Hermits and Experiences of Satan?

[[Dear Sister, I wondered if you have any experience of the Devil?  I have never known what to do with the part of the faith that includes the Devil but I recently heard someone who claims the Devil messes with her all the time. She made it seem like the Devil picks on hermits and even uses them to "mess with" others. It sounded to me a lot like that old joke about "the devil made me do it" -- it's kind of an excuse for anything that goes wrong when the person doesn't want to own up to their role in it. I don't think you write about the Devil though I saw where recently you referred to Satan being called "the accuser". Do you believe in Satan or the Devil? Does he "mess with" hermits? Is that because they are more spiritual than most people?]]

Another first! Thanks for your questions, although I have to say they leave me kind of at a loss. You see, yes, I have experienced evil, but Satan? No, I have no experience with that at all. My own experience of evil was something I came (eventually) to regard as the person's illness, and I found that explaining what I had experienced made sense in terms of mental illness. What also helped me make sense of it around the same time was Paul Tillich's theology of the demonic. What Tillich does is to look at something sacred. When that is distorted, twisted, and diminished, it becomes what he calls the demonic. On the other hand, when it is raised to higher forms and even its highest form of perfection, there we have the holy. For something or someone to be raised in this way implies participation in God's life, love, goodness, and truth, that is, in the holiness of God. For them to be distorted and diminished in the way I have described means for them to move further from participation in God's life, love, truth, goodness, beauty, etc. 

Another way to think of this is how we are when we allow ourselves to be loved as opposed to who we become when we refuse to be loved and become self-centered and incapable of the truth. As human beings made in the image of God, we are capable of great good and, if that image is distorted, great evil. Tillich knew this very well and so he understood human beings as sacred and capable of great holiness in and through God. At the same time, he had watched human beings who had become seriously distorted and diminished; they were profoundly inhuman and inhumane, and Tillich identified this state as demonic. But this had nothing to do with a literal Devil or Satan. It occurred in complex ways through the influences upon and choices made by each person, just as sanctification occurs. 

Personally, I neither affirm nor deny the existence of Satan (though I do note that it is not part of the Church's creeds). I simply say Satan has little to do with my own faith which is centered on Christ and the One he called Abba in the power of the Spirit.At the same time, I don't see where human beings need a lot of help in becoming inhuman and setting genuine evil loose in our world. We are the source of systemic and institutionalized evil, and I don't think we need an external source beyond the harmful ways other human beings have treated us or encouraged and conditioned us to treat others (whether all these things occur directly or indirectly). I feel the same way you do about folks who carry on about how the Devil is messing with them, or how persecuted they are, etc. However, (though I too enjoyed the Flip Wilson sketch way back) it is not funny or entertaining to me; it is a tragedy because it involves a person who, it seems to me, has no real self-knowledge, no motivation to metanoia or change, and a limited capacity for honesty or love, including self-love and love of God.

Ironically, there is a side to this, that is even more tragic in a person who tends to blame the devil, and that is the tendency to attribute to God everything that can't be attributed to Satan. While it is true that everything good in our life ultimately comes from God and reveals God to us, it is not typical of God to speak directly to us as a rule of thumb, to come to us similarly in visions, or to will our suffering, much less to cause actual suffering. God does NOT cause suffering, nor does God will our pain. This approach to reality not only refuses to take appropriate responsibility for the things that happen to us and cause difficulties for us (which includes taking responsibility for getting appropriate help with the wounds caused by others), but it also tends to be a form of self-aggrandizement.

I know some psychologically healthy hermits whose lives are edifying, focused on, and filled with God. They are wonderfully happy. Some can occasionally reference the Devil as the power behind real suffering, but these hermits don't have a strong sense of the Devil's presence in their lives. Certainly, they don't see him lurking and ready to pounce at the slightest opportunity. Others rarely, if ever, think of Satan except as he perhaps comes up in lectio or discussions, though they are apt to be acutely aware of the reality of evil in our world. What I am saying is that it is not "normal" for hermits to be "taken" with the place of the Devil in their lives. It is not normal for hermits to deal with Satan, to want to understand Satan, (to desire to) spend time writing or speaking about Satan, etc. Hermits may certainly have experiences of real evil. They may have experienced occasions or periods of serious suffering, but blaming Satan (or God!) for these is simply not typical of these hermits. Their lives are full of the grace of God and a sense of wonder or awe at the way God has called them to Himself.

They recognize all the ways God has been at work in (and for!) them and are full of praise and love for this God. They also are well aware of their own failures and shortcomings in this and other relationships; Satan has nothing to do with these problems, though personal woundedness may well be at their heart. They work on these with their spiritual directors and others who are competent in doing this kind of work with them. They suffer, yes, as we all suffer, and they accept this suffering as a share in Christ's own suffering embraced for the sake of a new heaven and new earth where God will be all in all. What they do NOT do is blame Satan nor play Satan off against God with themselves as some sort of victim or pawn of either or both!! (Note, those who are also "victims" of God will frame their victimhood in pious categories of grace, or "mysticism", or they may even identify themselves as a "Victim Soul".) 

In either case, just as you recognize, such a person, for whom victimhood (whether Divine or demonic) is a defining category of their life, tends to disavow appropriate responsibility for their suffering and difficulties. This can include resisting or rejecting therapy or other forms of assistance for original or core woundedness, and sometimes rejecting getting help for an ongoing paranoia about being persecuted or harassed by everyone around them. From my perspective, such a person's relationship with God is distorted and becomes seriously disedifying. Whenever God is made the direct cause of suffering or the one who directly wills and brings pain, serious theological errors have occurred in the name of a significantly flawed "spirituality".  In any case, the hermits I know, though profoundly spiritual and usually experienced with an authentic sense of what the desert tradition calls struggling or doing battle with demons**, tend to see themselves as simply way too inconsequential for Satan (or, The Devil) to have any interest in. 

** Please see articles on battling or struggling with demons for the way I use these terms