Brief Thought #6: Naughty Anton LaVey

When I was an early teenager, I was shocked at the news of “satanic ritual abuse” being reported by media and also dramatized in paperback books written as exposés.  I determined at that time that when I grew up I would become a super hero and rescue the poor victims and bring street justice to the perpetrators.  Oh well, my motives were pure.  Later all of the reports were found to be hoaxes, and are almost universally accepted as such today.  This marked the early realization that therapists could plant false memories of horrific events in people’s minds, either on purpose or by accident.  The horrible things attributed to the satanists made good copy for Sunday sermons at the time.  But perhaps most telling is the subsequent silence: I can’t remember the last time I heard a credulous reference to the issue.  I don’t think it is the topic of sermons any more.

Growing up, I have become more circumspect.  I have also become more skeptical of third-party accusations.  I put it in the same category as gossip until I see it for myself.  I try not to criticize things which I know nothing about.  So a few months ago I decided to find out– cautiously– who these satanists were.  I started, logically, by reading The Satanic Bible by Anton LaVey.  I reasoned that if there really were demons ready to jump out of it at me, that YHWH is stronger and can protect me.  And if the author was a true enemy of YHWH, it would do me well to know the enemy.

As it turned out, no evil spirits jumped out.  It was an astonishing read, and I concluded that Mr. LaVey only narrowly missed discovering a true Biblical religion.  His “theology,” though based on humanistic atheism, is in some ways closer to Biblical teaching than modern churchism is.  His teachings could be summed up by saying that people should live normal, natural lives.  When people try to contradict nature by being something they are not, it results in spiritual/psychological disorders, and the peer pressure to be better causes them to become self-righteous hypocrites, disguising their own faults by highlighting the faults of others.

Mr. LaVey started formulating his religious viewpoints when he worked for a carnival.  He saw men attend Saturday night events that were generally considered impious, and then attend church under the same tents on Sunday morning.  He concluded that the Christian religion was founded on hypocrisy, and set about to explore a diametrically opposite philosophy.  Anton LaVey’s Church of Satan was a self-conscious iconoclastic departure from the norm.  He never believed he was actually worshiping a being named “Satan.”  He was ultimately an atheist, deliberately attempting to be naughty in order to poke fun at the mainstream religion.

I suggest that he was not actually attacking the God YHWH of the Bible, quite simply because he didn’t know who the God YHWH was.  He attacked what he believed to be representative Christianity, but I have not noticed any instances of him attacking Judaism or Torah religions.  The seven deadly sins he sought to commit, at least as he represented them, were church sins and not direct violations of Torah.  He apparently did not realize that the average YHWH-fearing person in the Bible was a natural, earthy person– “the salt of the earth.”  YHWH’s people were not self-righteously pious or ascetic.  They did not pretend to be perfect.  They were human beings with warts.  Most of all, they accepted themselves and their relationship with YHWH.

I believe that if Mr. Lavey had been exposed to Biblical servants of YHWH instead of hypocritical people playing church, he might have identified with the Biblical people.  He might have started a Biblical church.  Instead, he was exposed to occult teachings and established the Church of Satan.  In reacting against the excessive and feigned piety of churchists, he swung the pendulum 180 degrees in the opposite direction.  Who can say what would have happened if he had stopped at the middle ground?  To be fair, I don’t know whether the people he observed were self-righteous, pretending to be perfect.  That may only have been his perception of them.

It is sobering to think that by the simple act of identifying ourselves as Christians, we put Christ on the center stage.  Others will judge Christ by how they see us behave.  They will draw either right or wrong conclusions about the God of the Bible.  That should give each one of us pause to consider whether we are doing YHWH a service, or a disservice, by publicly identifying ourselves with Him.  One of the simplest, easiest ways to avoid charges of hypocrisy is to reconcile with ourselves and not put up a false front.  By accepting who we are, we won’t feel the need to pretend to be something else.  By not pretending to be something we’re not, we can let our lives be a more true reflection of what a normal, natural person’s relationship with YHWH is.