Satan’s Opposite
This is a post I meant to write on Sunday as a nod to Mother’s Day. However, Mother’s Day and the following Monday got a little bit more chaotic than I anticipated, so instead we will have a weirdly timed Tuesday post.
The question of the day: Who is Satan’s Opposite? Who is the direct opposite of the Devil himself?
If you were a good Sunday schooler, you might have said “Jesus!” Points for enthusiasm, but wrong. Likewise, “God” is not the correct answer here either.
Jesus and God are not the opposites of Satan. God has no opposites. There are none like him, none to rival him, none that can stand before him. He is the alpha and omega, the only supreme power in existence. Satan, as powerful as he is, as dangerous as he is, is less than a molecule of water dropped on the surface of the sun when compared to God. It is our Western thinking that leads us to believe they are opposites. The darkness and light, the good and evil, the king of heaven and the king of hell. While poetic, none of that is true. Satan is a fallen creature. Hell is not his kingdom, it is his punishment. We in the West spend too much time thinking in absolutes, and we have also been overly saturated with media that, while entertaining, contains theologically poor material. God is not the opposite of Satan. Never was, never will be, and anything that places them remotely near the same level is not the truth of Scripture.
You may be asking, if not Jesus or God, then who?
The answer is actually quite surprising. We all know who it is. It was a poor, uneducated, village girl in the first century named Mary.
The Virgin Mary, the Theotokos, the Mother of God, is the opposite of Satan in every way and his most hated enemy. Satan was a perfect creature, made in power, standing beside God. Through his own pride, he fell and brought humanity down with him.
Mary was a human being, born in a fallen world, with no glory and no means. Through her humility, she bore the savior of the world who would set mankind free. Satan’s pride led to our fall, and Mary’s humility led to our salvation. Satan may have once stood next to God, but Jesus, God incarnate, humbled himself before Mary and was under her care and protection during his human birth and upbringing. Satan is the father of lies and the prince of darkness, Mary is the mother of the Truth and the Light.
As you can see, the parallelism is quite extensive. They are mirror opposites of one another. God really does have a beautiful way of bringing everything full circle and bringing beauty from the chaos of our world. There’s much more to it than this, but I would encourage you to look deeper into Mariology, the study of Mary, and to model your life after hers. Protestants often only discuss Mary around Christmas, during the nativity season, which I believe is to their detriment. Mary was the first disciple, the one who was closest to Jesus for three decades, and the only person who beheld his birth, life, death, and resurrection. She is the only human being in history to have shared divine blood, to have carried Jesus in her womb, and to have watched the Son of God grow up. Learn to be more like Mary, and I promise you your Christian Walk will never be the same.