Halloween and Resisting Satan’s Seductive Strategies
“I have so many names,” John Milton tells his protégé, Kevin Lomax, in Taylor Hackford’s movie The Devil’s Advocate. Al Pacino plays John Milton, the Devil incarnated as the head partner in a New York City law firm, while Keanu Reeves plays Kevin Lomax, the brass, young small-town Florida lawyer recruited by Milton. Taking Kevin to the top of his fifty-story law office, Milton waves his hand across the horizon as he tells Kevin, “Life is rich with possibilities for those who are unafraid to sample them.” Throughout the intense drama, Milton lures Lomax to sell his soul, tempting him with evil’s best—lust, ambition, drive, pride, ego, vanity, gluttony, and power.
Indeed, the Devil has many names and many temptations. The Bible exposes Satan’s seducing strategies.
Kevin Lomax swallowed the bait from Satan’s hook. Dazzled by all that John Milton offers, Lomax ignores the warnings of his church-going mother, neglects his beautiful but terrified wife, and silences his conscience by defending a man he knows is guilty. He succumbs to the temptation to rebel against God and everything godly. The results, however, are far from what he expected. Rather than feasting on the fruit, he faces fear and frustration. He’s wracked with guilt over his neglect of his suicidal wife. He’s shocked by his mother’s revelation of her past relationship with Milton. And he’s tormented by Milton’s mockery. On every level, he experiences condemnation for his wicked ways. Kevin Lomax learns the hard way what we hope to learn the biblical way: first Satan tempts us to sin, then he condemns us for sinning.
Satan mounts his mutiny through a powerful lie: God is untrustworthy. In subtle and not-so-subtle ways, he places God’s heart on trial whispering, “God is no Rewarder; he’s a Hoarder.” To counteract Satan’s challenge to God’s good heart, we need to expose his seducing strategies.
Seducing Strategy Number One: Enticing Us to Distrust God’s Good Heart
Satan’s kryptonite is separation through slander. He slanders God to us and us to God. His devious design lures us away from God. The original lie reveals the nature of all his lies—Satan wants us to doubt God’s generous goodness (Genesis 3:1-6).
Moses warns his readers with his opening words, “Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made” (Genesis 3:1, emphasis added). “Crafty” suggests brilliant malevolence—a being who is clever enough to package his venomous hatred in sugar coating. He simply wants some information, right? “Did God really say?” He is only after a little conversation, right? “Hath God said?” He seeks simple clarification, right? “You must not eat from any tree in the garden?”
“Hath God said,” seduces Eve to ask, “Why is God a ‘Must Not God?’” Serpent is not simply saying, “Do I have it right?” He is implying, “God said what!?”
God, of course, had said, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die” (Genesis 2:16-17). The Serpent ignores God’s generosity and twists his one prohibition—a protective prohibition meant to teach God-dependence and intended to spare planet Earth and its inhabitants from the natural consequences of self-sufficiency.
Serpent is not finished. He blatantly calls God a liar: “You will not surely die” (Genesis 3:4). Then he shoots the poisoned arrow: “For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Genesis 3:5). “God is withholding! God is terrified that he might have to share some of his glory. God hoards his gifts, squirreling them away so he alone can enjoy them.”
Satan wants us to see God as our Enemy, thus disconnecting us from God. Rather than seeing God as our gracious Creator who dares to create beings in his image with a will empowered either to obey or rebel, Satan deludes us into seeing God as our cruel Task-Master who suppresses our freedom and demands that we grovel. The cursing narrative of “God-Against-Us” becomes the dominant lens through which our flesh interprets life. We no longer give our Lover the benefit of the doubt. We view every event as one more evidence of God’s againstness.
Sin is like a computer virus that attempts to erase our memory of our trusting relationship with our trustworthy God. What if Adam and Eve had reminded each other that every good and gracious gift comes down from the Father of lights? What if they had recalled that God gives us richly everything to enjoy? Because they did not, they became susceptible to Satan’s second seducing strategy.
Seducing Strategy Number Two: Enticing Us to Trust Our Own Heart
Doubting God inevitably leads to trusting self. Imagine what might have happened had Adam and Eve cried to God between Genesis 3:6 and 3:7. In Genesis 3:6 they eat the forbidden fruit and their fall is complete. In Genesis 3:7 they realize their nakedness and cover their shame on their own. I imagine a God-dependent response looking something like this.
Then the eyes of both of them were opened and they realized that they were naked. Standing exposed as failed and flawed male and female, naked before him with whom they have to deal.
Then the naked man and the naked woman heard the song of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, as he always had for fellowship. And they stayed.
Adam cried out to God, “I am unworthy to be called your son, for I have sinned against you in my self-sufficiency. I have failed to be the courageous man you designed and called me to be. I have been a coward rather than a protector. Make me like one of your animals, for I am soul-less.”
Eve cried out to God, “I am unworthy to be called your daughter, for I have sinned against you in my self-sufficiency. I have failed to be the completing woman you designed and called me to be. I have poisoned rather than nourished. Make me like one of your animals, for I am soul-less.”
Instead, the LORD God slew the precious animals he had handcrafted. He shed blood. Carefully, tenderly, with tears streaming down his face, he hand-crafted robes of righteousness for his son and daughter.
Then he ran to them, threw his arms around them, and kissed them repeatedly. Father said to his angelic servants, “Quick, bring the best robes that I have hand-crafted and put them on my son and my daughter. Put wedding rings on their fingers and sandals of peace on their feet. Bring the fatted calf and kill it. Let’s have a feast and celebrate. For this son of mine and this daughter of mine were dead and they are alive again.” So they began to celebrate!
Grace means never having to cover my sin. But Adam and Eve, having doubted God’s goodness, do not focus on his grace. Instead of depending upon God, they depend upon self. Being naked and afraid, they hide. They turn their backs on and run from God. They work, sewing fig leaves together to make coverings for themselves. They attempt to make themselves acceptable by trying to beautify their ugliness.
In the flesh we use every strategy at our disposal, every scheme we can imagine, to not need God’s grace. What fig leaves do we sew to cover our shame? What view of God does such shame and hiding suggest?
Satan conspires to trick us into viewing God as Javert. In Victor Hugo’s classic work Les Miserables, Jean Val Jean is imprisoned for sixteen years for stealing a loaf of bread to feed his sister’s starving family. Javert is his self-righteous, legalistic prison guard. Upon his release, Jean Val Jean is unable to find work. Destitute, he spends a night in the tiny home of a Catholic Bishop who treats him with respect and provides him with a meal. During the night, Val Jean steals the Bishop’s silver candlesticks.
The next day the French police drag Val Jean back to the Bishop’s home. “We found this thief with your possessions!”
“Jean Val Jean, you left without taking the other gifts I had offered you,” the Bishop replies as he hands Jean additional valuables. Val Jean is shocked, and changed—changed by grace. He begins to live a life of grace, caring for others. Eventually he becomes the owner of a factory and then the mayor of a French town.
But Javert hunts him down. At every turn he reminds him of his past. At one point he shouts repeatedly, “24601!” the prison uniform number Jean Val Jean had worn for over a decade-and-a-half. Val Jean is less than human. A number only. Javert exposes Jean Val Jean’s past to the townspeople and attempts to arrest him for parole violation. Shamed, Jean Val Jean runs. Taking matters into his own hands, he does not trust Javert, nor should he.
Satan desires us to imagine God as the spitting image of Javert. If Satan is successful, then, of course, we will run. We will take matters into our own hands. Whenever we mistrust God’s good heart, we always trust our own fallen hearts.
Join the Conversation
Now that you know Satan’s two primary seducing strategies, how can you connect to Christ’s resurrection power to defeat each of these temptations?
Note: The material for today’s blog was derived from chapter 7 of Soul Physicians.
