In the eyes of QAnon and Christian fundamentalism, I’m a heretic. I don’t believe in Satan. Not that Satan, the devilish opponent of God. But trying to make some sense of life these days has led me to take another look at Satan.

The biblical Satan is the personification of trickery and the reptilian impulses that lie in wait in every mortal psyche. Satan is a con artist. “You will not die,” whispers the serpent to the mortals in the Genesis story of humanity’s fall from paradisaical innocence. Likewise, in the wilderness temptations of Matthew and Luke, it is Satan who lures “the man for others” (Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s description of Christ) to being a man who cares only for himself. Satin is the personification of the lies that flips reality on its head. Satan is a Con Artist.

Con artistry is never far away. Sometimes we come face-to-face with it. I see it inside the courtroom in New York City where a jury wrestles to disentangling truth from falsehood, evidence from sham, honesty from fraudulence, in full view national figures, members of the U.S. House of Representatives take their seats in room as visiting dignitaries who are surely recognizable to at least one member of the jury. Their physical presence is intimidating; it strikes me as its own kind of witness and jury tampering, a violation of the defendant’s gag order.

Outside the courtroom, I see these same Members of the United States House of Representatives, each of whom has sworn the Constitutional oath of office, line up take their turns behind the microphone and media cameras to denounce the judicial system, malign court personnel, the judge, prosecutors and their families, and read aloud. Up is down and down is up; right is wrong and wrong is right; truth-telling is out; conning is in. I hear Pinocchio’s surrogates betray their oaths of office in hopes of becoming Pinocchio’s right hand. Jiminy Cricket is a distant memory. Conscience is nowhere to be found.

Yesterday confirmed what I know of the biblical Satan who never was but always is wherever there’s an Achilles’ Heel – the vulnerability of mortals to the Con that I and we can do no wrong.

Gordon C. Stewart, public theologian, host of Views from the Edge, author of Be Still! Departure from Collective Madness (2017 Wipf and Stock), Brooklyn Park, MN, May15, 2024.