In case you missed it last week, it seems some small outfit called the Satanic Temple won the right - on religious freedom grounds - to display a statue of Baphomet, a satanic occult figure, in the Iowa capitol building. The spectacle was to appear for a period of two weeks, but thanks to a Navy veteran named Michael Cassidy, the freakish ram's head-on-a-mannequin didn't quite make it that long.
Claiming he was outraged by the "blasphemous statue," Cassidy said his conscience drove him to chop the thing's head off and topple it.
And because we are a controversy-obsessed, polemic people, about everyone felt the need to weigh in with an opinion. Online, Cassidy was either a hero or a fool, a Christian unafraid and unashamed to stand up to the forces of Satanic idolatry, or a blind guide missing the godly forest for the trees.
But there was something I noticed amongst the eclectic array of social media users I follow or that are algorithmically recommended to me. There were a lot of progressives, primarily progressive Christians, who were pretty ticked off that an apparent conservative Christian would desecrate such a harmless ram statue.
"The most anti-Christian act imaginable?" Really? One's imagination needs some work if that is the limit to your understanding of anti-Christian things.
Judging by the impressive volume of reactions to it on his timeline, Pastor Ben was very worked up about any Christian pleased to see the goat dude demolished. Like, he seemed angry with anyone celebrating its destruction. With so much actual trouble in the world, that seemed a little on the strange side. As did this…
Well, I don't know about Jesus melting down any statues, but this ongoing effort to turn Jesus into Captain Charity is a little tiresome. Of course He healed the sick and fed the hungry, and He did so in order to demonstrate the authority He had to offer salvation to sinful humanity. Those caught up in sin were the "oppressed" He lived and died and rose to "liberate." And whose grip did He liberate them from? Satan's.
But all that is continually lost in a politics-first progressive Christianity that is consistently more triggered by Robert E. Lee than the Prince of Darkness himself.
Yes, Mason, I don't think that's quite the point you were hoping to make. Obviously slavery is an abomination, and to the degree that confederate statues lionize its legacy in America, it makes total sense why a Christian would want to see them come down. But, who is the ultimate slaveowner, and whose corruption and wickedness spawned the horrors and inhumanity of the practice in the first place? If you need a hint, take a look at the beheaded goat man.
I guess I'm just not sure why this has to be all that hard.
First, it's absurd to suggest that any civil society has to be so committed to the vanity of pluralism that it feels obligated to pacify Satanists when they demand equal representation in public displays. Insofar as you will not be imprisoned for your Satanic devotion, enjoy the free exercise of your faith. But the Constitution doesn't require that your fake temple's commandments get equal billing with the ones from Sinai in the public square.
Second, from my best understanding, the Satanic Temple in question here are a bunch of atheist trolls. They don't really worship Satan because they don't really believe he's real. They do these things to either (1) win specious legal rulings that diminish the influence of Christianity, or (2) provoke unhinged and distressed reactions from Christians. In that way, the state of Iowa got played, and the Christians who have obsessed over it all have too.
Third, it seems like we just went through a season of statue-toppling where monument desecration was all the rage. And it was all justifiable because those were statues of bad dudes, remember? Is that off now? Because it seems like Satan should rank pretty high on the list of unpleasant historical figures, no? So why is it now such a scandal?
Finally, a word to my fellow Christians. I get why imagery and monuments of a Satanic nature offend and upset us. It's an affront to the Truth that inspires and inhabits every believer. I don't fault any Christian for making their contempt towards Satan a matter of public awareness. Let's just make sure our most vocal and visible testimony is always to the shackle-shattering truth that the real Satan - not the cheap knock-off counterfeit propped up in a government building - was himself eternally decapitated some 2,000 years ago when Jesus crushed his head at Calvary.
