this post was submitted on 07 Oct 2023
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Except that's a horrible distortion of Satan's real role in Abrahamic religion - he was once understood as YHWH's most loyal angel, willing to inflict eternal torture against his will for the sake of cleansing sin or whatever the fuck his torture was supposed to achieve. If the Christian god stopped being a massive piece of shit and went "yo, I don't think all this torture stuff is actually helpful", Satan would immediately stop his business.
To be upfront, I am not religious and never have been, but my understanding is that Satan isn't the one doing the actual punishing? He is being punished by God himself, as is everyone else in Hell
That is a common misconception. Lucifer was punished and had his holy light removed, but Satan was always supposed to stay in hell and govern it.
Well, he was banished for being proud. But it all depends how you interpret the Bible
There isn't really much about eternal torture or damnation back when Satan was still an agent of God, and he certainly wasn't in charge of Hell. All the talk of gnashing teeth and lakes of fire was originally metaphor for how much it sucked, not literal.
Hell isn't a place, it's a state of complete lack of Grace. The idea is that everyone has a 2 way connection to God, and all good feelings and emotions must come from it. People are free to reject that connection by committing mortal sin, but "the line stays open," as long as someone lives. Honest repentance is accepting the connection back. If one dies before accepting grace again, God shrugs and accepts they aren't interested, and cuts his side of the line. This leaves an existence with zero positive thoughts or feelings, best case scenario is eternal meh. Of course, it was hyped up to be awful to help convert and maintain control. And, ofcourse, Satan did do a bit of torture here and there, but it was generally all on living folk to test them.