose what he desires but he must choose what he desires to be able to choose at all. This means that every choice is free and every choice is determined. But determined does not mean that some external force coerces the will. Rather it refers to one”s internal motivation or desire. In short, our choices are determined by our desires”

E. I. Sanchez of the Christian Alert, who is studying the Calvinistic framework, has the following questions:

1) How does Human Nature relate to “Desires”?

2) How am I responsible for my Sin when he has predestined my “human nature” to be sinful?

3) How do we explain this to unbelievers?

I am interested in how the Calvinists answer this question. I think that the answers to these questions are important in understanding and making sense of the Calvinistic framework.

At my blog, I wrote a post entitled “Does the God in American Evangelicalism Produce Fear?” When we look around, we can see that our church is divided and weak. The Anglican Communion and the PCUSA have rejected the authority of the Bible as the sole authority for the church. The church won’t preach the fullness of the Word in an expositional format (verse by verse) and is afraid to call out society on its sin. Instead, we hear pop psychology lectures or shallow topical sermons that are too pragmatic and ignore the deep rich doctrines.

My question to the bloggers here on this site, and all visitors to my site or this site, is why is the church so weak? In my post at my site I answer the question with the fact that God is not so sovereign to inspire genuine fear and awe in us to love him and delight in him alone. Do you agree with my assessment? If so, do you agree with my answer, or what do you think the reason is for why the church is in this state? If not, why do you disagree with my assessment of the situation of the church?

ricoblog :: Reading Multiple Translations is Good; or, Remembering that the Devil has No Power

This excerpt from Hermas also reminds me of a bit of a pet peeve of mine. Have you ever been in a Bible study where folks end up dwelling on “Satan” as if he is an omnipotent and omnipresent deity wreaking havoc in all areas of everyones life simultaneously? Its easy to think so; but I much rather think that many of the things in life that folks like to ascribe to “Satan” are really the result of our struggle against sin. I really don’t think the prince of darkness has much personal interest in me; he can surely focus his non-omniscience and non-omnipresence elsewhere to much greater effect. Instead of focusing on attribution of things to “Satan” whom I am much more comfy just calling “the enemy”, we should instead focus our efforts on believing and serving the one true God.

That just summed up my thoughts on the same pet peeve.