One Question

A lot of people used to talk about (until someone wrote a song about it) their one, most important question for the Judeo-Christian God.  I've always had just one for the "Devil."  That question would be: "I understand courtesy, and I obviously understand taste, but tell me about sympathy, who are you to need sympathy?"

I mean, it's not as if I do not understand the psychology of abuse and something of psychosis. Enough to know that, as the dominated in an abusive relationship with the deity who psychologically raped Abraham, not to mention Issac, who killed all of humanity then threatened never to do it again with an iconic reminder, whose commandments include "no one may be jealous but me," (I'm sorry, did I mistranslate that?  I meant "You can't worship anyone but me!") the Judeo-Christian Devil would have to be psychologically pretty fucked up, and no mistake.  You cannot help but feel pity for the Judeo-Christian Devil (and I use this label with the understanding that the devil is a mystical anti-god in 'Hebrew' mythology, not an official part of the story in the Old Testament), but feeling pity for the devil, however sentimentally evocative his story of abuse and ostracization may be, does not earn him my sympathy.

Sympathy means that I see things your way for a moment.  Assuming that mythology is being treated as factual to the point of there being a specifically Abrahamic, single, all-encompassing anti-deity, then this being's actions in Job alone, the Hebrew Bible being the single historically 'reliable' volume of the Abrahamic bibles, makes him no better than the proper god Yaweh, you remember, the abusive father.  Its like you're watching that Eddie Murphy/Dan Aykroyd (sp?) movie Trading Places, and, just because they happen to be two rich guys, you say to yourself, well, I have to marry one of them, they're rich.  No thought for the fact that there might be other rich people (other deities) out there, we're stuck with either Randolph or Mortimer.  No reason, we just decided that Mortimer's edict that we pretend no one else is rich but them was worth accepting.  And Mortimer's a little better than Randolph, right?  I mean, he's in charge at least, and Randolph is his little Grey Eminence, ruthlessly playing the adversary to all of Mortimer's marginally more just rule.

No, I'm not prepared to have sympathy for the devil, not without him going on trial, arguing his case for me, submitting his actual behavior to my judgement.  If he deserves my sympathy, it will not be because he has convinced me with his silver tongue that 'god' is really the evil one.  They're both assholes, from all appearances, the question could only be whether there is any moral ambivalence at all anywhere in the objective actions and consequences of others and of fate and physics, however physics operates on deities.  I'm prepared to believe that it is entirely possible that Yaweh is the real villain in the personal rivalry between the two, I've pointed out that he's clearly a HUGE dick, based on the stories he brags about and has his disciples write down.  IF that 'real' story is in fact as bad as it seems perfectly plausible that it could be, then, and only then, would I be willing to meet the Judeo-Christian Devil with sympathy, courtesy and taste.