Satan

Get behind me, Satan! For you are concerned with things that are of humans and not of God.
Mark

Why in the world does Jesus call Peter "Satan"? Peter was a bumbler but he was not a bad guy. He made some bad mistakes, but he also made some great comebacks. He was one of Jesus' closest disciples. He gave up his entire livelihood to follow Jesus. He was a good man.

Peter had just finished identifying Jesus as the Messiah, the Christ, and then this happened. At one moment Jesus called Peter the Rock of the Church, at the next moment, he was calling Peter Satan. Both can't be true...

This conversation happened at the height of Jesus' ministry. The crowds were all over him. Everyone wanted to be touched, healed. Everyone wanted to hear Jesus' words. Everything seemed to be going perfectly. Peter says what everyone must have been hoping, that Jesus would save the Jewish people.

Jesus recognized that he was the Messiah, but then he began to describe the real plan that God had in store for him. He would suffer. He would die and then rise again. And Peter could not accept this. Peter scolded Jesus...

No, Lord, that is not the way that things are supposed to go. That's not what everyone wants and needs. You are supposed to rescue us from oppression and rule as king, not die. That just can't be right.

And that's when Jesus caled him Satan. Because the words that Peter spoke, the thoughts that he was articulating, were the thoughts of the Adversary.

The Satan first appears in the book of Job. The title literally means The Adversary. The One who opposes God.

Whenever we let our actions be determined by what others want and not what God wants, we follow the impulses of the Adversary.

Satan is not a red man with horns. He is the personnification of everything that slides into our minds to confuse us, to redirect our intentions away from the will of God. That is why the image of the snake is so powerful. The impulses of the adversary sneak into our lives and lure us away from God's purposes.

And one fundamental way that Satan distracts is to make us care more about pleasing people than about pleasing God.

In the 1960s, Dr. Stanley Millgram, a professor at Yale University, ran an experiment. There were three players: a doctor in a white coat, a volunteer taken randomly from off the street and a student named Carl. The doctor explained to the volunteer that he was to ask questions of the student. When the student got an answer wrong, the volunteer was to adminsiter a small electric shock. The voltage of the shocks was to increase as the student got more answers wrong. The purpose of the experiment was to see how the human brain might be capable of greater intellectual prowess when faced with discomfort.

Before the experiment began, the student, Carl, mentioned to the volunteer that he had a heart condition. The doctor gave the volunteer a small shock, so that he would feel what the student would be experiencing. It hurt.

The experiment began.

Carl got question number 3 wrong. The volunteer administered the electric shock and Carl began to sweat.

The experiment continued and with each successive incorrect answer, the volunteer administered another electric shock, turning up the dial each time so that the voltage increased.

Carl began to beg for them to stop. The volunteer looked to the doctor for guidance, but he simply nodded and smiled.

This continued. Carl pounding on the chair, shaking excessively, and begging for them to stop. But the volunteer, upon the insistence of the doctor, continued. In the end, the volunteer administered 400 volts of electricity. Carl was almost incoherent.

When the experiment was over, its true nature was revealed. Carl was an actor. The real purpose of the experiment was to see just how much pain one human being was willing to inflict on another just become someone told him so.

How often do you make decisions based on what others think or will say? Whenever that happens, you are in danger of following the Adversary.

How many people, after the fall of Nazi Germany, told the world that they felt Hitler was wrong, but they just kept thinking that everyone else seemed excited. So they silenced their reservations and followed him.

Jesus identified the mind of Satan immediately, forcefully. He recognized temptation. We are much slower to identify temptation.

How often do you let the opinions of others determine your actions, determine who you are? Pay attention to your own mind, so that one day you too will be able to say no to temptation.

- The Very Rev. Kate Moorehead