Forgiving Satan: Judgement and The Left Hand of God

We are told that seated on the right hand of God is Christ. In one of the gospels (I think not a canonical one) the mothers of two of the disciples of Jesus insist that he place their sons with him on the left hand of God. Jesus dismisses them saying that they know not what they are asking.

Aside from the ambition and conceit of such request, Jesus seems to allude to something. What were they unknowingly asking of Jesus? Is there someone already on the left hand of God? I am beginning to think maybe there is.

Jesus said "I am the Way... no one comes to the father except through me." I do not think this was Judeo-Christian conceit - but rather that Christ's role in Christian theology is to restore man's relationship with God. Is there someone who strives to keep us from him?

I recently read something interesting: that in Jewish understanding, the right hand of God is his punishing, violent, jealous side. Since the writers of the books that became the New Testament would have been familiar with this concept, it seems that the placement of the Christ in this specific position was not just an honour for the carpenter from Nazareth. His position would indicate that he would restrain the punishing, judgmental side of God we see in the Old Testament.

But what then of the left hand of God? The story says that it is the left hand that is compassion, love, nurturing, forgiveness. Are we to believe that this arm is unfettered?

In the book of Job, there is a councillor who pressures God into inflicting suffering on Job. Job was a good and faithful man, but the councillor suggested that this was only because his life was too easy. This being was then dispatched by God to deliver Job's suffering himself. This councillor's name is Satan.

Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan came also among them. And the LORD said unto Satan, Whence comest thou? Then Satan answered the LORD, and said, From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it. (Job 1:6.7)

In the Garden of Eden there are two special trees - the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and the Tree of Life. The fruit of the Tree of Life is not prohibited (until the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil has been eaten). The action happens at the forbidden tree. The snake appears in the tree, almost part of it. And the snake is now routinely identified as the Devil.

Eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil gets man and womankind banished from the Garden and causes them to become estranged from God. The rest of the Old and New Testament is about God and man trying to repair that relationship.

And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever: Therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken. So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life. (Genesis 3:22-24)

In the Gospel of Truth, one of the apocryphal gospels, the author describes the death of Christ not like Mel Gibson's recent snuff film does. Rather, he uses the image of Jesus as the fruit of God's heart, the fruit of the Tree of Life. The cross instead of an instrument of torture becomes a living source of life. Notice that Jesus is now hanging in this tree and the devilish snake in the other.

Is it crazy to think then that Jesus might not have been the ONLY begotten son of God? Rather that he had a divine twin, called the Satan or the Adversary by the Jews , Muslims and Christians, Mara by the Buddhists? And while Jesus restrains God's wrath, Satan tempers his compassion.

The current fundamentalist Christian projection of Satan as the enemy of God is senseless. How could a creation, no matter how powerful make even a nuisance for the Uncreated? If God saw the Devil as an undesirable part of Creation - the Devil wouldn't have lasted long at all. In the book of Job (that suffering but faithful man mentioned previously) the text is quite clear. God created all that there is, and he put all Good AND Evil that exists into His Creation, because this is what he wanted to do.

In the Buddhist tradition, wisdom and compassion are both virtues (or roughly the equivalent of virtues). They are also seen as counter-balancing opposites. Wisdom without compassion is cold, aloof, uncaring and selfish. Compassion without wisdom is random, quickly exhausted with out doing much Good.

Does the Tree of Life and Jesus represent compassion? Does the Tree of Knowledge and the Devil represent Wisdom and Independence? Remember that one name for the Devil is Lucifer - literally the bearer of light! And of course, among other things, light creates shadows.

Has Creation been designed with Good and Evil, Compassion and Wisdom in careful counterbalance?

Who is it that sits at and tempers the left hand of God, that gentle compassionate hand?

And if Christ is, among other things, the bearer of the fruit of the Tree of Life - is it possible that his great gift of reconciliation with God requires that we renounce the fruit we ate from the other Tree? And what could the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil be but judgement?

Judge not, that ye be not judged. (Matthew 7:1)

For all the blame we have seen fit to heap on the the Snake, Adam and Eve for their roles in the "Fall of Humankind", why are we so slow to cough up the apple of judgement we swallowed ourselves? If not for the taste of that fruit, what would we know of Good and Evil?

God looked on His Creation and saw that it was Good. The Snake was part of that Creation. The Fall was part of that Creation.

God did not eat the apple. We did. What can be Evil in His eyes?