No Stupid Questions

It's Christian fanfic. There is surprisingly little about Hell in actual scripture, definitely not the "hell" we've come to expect from modern media. Most depictions of hell originate from Dante's Inferno, not from the bible.

Wow there's a lot of bad faith answers in here. Just because you're upset about Christianity doesn't mean giving a terrible uninformed answer is helpful.

As for the general answer to your question (no longer a Christian, but did missions work for many years), the predicate of Christianity is that God created everything in the world. Therefore, by basic extension, everything's place in that world is to worship its creator (and not itself), because worshipping God in this paradigm is its fundamental natural purpose. Not doing so is a perversion of that purpose and leads to dissonance in your soul, sin, etc.

Satan did it first, and as some commented, was the first to be in this realm of far from God by worshipping himself instead of his creator. Like anyone with a terrible addiction, you tend to want to get other people to support that addiction, so humanity is easy game (Adam and Eve). In this sense Satan is like the older sibling teaching bad habits to newer siblings.

Taking this further into the future, you now have Satan and humans who will be occupying this space of "God not being there". In that time, if none of you are God, it stands to reason that the strongest will prevail, i.e. the angel who got you to sin in the first place. The bible doesn't paint too much about him explicitly in regards to his role in hell. This idea of Satan just not being part of the harmony of putting god at the center explains the strange way that he and God still have a conversation in thr book of Job since hell is rejection of God from the self, not the other way around. What we can infer from other parts of the Bible about his role, like the numerous examples of human sacrifice and other degenerate activities for "false gods" the picture of Satan is that he hungers to use humanity to make himself a God and that he's a lot stronger than us were he to do it (hence the idea that he rules hell).

The last little bit on this is at the book of revelation. In the end, the prophecy is that Satan and humans are thrown into a lake of fire. There is no governorship here. This is the final judgement where all who are irredeemable are destroyed. The period of rule most Christians probably got the idea you asked about is from earlier in revelation when the righteous are raptured and the earth is run by Satan (again, not on purpose, but by consequence of being the strongest). Ultimately though, his fate ends up being destruction, not rule. So for a while, he has apparent power by nature of being more capable, cunning, and self-serving over others who have rejected God and therefore have none of the one things he cannot surmount.

You asked a good question, with a very interesting answer. A lot of very naive atheists seem to like to Google bible passages and then forget that there is such a thing as internal consistency. In a paradigm like Christianity, you need to start with it's fundamental postulates and walk from there. Not project your own completely different viewpoint onto it and act smug when they don't match. At the very least, Christianity is a centuries old story with some interesting internal consistencies and comments of human nature. There's a whole fascinating side discussion of this stuff on whether or not Satan is being given the same long grace period that humanity is to accept God.

The concept of hell does not appear in scripture, it is a Hellenist addition. The concept of Hades ruling the underworld was preserved as “Satan and Hell” as Judeo-Christian terminology spread and was co-opted by Hellenist cults.

In actual scripture, “Satan” is a being who stands before gods throne slinging accusations and slanders against god’s people. The concept of hell does not exist at all, and every time you see the word in an english Bible it is an intentional mistranslation from one of a handful of other words that have more specific and nuanced meanings, usually “the grave.”

Jesus observed and taught a form of pharisaic Judaism that believed in an eventual “resurrection and judgement of all people.” The righteous would be given a fresh start in a new creation but everyone else would be destroyed by cleansing fire, dead and gone forever. This “burned away like trash” imagery eventually infected the traditional Hellenist imagery of a “cold dark” underworld and turned it into a place of flaming, volcanic, undying torment.

Hmm the way Satan is portrayed in the old testament is like a prosecutor for God. The New testament mentions a few characters sort of like that. The whore of Babylon, Lucifer, the dragon, etc.

I have always been sort of open-minded about the idea of Lucifer,because the people who always seem to want you to hate him and have bad things to say about him/her, always seem to be exactly the types of people I dont like. Considering the Catholic Church for example, ruled over a slave infested hellhole of public torture and execution and brainwashing, I kind of feel like Lucifer is probably the good guy since they hate him/her so much. Idk tho. Not really that religious anymore.

There is a sort of old belief that Lucifer rules over earth and God over heaven. This is based in old folk beliefs of Christianity before it was made into a religion and stuff. One place this shows up in the Bible is when Moses dies, God and the devil are sort of arguing over who gets the soul of Moses.

The idea of hell is mostly a medieval concept to sort of sell the more institutionalized version of Christianity to the masses and emphasize the punishment part, which was necessary when the religion started to become the backbone of the power structure of medieval society. At the time when Christ lived, the Jews didn't really believe in an afterlife. They believed in a place where souls rested, but it was dark and miserable. The greeks had hades and some other places depending on how good your soul was.

Too cool for God.

the bible says satan causes illness but then god causes the firstborn to die, causes plagues, and so on.

the bible says god is good but god is a judgemental ass, who raped a woman and impregnated her, and who forces suffering onto people. while satan welcomes all who come to his realm, to better themselves.

satan's the real protagonist, not god. and the bible is so self contradictory that science alone holds the answers.

edit: likewise, if you look at greek mythology, Hades is actually pretty chill compared to the rest. He still abducts Persephone to make her his wife, but he treats her decently and lets her visit family and friends. Can't say that about Zeus, who gets angry randomly and fucks anything, regardless of whether it's moving

In the book of Job, Satan is depicted more like a friendly prosecutor or advisor to God than an enemy. He and Yahweh are like frat bros torturing the poor schmuck.

Trump hadn't been born yet.

Well they need someone there; if you just exile people to hell without a plan you end up with Australia.

Modern Christian mythology is a mashup of a lot of things. A scholar would be required to really unpack a lot of it, but consider that much of what we think of as lore, motivation, and character are newer additions. Dante's Inferno probably has more influence on our ideas about Lucifer and Hell than the Bible.

Once you start unpacking these old stories with a post-modern mindset, the logic of it quickly stops making sense.

A modern Christian might opine that Lucifer is a prisoner of Hell but not a genuine threat to the power of their Almighty God. He's not awarded this position. He's lost God's grace and dwells outside of his love - the worst punishment imaginable in the mind of some Christians.

it depends on what you consider to be Canon. personally, I think the Bible doesn't say much about it because the Bible is a boring and poorly written.

Milton's Paradise lost is pretty interesting. lucifer is the leader of a failed revolution to overthrow the monarchy of heaven and that's how they all got banned

From my understanding hes just the first prisoner, not actually the leader of hell

The more important question:

Why do humans continue to believe in utterly moronic fictional BS?

Let us not forget that according to the Bible, angels do not have free will. It is pretty clear that humans are the only beings in all of existence to have such a thing. Angels are just extensions of God's will. So Lucifer could not rebel of their own volition, that they did so was God's will. If humanity's free will were to mean anything, they had to be tempted and forced to choose, had to have bad guys.

Satan doesn't rule hell. In fact, Satan is the one who suffers the most in hell. Hell was literally made to torture Satan and his demons. It wasn't made for the Humans, unlike Heaven

A few disclaimers. Im not a believer nor super knowledgeable about any specific interpretation. There are many interpretations and here is one.

Hell is supposed to be bad because its disconnected from god. Before satan all was god and in withdrawing his being it made a second place. Also satan is immortal so its possible he can't be killed which is why god was so worried about adam and eve eating from the fruit of eternal life. Eating the apple of good and evil allowed some of mankind to be evil enough to not be allowed in gods prescence so are in the only other place. Satan being powerful and there from the get go easily controls the place.

Okay, bear with me for just a second. There's a cartoon called "Hazbin Hotel", which it told from the point of view of Satan (Lucifer's) daughter. In her version of their origin story, Lucifer gave humanity free will. But because humans are, well, all over the place, this allowed for evil to exist. Which lead to the creation of hell as a place to put these evil souls.

As Lucifer's punishment, he was sent to rule over hell, so that the only outcome he would ever see for giving humans free will was humans turning evil. Over & over again for all eternity.

Yes it's a cartoon. But I thought it was very elegant here.

I think its kind of a matter of interpretation? The "why" is that he either refused to bow before men (who he thought of as beneath himself), or, the less fun option, he just didn't follow daddy's wishes and got sent to the corner.

As for his "award", that too is kind of...opaque. One way to interpret hell is as the absence of creation, as in literally outside of Yhwy's world of creation. So either a new second world for unworthy creations to go when they end, or just literally a void of nothing, because to be removed from God's world should be to be removed from reality.

Ideas about hell being a place where the unrighteous are tortured largely come from later, non-canonical stories, with the biggest name easily being Dante's Inferno (which itself seemed to be largely about the author taking jabs at people from his own era that he didn't like or agree with iirc).

I'm not a scholar on the subject tho, so take it with a grain. This is just what I've heard, and I'm quite sure that I've heard some incorrect and half-true things before.

As if ANY religion makes sense. Don't try to find one, either just accept the nonsense (they call it faith) or don't. You are NOT supposed to question that.

Satan ruling Hell

From where exactly have you got this idea?

The way I understand it the whole Lucifer/Satan thing is a mistranslation.

Satan just means "challenger" and he is just an angel that has been ordered by God to troll humans.

Lucifer is an angel that got cast out.