Reluctant Demon (9 page)

"This Earth is mine, and I will not give it up," he continued. "Will You steal it from me? W h y don't You just destroy me now in the presence of witnesses? Show Yourself for the tyrant God that You are."

I did not expect God to answer at all, much less to answer as He did.

"Adam will obey Me, and they will accomplish all that I have purposed. I will love them with an everlasting love. They will love Me and follow Me completely."

Satan shot back, "They will not. If they have free will, they will not obey You. Will You leave the warring host to guard them so that their affection for You cannot be tested? That is no contest."

I desperately hoped Satan would stop talking. I didn't know how much more God was willing to take from this rebel.

"Is that what you call love?" he taunted God. "Let them freely choose between You and me. It will be as it was with the angels whom You despised because of their devotion to me. Adam will laugh at you. They will defy You. They will follow me. Unless you force them to obey, they will choose my ways over Yours. They will hand Earth back to me."

From where I crouched in fear, I could see both the angelic guard on the edge of the sky and the faces of the fallen demons who poked their heads out of hiding to hear how God might answer Satan's accusation. As I looked at the perplexed faces in both camps, I realized how much God was willing to risk on this untested prototype of humanity. Both sides had something to win or lose on the basis of how well Adam functioned.

God replied, "I have given Adam complete free will, just as I gave you. If they obey me, I will do all that they ask."

What was I hearing? I was so confused by what God said that I lost concentration, and I am uncertain what happened next. The blackness had returned, and the glory of God had departed. That much I knew, but it was all I knew.

It was not like God to make a wager, and yet that appeared to be what He did. He must be trying to make a point, but what could it possibly be? He was allowing a contest with consequences all of heaven would regard as unthinkable. If Satan had not obeyed God, why did God think that this much-inferior model—Adam—would or could obey?

When things settled down, I unwound myself and moved closer to the edge and looked down upon Earth. I wanted to get a better look at this race God had created.

Adam was not that impressive. He had a physical body.

That right there was the first mistake God made with him. How could Adam fight against a supernatural foe when he was confined to a body of flesh that could be injured, perhaps even destroyed? An obvious design flaw.

He did not seem to have any particular talent. He could not fly. I suppose he was beautiful, but hardly a match for any of us, at least how beautiful we used to be. His physical body had to be fed. It had to sleep, a concept I could not relate to, although I admit it did have a certain appeal for me. (From time to time I've actually closed my eyes and tried to do it, but I cannot seem to get the hang of it.)

Angry as I was at God for never giving me a chance to plead my case before Him, at that moment I felt sorry for Him. This was never going to work out as He hoped.

That free will thing was the fatal flaw. I couldn't imagine Satan would take Adam seriously. I turned to leave when my eyes caught sight of my evil master staring at Adam. I shall never be able to erase from my memory the ghoulish thing I saw in his contorted face. He stood salivating after the man.

CHAPTER 10

SATAN WENT BACK
to his den, and I returned to my post to watch Earth. I had to admit it was a lot more interesting now that it had been reor-dered and mankind created. I was curious to see how it would turn out.

God made a fabulous home for Adam in a garden personally designed for him. God named the garden Eden, and it was lush—full of every kind of tree and plant that would ever be needed by humans or animals.

There were many trees in Eden, but only two that mattered: the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. God told Adam, "You are free to eat from any tree in the garden, but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. For when you eat of it, you will surely die."

Considering the consequences of the cosmic rebellion, surely someone in heaven must have tried, albeit unsuccessfully, to convince God that His insistence in giving Adam the ability to choose between one thing and another was a terrible idea that had no possibility of ending well. If God couldn't be talked out of the free will idea, He should have at least let Adam practice a little on something that had no consequences. Let him choose between an apple and a kumquat. Don't let a novice's first choice be one that could alter the balance of the whole world.

The choice to obey or not is far too dangerous to be experimented with. It should be banned from every universe. I could be the poster child for why free will is an eventual disaster for anyone who has it. The ability to defy God is the cause of all my misery. Lucifer decided he could rebel against God. One-third of the angels chose to follow Lucifer. And what did it gain for us?

Loss of everything we once held dear—loss of our home with God; loss of our purpose for being; loss of our high place; nothing but loss with regret, despair, fear, and hatred becoming our destiny.

W h y does God insist on imposing free will on creatures who cannot possibly use it correctly? He knows what is best for everything He creates. We would be so much better off if He just eliminated the choices. I would not be wasting my existence sitting on a perch in the service of a tyrant if God had only restricted Satan's ability to defy Him.

It is that part of God's nature I cannot understand.

He created all there is and all there will be, and He made it perfect. Then, for no reason anyone can explain, He programmed in a fatal flaw. Into every intelligent life form, God deposited the ability to defy its Creator. Can someone help me understand why this was a good idea?

Believe me, I know the company line: God wants those who love Him to do so of their free will. He will coax.

He will woo. He will implore. But He will not force His creation to obey, though He could easily do so. How much trouble would He have saved Himself and how much devastation and misery could have been avoided if the rebellion in heaven had never taken place?

I can attest to the fact that we who were cast out of heaven would be so much better off today if God were only willing to be a benevolent dictator. Suppose that we had not chosen to rebel because the choice was not available to us. W h a t if we had been slaves in obedience to Him? Certainly we would still be in paradise and never have known the difference.

Then assume that we annoyed Him in some way and in His anger He cast us out of heaven anyway. If it had happened like that, we would be in the same place where we are right now. And yet, I daresay we would be so much better off. If our destiny would have been the same, what difference would it make
how
we were thrown out?

I know I would feel better if I could blame this on God's will and not mine.

W h e n God said He would give free will to Adam, I wanted to shout, "Don't do it, God! Look at us. Look at what it does to those who are less wise than You." But I dared not say a word. It would have been the end of me.

When Satan realized that Adam would indeed have the ability to choose, his excitement at what this might mean could not be contained.

Adam's job description was not that hard. He was given ruling authority over the garden, and if he obeyed and worshiped God, he could count on living happily ever after. How hard was that? As I understood his assignment, Adam was to push the boundaries of the garden further and further into the unsettled land until Eden covered Earth. Should have been a piece of cake for someone created in the image of God.

That is very well how it might have ended up if God had not given Adam the option of choosing between those two trees. By far, that was God's worst mistake with Adam. But it wasn't His only one. Let me tell you about God's second greatest lapse in judgment.

CHAPTER I I

GOD DECIDED TO
separate them.

She was always in there. I'm not sure

why God kept her hidden at first, but whatever she was, she was not an afterthought. It may have been because Adam was an experiential learner. If God had surprised him with the concept of a partner before showing him what a partner was for, I'm pretty sure Adam would have missed the point entirely. God was always patient to walk him through the practical appli-cation of a great idea before turning him loose with it.

God knew He had to lead Adam to the point of wanting a partner before springing the woman on him.

It was brilliant how God went about it. He gave the man the task of naming the animals. This meant he had to really look at the animals to know what they were before he named them. In doing this work, I believe that he immediately latched on to the comfort that two animals, male and female, provided for each other. It also allowed him to figure out there was no suitable partner for him among the animals. That may seem obvious, but in all honesty, Adam was not that quick on the uptake.

It took him forever to name the animals. I thought he would never get around to broaching the subject with God, but one day he did. He asked for a partner.

Eager to give her to him, God told Adam to lie down and go to sleep. While he was sleeping, God took one of his ribs and then closed up the place with flesh. Out of that one bone, God revealed Eve. When Adam woke up, there she was, and she was gorgeous.

We angels were familiar with every living thing in the universe. We have seen about all there is that is beautiful, but I have to tell you, she was a showstopper. We were somewhat dazzled by this new creation. Until God took Eve out of Adam, we had never had a frame of reference for anything female. The angels were all male. Adam was male, or so we thought, but apparently not entirely. We couldn't figure out what she was for. She was like Adam, smaller though, but with a lot of upgraded features. I found myself strangely attracted to her, especially her long hair that flowed and shimmered like strands of gold.

In terms of beauty, God really outdid Himself with Eve.

Clearly, she had been part of Adam from the beginning, but now, she would be distinct from him. I wondered if that meant that she would also have free will.

They were amazing to watch. They loved and trusted one another right from the beginning. I suppose it might have been something like the affection and trust they held for God Himself. There was no envy, no struggle for power, no suspicion between them. The demons could have learned something about teamwork by watching them, but, of course, you cannot teach a demon anything.

The man and woman worked together at the task of the garden hand in hand, each helping and submitting to the other. Adam had more physical strength and wanted to protect her. Protect her from what I don't know, since we weren't allowed in the garden yet, but it was quaint to watch them. She did not seem to mind the difference in their body mass and his obviously greater physical ability.

I remembered how I once felt that way about God. I did not feel diminished because His power was so much greater than mine. At least, I didn't feel that way until Satan pointed it out to me. Between Adam and Eve there was intimacy and trust I had not seen since we lost paradise. Unfortunately for them, Satan saw it too. Naturally, that would be the first thing he would try to destroy.

As I watched them, I began to appreciate how God had created them equal but interdependent on one another.

Adam won out in the brawn category, but without a doubt, Eve was the thinker. Adam could do amazing things, but it was Eve who figured out what things were worth doing.

Had Eve never come along, the flaw in Adam's ability to communicate with another human might never have come to light. When God was the only person Adam had to talk with, it didn't matter that much how good he was at detail. After all, Adam could not possibly tell God something He did not already know. I'm certain God must have been aware of Adam's proclivity to speak in headlines: no paragraphs, no fine print, no sidebar articles. So why did God leave it to Adam to tell Eve what the rules were? Adam was sure to leave out something important.

Every evening God came down and walked through the garden with Adam and Eve. I listened carefully because Satan wanted a full report on every word. Each night, before the presence of God ascended from Eden, I would find myself wanting to call after Him.

"God, wait. Tell her about the rule. Tell her about the two trees. Don't leave it to Adam. It's Your only rule.

He's sure to forget something."

Of course, I never did any such thing. I would not have dared, and God would not have listened.

As I knew would happen, the day came when Eve asked Adam about the two trees in the garden. I was afraid he would gloss over the importance of what God said about the trees and leave out some important detail.

I worried about the wrong thing. He left nothing out. In fact, he added to it.

CHAPTER 1 2

SATAN BECAME POSITIVELY
obsessed with the new dimension of time. It didn't mean much to the rest of us since we didn't feel its passing anyway.

We might have forgotten about it completely were it not for the fact that Satan kept saying we hadn't much time or we would soon be running out of time. I wondered, how would one go about doing that? If we ran very fast, did it mean that we would run past it? And if we did, what of it? We had always been outside of time before.

He watched Adam and Eve intently now, studying their every move. I thought he might try to approach them soon after God's departure from the garden, but he didn't. He just watched them. He paid attention to everything they did. He shied away from his watching post in the evening when God appeared in the garden and walked its paths with the two of them. Satan did not want to be seen by God (as if line of sight were necessary for God to know what was taking place). He knew. He always knows.