The red herring of Satanism: the Beast in "The Lord of the Flies"

One of the greatest deceptions by the Enemy is the sensationalism around devil-worship or "satanism." It is another way of lulling nominal Christians into complacency: "I don't worship Satan, who is the embodiment of evil, therefore I must be good." It draws that attention away from the much more subtle way in which people are, in effect, worshiping the enemy through their pride - especially religious pride. It is here that he wears his sanctimonious mask, where he uses the name of Christ as a banner under which to persecute, judge and murder and bring disgrace to this name.

We have nothing to fear from Hell. The gates of death and corruption were broken apart and all the prisoners have been set free. Nothing that emerges from its depth - no demon, no spirit, no dark thought, no satanic music, no hatred from my fellow man - has any hold or authority over those who have been set free by the Lamb of God, Jesus Christ. We are in God's Kingdom on Earth, walking free among the prisoners of this world, this human condition. These prisoners are people who have been deceived into believing that they are mere mortals who have to make a heaven here on earth for themselves.

To be sure; there really is a devil, a fallen angel who corrupted creation and man when he fell from grace. But blaming our misdeeds on him is giving him far too much credit. Rather, it is the fallen nature of every person, from the day that Eve and Adam listened to the lie of the serpent, that is the chief cause of the woes of this world. And sure; the extreme sensationalised form of Satanism is a dreadful thing to practice or even to dabble in, but it is too easy to blame Satanists for the ills of the world, to get bug-eyed about "Satanic" lyrics and "gnostic" messages in music and cinema when we don't have to examine our own pride which causes us to gossip, to slander and hate our fellow humans.

In The Lord of the Flies the boy Simon correctly identifies the Beast as the evil living within our own breast, not a foe that we need to hunt down out of fear: we might just be crucifying Christ again in the process, as Simon, who was the embodiment of spiritual good in LOTF, was killed by the fearful boys in their ritual.

It is in this story that the Christ metaphor is best illustrated and expressed. Simon is not a strong hunter like Jack, the antagonist of this story. He is a dreamer, a philosopher who loves sitting in his secret spot and losing himself in the beauty of the island upon which the boys have been stranded. Neither is he a logician like Piggy, the boy who is always looking for rational explanations yet who is also frightened by the "Beastie" and the danger that Jack poses.

But Simon has a strength that no other boy on the island has: the strength of spirit. The other boys respond to fear: the "littluns" speak of a "Beastie" that they have caught glimpses of in the night, which makes the older boys uneasy. Jack, the fearless hunter, is just as afraid as the other boys, but he uses this fear to lord it over the others: he would protect them against the beast if they made him chief; they had to worship and bring sacrifices to appease the beast. Simon, however, sees clearly that there is no external threat - rather, the beast is something living within each of them. That is the beast that really is to be feared: mankind's capacity for doing evil. Not only that, but also his capacity for blaming his misdeeds on something outside of him - claiming "The Devil made me do it" instead of taking responsibility for his sins.

These "sins" are evident early in the story: Ralph, the "nice" boy is the first to tease Piggy for his nickname; Roger is only constrained from real violence by the still-present voices of the authorities of civilisation when he throws stones at the "littluns," not by any innate goodness; the response to the little boy who is lost in the fire is eerily reminiscent of Abel's response to God when Cain is murdered, that he is not his brother's keeper.

Golding, the author of the book, saw in the war what humans can do to one another, saw the cold political evil of war. It is for this reason that he introduces the dead airman, representative of an outside world in the throes of battle, who parachutes onto the island and gives the boys the fright of their lives. Finally here they have "proof": half-seen in the darkness, the parachute billowing in the wind on the hilltop with the ravaged corpse still attached is their beast. But it is Simon who defeats the beast in his mind - first his monologue with the dead pig's head and then when he is the one who examines the airman closely and realises who the "beast" really is: an emissary of the eternal war that man is waging against man, paying for his sin through death.

What ensues is a combination of two Biblical events: Simon comes down the mountain with the good news like Moses with the stone tablets while the Israelites have fallen into idolatry. Like the Israelites, the boys at the feast are engaged in a primeval ritualistic dance, swept up in a frenzied chant about killing the beast. Simon appears and is mistaken for the "beast." He is murdered in the boys' barbaric ritual. Just as in the Christ story where the evil of the world is defeated on the cross, the wind blows the parachute off the island at that moment when Simon dies, ridding the island of its "beast."

After the scene of Simon's death, Ralph comes to the realisation of his guilt, his complicity in Simon's murder with the other boys. The other boys, however, are in denial, saying they weren't really part of the ritual. This is reminiscent of recent mob killings in the USA, for example, where participants shift the blame onto others in the group, never taking personal responsibility.

Jack keeps the fear of the beast alive in order to hold sway over the other boys. After all, he is their protector and fearless provider. In the same way, world leaders from all ages have sought to quell the idea that Christ's simple gift of redemption is real, that the foe within has been defeated, because fear is the most potent weapon in the arsenal of any leader. The aftermath of 9/11 testifies to this, where the Bush administration used the people's fear to put "anti-terrorist" measures into place that diminished their freedom in the name of Homeland Security. Going back further, Hitler's paranoia that he instilled in the German people of a Jewish conspiracy behind Germany's downfall was a key factor in his rise to power. Then there was the West's bogeyman of Communism. The list of popular fears for the sake of political power goes on.

Even worse is the religious use of fear in order to keep control. Fear of Hell has long been the province of religious leaders whose dead religion has had no power to attract proselytes to Christianity. Christ himself, however, makes mention of Hell only once, and this he does in order to illustrate the consequences in store for those who neglect the plight of the poor and the needy - note that it is not a place reserved for homosexuals and prostitutes in this parable of Lazarus and the rich man. It is also not the place where you go if you're not a "born-again Christian" in the 20th century sense of the word.

Today we have the fearful attitudes against homosexuality and gay marriage that seek to divide the human race into "Us and Them" camps: pro-marriage equity equals "un-Christian"; "Christian" equals condemning homosexuals as loudly as possible. Anything that doesn't look "Christian" or doesn't proclaim itself loudly to be so is treated with distrust and paranoia: cinema or art with "gnostic" messages, music that can be played backwards containing "satanic" messages. Straining out gnats but swallowing the dead camel of the lack of mercy and compassion for a humanity that doesn't know any better.

This is the enemy's greatest deception: making Christians who display godliness but have deprived themselves of its power. It is their fearfulness that is holding them back from engaging with the world on any real terms, calling things evil which God has not, ostensibly uncovering the machinations of Satan by pointing accusing fingers at cinematographers, musicians and artists who are addressing the "big questions" in life . They are the ones who fear Satanism because they don't understand this one simple truth: the gates of Hell, the powers of evil, have been totally neutralised. A light has been switched on in the darkness and there is nothing that the darkness can do to extinguish it. They are the ones who are chasing the red herring of satanism because the enemy has given them a bogeyman to revile, instead of examining themselves for the evil which lurks in all of us.