Thucydides Trap And The God-Satan Conflict |

Satan who is an antithesis of anything good surely has an origin , here I shall pretend that he exist, just for the question I intend to ask. He was once a shining star, a light bearer and a morning brightness. He had a peculiar piquancy and starlit eminence that secured him a place above other angels in the kingdom of Heaven. 

According to Bible preachers, this entity became prideful and  began to display subaltern attitude. He rose up and organized a campaign of recruitment to win angels to his side and thus contest with God over a position of Authority. He is quoted to have said “ I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High(Isaiah 14:4) .

Why Satan inclined himself to such unaccountable protervity , we don’t know. But we should even ask ourselves why we think God would create a being that will have pride in such a holy place as heaven. We will talk about that later. 

Now the Thucydides trap- Thucydides is a 5th Century Historian who wrote about the Peloponnesian War (A war that was fought between Sparta and Athen). About the war, he said “the growth of the power of Athens and the alarm which this inspired in Sparta made war inevitable “. According to him, the beginning of the war was driven by fear associated with a shift in the balance of power. And the main reason for this fear, he points out , that it is because we never always know the intention of our partners. So, we always assume that our partner is getting stronger , not because of any other reason, but because he is going to attack us. This fear then becomes a driving force which brings nation to war.

Let’s bring this thought to judgement, the case which we always imagine of God and Satan has always been that of a Peloponnesian War, where Satan was increasing in strength and God who wants to stay stronger and supreme feels threatened and decided, out of fear of a power shift, to go into war with Satan.

This imagination has secured a strong anchorage on the minds of believers to the end that they think God and Satan are in constant conflict- a battle of supremacy. If nothing is done to experiment such thought as this, I believe, that the believer may live all his lifetimes fighting unknown forces, metaphysical hidden hands or even struggling to fully accept the qualities that are ascribed to God. What makes God to be God – his omnipotence. 

It is  further impressed of God , that he was angry, being very impatient and unable to dialogue peace and negotiate change with Lucifer  his musical diapason,  mismanaged the conflict to a pyrotechnic outburst wherein he had conquered Satan and his rebellious angels with the help of some loyal angels , and also push them to hell- a special place he designed for them to rotten. 

One cause of this kind of conclusion made of God is our imagination of the lachrymose monotony of praise and worship of God by angels, a thing he enjoys every single second of minutes. He couldn’t then bear the thought of not being worshipped or losing some worshipers to his rival -Satan.

If indeed Satan was waxing great, then it means he had the ability to be greater and should have been allowed the opportunity of aspiring to maximize his potentials. So we need to ask ourselves a question, why would God wants to limit another person from maximizing his potential?

Or maybe , it makes sense to ask it this way; why would God create and put in his creature, the capacity to be greater than him or to be like him? 

It appears from the story that God has more blame to share in the conflict than Satan

• God shares the bigger blame because he created Satan and put in him the potential of being like him or even greater than him. He created Satan and also put inside him a negative spectrum of existence- which is pride. So God has a blame for not creating Satan as all good.
• God shares a blame for not having what it takes to broker peace in such a holy place as heaven. Has  a God who has instructed man through the scriptures, to follow peace with all men, without which to man shall see him (Hebrew 12:14) 
• God with his sacerdotal preeminence and peace loving mind, shouldn’t make entertain the idea of war. 
• Since he is ‘all knowing ‘, he should have known that Satan will become prideful one day. Such knowledge should have informed him on how to create Satan and what element should not partake in his creation. So if he knew before time that Lucifer will derail and did nothing to prevent it, then he is not “all good”. 
• God is unfair to cast him to hell fire, where he gnashes his teeth and grind in pain. How can you do that simply because someone showed pride. So you enjoy seeing the person you created (the way he is) perishing eternally in hell. 

But this smirking commonplace of interpretative conjecture should be revisited and proper understanding must be made of that scripture  from which God is said to have found himself in a Thucydides trap with Satan. 

Isaiah 14: 12 which preachers erroneously quote to discuss the the origin of Satan and how that he rose up to fight against God and was defeated and casted to hell is one most singular error that has made nonsense of the believe in God. It is one ignorance that though being easily avoidable, have been greatly patronized by even the most intelligent of us. 

But let’s see how God wouldn’t have been in a Thucydides trap with Satan.

That thou shalt take up this proverb against the king of Babylon, and say, How hath the oppressor ceased! the golden city ceased!

Clearly, this was a proverb as is boldly stated. And every proverb as an allegorical message behind it. As an allegory, the story was meant to reveal an hidden meaning. Not to be taken literarily. 

• It is also clearly stated that the entire proverb in that chapter is a taunt for the Babylonian King, a earthly ruler and not a spiritual entity

I shall not analyze further. Just a careless read of the chapter from verse one to the last will convince anyone that the scripture did not refer to any spiritual entity. 

Because such war has no ambrosial essence, it is then out of place to even place God in a position where he will find himself in avoidable conflict with Satan simply because he fears that Satan would become like him. Except there is any other scripture that also suggest this conflict between God and Satan, but with a simple understanding of the scripture we just analyzed, it becomes clear that there was never an incidence  that brought war between God and Satan. 

So the question we now have to ask ourselves is ; where does the idea of Satan comes from in the Bible?

What if Satan does not exist? 

Wouldn’t the idea of God make more sense?

David