John 8:44 in the Christians’ Bible says of Satan, “When he lies he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies.”  These words are attributed to Jesus Christ; but what are we to make of them?  Is Satan indeed the father of lies?  Or is it not more accurate to point the finger of blame at the One who made Satan, and Satan’s character?  Is it not more correct to state that God is the father of lies?  God, after all, made Satan, and made Satan to be what he is.  God, in His infinite wisdom, in His absolute omniscience that spans all of time altogether, this God made Satan, had foreknowledge of Satan’s inclinations, his character, indeed of all his actions and words.  Long before God created Adam and Eve in His own image, He knew what Satan would do.  In fact, God made Satan to do what Satan did.  So is it not rather God who is the father of lies?  The One who made the liar and instilled in him the capacity to lie cannot be dismissed as a mere interested party.

Satan was “set-up” by God.  Satan was, before he was created, ordained to lead the human race to eternal damnation.  As God foresaw, as God preordained, Satan was created to lead the rebellion in heaven and on Earth.  For what?  For the amusement of God?  Is all of the pain and suffering we endure God’s cosmic joke that He tells Himself to provoke omnipotent laughter?  What other conclusion can we reach?

Do not be distracted by pious theologians tugging at your sleeve and bidding you to look to the cross of Christ for your answer.  For that, too, is an artifice of God.  There is no answer to evil to be found  in the cross.  There is only another person of the Holy Trinity hanging as an omnipotent voyeur – aping the behavior of humankind, mocking us in our weakness as He knew in His wisdom that, unlike us, He would experience death as a temporary state.  No, the cross provides no answers – only more questions as we eternally fail to understand the character of our Creator.

God is capricious.  He showers blessings and curses wherever He wills.  As He breaks our kneecap He calls upon us to say, “Thank-you, Lord, may I please have another?”  Another what?  Another blow to beat us down.  We cannot comprehend a being so utterly alien as God.  His thoughts are not our thoughts, nor are His ways our ways.  God is profoundly unknowable.  So to mortals He appears capricious.  We observe symptoms of God’s pathology – we cannot observe God.

Satan is evil.  God created Satan.  Therefore God created evil.  This syllogism may be our most important insight on God’s character.  With the freedom to create whatsoever He desired, God chose to create evil.  Those who would acquit God of evil protest that Satan became evil only after God had already created him.  This defense won’t do.  God knew before creating Satan exactly what Satan would become.  God created Satan to become evil.  God is responsible for evil.  No excuses or apologies.

God does contain darkness, which He expresses continuously.  Therefore the Holy Scriptures mislead when it is written that in Him there is no darkness at all.  All darkness flows outward from God.  Pious theologians make excuses for God, as though God needed their efforts to defend Himself.  God needs nothing from any mortal.  He is perfectly complete in Himself.  We add nothing to God when we seek to defend him, when we pray to him, when we praise him.  All these are vanity.  We do these things for ourselves, because we are afraid to recognize the truth about God – He alone is the destroyer of souls.  He alone is the destroyer of all humankind.  He has no affection or affinity for us.  In vain do we seek Him.  In vain do we worship Him.  In vain do we search the Scriptures seeking to understand Him.  He will not be known by us.  He will not be understood by us.  Our prayers and praise will not move Him.  The darkness that God has spread over all of creation is but a foretaste of what awaits us all for eternity.

We cannot trust our own intellect to comprehend God.  We cannot trust Holy Scripture, which we must recognize as misleading, and we cannot trust our feelings, which are changeable as the weather.  God does not desire to know us or to be known by us.  No more so than we might seek to know and be known by an amoeba.  The gulf which separates us from our Creator is unbridgeable.  The God on the other shore is forever unknown and unknowable.  But the symptoms of His pathology are only evil all of the time.  No amount of self-delusion can free us from the fact that evil exists in the world, and that evil entered the world through the offices of God.  This is what all sources reveal to us about the nature and character of God.