For my part, being the Occam’s razor fan that I am, I opt for a very simple explanation: There’s no personal God anywhere. God exists, but he’s not a person or an entity sitting out there in heaven, way beyond our sight and scrutinizing our every thought and deed. No. There’s a One and Only God for sure, but he’s not outside creation. He IS creation itself and everything that exists in it.

Consequently, if there’s no personal God anywhere, then there’s no personal Devil either, for there would have never been anyone there to create him in the first place. From this perspective, the idea of the Devil is just the greatest conspiracy theory ever conceived (i.e., the Devil is always out to get you), and a pretty convenient one too.

The Devil is the perfect scapegoat any wrongdoer can find, for if anyone is ever caught with their hands in the cookie jar they can always claim that: “Hey, I’m basically a good guy. I really didn’t want to do this bad thing. The Devil made me do it.”

Very often, the idea of the Devil is just a pretext that some people use to shield themselves from blame, so that they won’t have to admit that the “evil” one is potentially each and everyone of us. For example, I find it odd that some people should demonize some films depicting some aspects of Hitler's life (i.e., “The Downfall,” 2004) because they say such films “humanize” Hitler. What are they talking about? Hitler was never an extraterrestrial demon. He was always a human being quite similar to you and me.

He was clearly an extremely evil individual, but he was not from another planet. He was born and raised on Planet Earth just like you, me and everybody else. He just embodied one extreme of the human equation, the evil extreme, just like some outstanding people like Jesus, Gandhi, Buddha, Mother Therese, Ramana Maharshi and others embodied the other extreme of the equation, the good one.

So who’s the Devil in all of this? Nobody is. Not even George W. Bush, contrary to what Hugo Chavez said at the United Nations in September of 2006. The Devil simply doesn’t exist. For if it’s true that the God of the Bible is omniscient and omnipotent, and if it’s true that such God is good and that therefore he cannot be a sadist, then it’s also true that the Devil could have never been created. For if the Devil had been created, then the God of the Bible would have to be either a sadist or a very naïve and largely powerless guy.

In a nutshell, the idea of the Devil cancels out the idea of a good, all-knowing, all-powerful personal God. No question about it. The story of the Devil is just a hoax, a fabrication, the greatest conspiracy theory ever concocted. But if this is true, what would it tell us about the personal God of the Bible? Well, if you didn’t wake up and smelled the coffee yet, you probably never will.

© Salaroche. 2007

[1] Paraphrased from www.reference.com