A Question on Satan

Having not posted in ages, I figured that it would be a great time to start up again when I got this excellent question from an acquaintance who has written in before, a Mr. DeMers. Sorry to those with questions or comments I hadn't seen because I had been inactive, I'll attend to them soon.

Why did God create Satan/Lucifer to begin with if God knew he would rebel and usher in a rebellion in heaven and tempt and bring sin to mankind? I understand the free will bit. But couldn't God of avoided it altogether since he is all knowing. By creating those who would not rebel since he knows they won't. It almost seems unfair to say "Oh you have free will, but if your not on my side you get sent to everlasting torture in hell and I'm speaking for angels and mankind alike. See we can't say God didn't know Lucifer would rebel because I'm sure as Catholics we believe God knows the future. Anyway if you have time to respond that be great, because the free will, all knowing, always present, throws me off sometimes and answer to this would really help me grow in my faith. I also get asked this question and I think I get kind of a warped logic about that God Simply IS and you cannot be seperate from God because he simply is Life. So if you rebel against Life/Light/Love itself you damn yourself away from his presence which is all of the above. That's the closest answer I've got for myself but I"m not to sure of it. Could you help me out?

You're very close to the answer, so you've done quite well so far I'd say. This is a difficult question for a lot of people, you're not the only one who has struggled with it (as I'm sure you've realized from people asking you about it).

Let's start with a basic issue. Putting aside whether God knows everything about what we would subjectively perceive as the future, and putting aside HOW He knows, which is vastly more important to the present question, let us assume that He knows Satan (his name is not really Lucifer, he certainly is not the bringer of light) will rebel.

You say you understand the free will bit, but if you truly understood it, why would you expect God to avoid it? Were God to only create those who would not rebel, He is in fact not allowing for free will, but actively stopping those who would exercise that freedom to err from being.

Remember that God really IS, that God's essence is existence itself, and that existence is GOOD. You're on course when you note that you cannot exist without God, the entirety of the universe, everything that is, including Satan, can only exist because God wills for it to exist. And willing for existence, willing for that good of existence, this is Love. Love is willing for the good of another, no matter the cost to one's self. And willing means choice and action, not mere desire. It's not that God just wants good for others, it is that God is actively pursuing and creating good for others, He's even creating the others.

Asking God to avoid creating beings, period, is going to run into problems because it is contrary to this fundamental aspect of His nature. And asking God to avoid creating creatures with genuine, real freedom of choice is asking God to create creatures who cannot will to love Him. Remember that the entire point of Creation is to give us, the Created, a chance to love God, to will for His good, no matter the cost to ourselves, and thus have a relationship with Him, as He wills good for us. If God never gives anyone who rebels a chance, well Kasie, you wouldn't be around. Nor would I. We would never have the chance either.

Of course, you and I are a bit different, after all, we can repent, we can change our minds.

Satan, however, cannot change his mind. Angelic reason is perfected to the point that an angel cannot change his mind, he has already completely and perfectly considered his course of action and its consequences prior to making it. And angels are beings that exist outside of our understanding of time, thus not really giving them time to reconsider or change their course of action. Satan's rebellion then, has no hope of repentance, Satan has chosen, has willed, and will never, ever change his mind.

Should God then have prevented this by not creating him? By not willing for Satan's good? God would not be God in such a case. The problem of evil, the problems of evil, are not remedied by a denial of love in any aspect, not the creative, not the redemptive, not the active. God created, creating is good and part of God's nature, do not ask that He stop. Satan rebelled, and God knew he would. Satan cannot be redeemed because he cannot repent and return to God, but this does not mean that no good can come from him.

God's omnipotence, if it means anything, means that He can turn even evil into good, and this is shown to us most plainly in the Passion of Christ. We can never consider murder, torture, betrayal, abandonment and the other sins of the Passion to be good things. They are all objectively evil acts perpetrated against Christ, in some cases by people who were among His closest and best friends. Yet look at their result. Because of these evils, the greatest good in human history blossomed, and salvation became possible for humanity, and true freedom, which we had not known since the Fall. Christ's murder resulted in our redemption. Christ's obedience to the Father to submit to sinful actions resulted in our chance to obey the Father and break the bondage of sin.

The Passion was Satan's great triumph, it was the leading of Man to reject God yet again, to murder Him, to seek His death, just as he had lured us to seek our deaths in the Garden. The Resurrection is the ultimate end of every triumph of Satan, through death to life, through evil to good, through deception to truth. So it will always be for those who let God into their lives. The Enemy will never win.

As for damnation, let us not pretend that God is damning anyone. God does not damn. We damn. We choose whether we wish to be with God or not in our lives by doing the things we do. If we live a life which radiates love and is filled with Grace because we will for God and communion with Him, then we're choosing Heaven. If we live a life which does not radiate this love, and rejects God because we will for our own desires and pleasures and not for God, then we're choosing to reject Him. In rejecting Him, we reject His good, and His offer of salvation, and thus we demand Hell for ourselves, and it really is a demand. God offers, over and over again, to let us come home, to forgive and heal and love. And we, rather like children, demand to have our own way. Well, the ultimate end and challenge of true freedom in the name of love is that we have to be willing to let people make choices. That's why we cannot just seek to prevent their choices because we know their choices will be wrong. That's not true freedom, and thus it is not true love, love cannot be forced.

It's wholly inaccurate to cast God as the petulant child who stamps His feet and sends us to torment and horrors unspeakable because we won't be His friend. We are the spoiled ones, we're the ones who are obsessed with our addictions, our desires, our whims, even when we're aware that they're not good for us at all, and not good for others either. We're the ones who don't give a damn, and don't care about each other. We're the selfish ones, the petulant ones, the whiny ones. Look around you and you'll see it.

And yet God has given us the chance to be, to live, to know the sheer glory that is life, even in this Fallen state. Would you truly ask Him to rescind such good for any being?