If we're being truthful, Satan is supposed to be punished in hell too, its only modern works that portray him as the one 'ruling' and dishing it out to people in hell.
Biblical Satan is a role, not a person. I've seen it translated as "opponent" or "rival". Something like a "devil's advocate" in catholic church - person or entity who tests somebody's faith.
And Lucifer is again a completely different character, not related to Satan until much later.
You can find it here. Along with a scathing rebuke to those who wear the name Christian and yet are so full of hate they refuse to do any of these things.
Matthew 25:41-46 (NKJV)
41 “Then He will also say to those on the left hand, Depart from Me, you cursed, into the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels:
42 for I was hungry and you gave Me no food; I was thirsty and you gave Me no drink;
43 I was a stranger and you did not take Me in, naked and you did not clothe Me, sick and in prison and you did not visit Me.’
44 “Then they also will answer Him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to You?’
45 Then He will answer them, saying, ‘Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to Me.’
46 And these will go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”
If you listen to the Yazidis he was sent to Hell for defying God by not bowing down to us humans, his greatest work, despite God telling Satan to never bow to anyone because he was made of God's essence rather than us, made in his likeness.
So he went to Hell for 10 000 years until his tears put out the fires of Hell, then God forgave him. He also rewarded him for honoring his original pact with God and was given Dominion over Earth.
He took this Dominion and gave us Humans "Knowledge" like the Serpent in the Garden of Eden, only the Knowledge was of Farming.
Thing is, the Yazidis live awefully close to what is thought to be the birthplace of Farming.
When asked to describe Satan, they described him as a Peacock holding a sheaf of Wheat in it's beak, the same image found in Gobekli Tepe, which is thought to be a shrine that taught Farming to the world.
Hail Satan.
Edit: this is just my understanding after reading an article or 2 on the subject, I'm probably wrong about loads of it, but it's all just stories anyway so who cares?
Actually, Satan is always described as being on earth. In Genesis, Lucifer is cast down to earth, not hell. In Job Satan tells God he's passing by during his comings and goings on earth. In the Gospels, Satan tempts Jesus in the desert.
Well that concept isn’t in the Bible and even if it were then 1667 would still be somewhat “contemporary” compared to when the Christian scriptures were supposedly written. Of course I say all that as if any of it is real or matters anyway lol
Unfortunately this doesn't really faze Christians at all because many of them believe that God is the source of all that is good, and so by default anyone who worships God is also good by default, and of course this logic follows that anyone that doesn't worship God is evil by default.
Also, barring that, just because Satan punishes bad people doesn't make him good. He punishes bad people because he's jealous of God's love for Humans, and he hates them for it. He's more of an antihero I guess if you really wanted to paint him in a somewhat good light.
Except that's a horrible distortion of Satan's real role in Abrahamic religion - he was once understood as YHWH's most loyal angel, willing to inflict eternal torture against his will for the sake of cleansing sin or whatever the fuck his torture was supposed to achieve. If the Christian god stopped being a massive piece of shit and went "yo, I don't think all this torture stuff is actually helpful", Satan would immediately stop his business.
To be upfront, I am not religious and never have been, but my understanding is that Satan isn't the one doing the actual punishing? He is being punished by God himself, as is everyone else in Hell
There isn't really much about eternal torture or damnation back when Satan was still an agent of God, and he certainly wasn't in charge of Hell. All the talk of gnashing teeth and lakes of fire was originally metaphor for how much it sucked, not literal.
Hell isn't a place, it's a state of complete lack of Grace. The idea is that everyone has a 2 way connection to God, and all good feelings and emotions must come from it. People are free to reject that connection by committing mortal sin, but "the line stays open," as long as someone lives. Honest repentance is accepting the connection back. If one dies before accepting grace again, God shrugs and accepts they aren't interested, and cuts his side of the line. This leaves an existence with zero positive thoughts or feelings, best case scenario is eternal meh. Of course, it was hyped up to be awful to help convert and maintain control. And, ofcourse, Satan did do a bit of torture here and there, but it was generally all on living folk to test them.
Ist Michael Mittermeier Atheist? Bin jetzt nicht super mit seinem Programm vertraut, und er nacht sich glaub ich schon hin und wieder über Religion etc lustig, aber meine mich vage zu erinnern dass er zumindest christlich geprägt ist.
As concerned as most christians seem to be with punishment of those doing some imagined wrong or another, wouldn't that sort of mean they're following in their supposed satan's ways and tenets.
you're missing the point. There are a slew of contradictions in christian dogma that don't make any sense at all. People who "punish" people are typically the good guys in stories. Take a sheriff in a western for instance. They chase the robber and throw them in jail as a form of punishment. The meme is just showcasing an example of how religion faulters under critical examination
They merely said that being separated from God means suffering, while following H..er.im means walking towards the establishment of H..er.is Kingdom/City unto Earth. They talked more about Hell as a state than as a physical place, but, well... who cares nowadays, right ? Parabola never taught us anything about the real world, the spirit doesn't exist, and morals are relative, they were simply naive ignorants who never had anything to teach us, embrace modernity and reject 100% of the past.
The sheriff is a bad example because in a typical Western, the criminals are a real threat to the community and the sheriff is far more concerned with protecting the community than punishing bad guys.
The best examples I can think of are from the Bible, where it's God doing the punishing, but God is also pretty indiscriminate and sometimes either punishes people just for fun, like Job, or punishes a who group presumably containing people he's not mad at, like the residents of Sodom.
Im neither a Christian nor a bible expert but i thought satan was just one of 7 deadly sins and not the punisher of bad people? Wasn't there an entity called "the devil" that is referred to as satan and/or lucifer but is basically an entire different entity to lucifer and satan? Also isn't hell a general place of suffering/redemption and the deadly sins are just luring people there?
That's how i understood it. Didn't read the bilbe tho, only got this from references and random fun "facts" over the years so it could be completely wrong
Justice≠Revenge, otherwise Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, and the rest, would be justified.
If every evil was stopped though it would be the end of 'our trip'/'any possible progress'.
To a lot of people, forgiveness comes when the person who did wrong feels regret over their actions. Not regret for the consequences, but regret for the harm that their actions caused.
Tbh, if someone is hoping that just paying false lip service will guarantee then forgiveness from an all knowing being, I'll wonder what exactly it is that they believe. An all knowing God would know whether you actually regret harming someone, or if you just regret not getting into heaven. Is there any chance you could explain that to me? I have seriously never understood why some religious people believe that they could fool an all knowing God.
If that amount of sin is forgiven easily, I would argue that many of the harmless actions that current organized reliegon is against would also be forgiven.