#i wish more discussion of Christian folk myth distinguished between levels of canon and myth

[daisyachain]

I saw a critique somewhere once that I really liked of the popular conception of Paradise Lost-type Lucifer as a real paragon. The Christian idea of the relationships between god/humanity/sin is poisonous in that Original Sin means humans deserve to suffer. This means that then the existence of the god is what condemns humans to suffering—there is no sin if there is no perfect being. The god’s all-perfect nature is what leads it to choose to bring down such worldly suffering on humanity, which it deems to be wrong by nature. This for also lends itself to white supremacy and patriarchy, where the perfect god is cast as a man of whatever dominant ethnically European group. Having a perfect god creates a theoretical moral hierarchy, that hierarchy is co-opted by the real actual hierarchies that exist, oppressed groups are framed as ontologically bad.

Therefore, conceptualizing Lucifer as a wronged paragon is not the transgressive move that people see it as. Rather than truly undercutting the oppressive god, it just raises up an equally unfair/hierarchical/white male supremacist figure (after all, when is Lucifer shown as anything but a blond guy?) as a rival to the oppressive god. The trickster Satan of sex, drugs, and goats’ hooves is a more effective folk Christian figure to adopt to undercut the oppressive god. Lucifer represents a challenge to the god as an equally powerful, perfect, judgmental being establishing a rival hierarchy. The Satan-devil-figure represents letting it hang. Satan is a way around the rules of the oppressive god, he is the ability to ignore all hierarchies and hack the system. Magic does exist, it just goes against the divine order. The post-Paradise Lost Lucifer seeks to replace the oppressive god, the Satan figure seeks to make him irrelevant.

That’s an analysis I like and agree with. After all, when is Lucifer portrayed as anything but a blond guy? However, the one thing that is compelling about the pop culture mythos of Lucifer is that it represents some kind of failed effort as the basis of suffering. The figure of Lucifer started a rebellion and was cast out, as opposed to the exogenous Satan who just hangs around tempting. Lucifer has been taken to be the idea of ‘what if someone tried to help humanity, and was punished?’

The Christian mythos’ main sticking point is, again, original sin. Every misfortune is blamed on humanity. Anyone with eyes can see that the people who suffer most in their lives do not do anything to deserve it. It’s impossible to reconcile, and the Christian way of doing so is to just say that life doesn’t matter in the long run. In the year 1400, it’s easier to believe that your cousin got the black plague because he’d screwed your brother’s wife behind his back. In later years, it gets much harder.

So, as much as it has played into white male supremacist ideas of ‘I’m right and I define right and laws like the age of consent are oppressive’, Lucifer has a far more powerful appeal as a story to explain the wrongs in the world. There are so many things going badly, how could the god not be responsible? How could nobody have noticed this was bad? The answer that the pop culture idea of Lucifer presents is: someone noticed, someone tried to help, and the person who tried to help suffered or was corrupted. It’s comforting to think that there was at least some resistance on moral grounds to the tyranny of the god. It’s easier to understand divine entities getting corrupted in a long war than to understand them as corrupt from the start. Me, I like the idea that a divine being trying to do good will be struck down. It resonates with the nature of the world as it shows itself. Rather than the good god which triumphs and the devil which tempts, it’s much easier to imagine the evil god who whacks the mole and the good devil which tries (and fails) to overthrow it.