As I was waiting for repair work on my car to be completed, I saw an issue of People magazine on a table nearby. I picked it up for some casual reading to kill time and noticed an article on the television show “Lucifer.”
The article called fans of the show “Lucifans,” and as I read that I wondered, “How low can our culture sink?” For people to find entertainment in a show about the Prince of Darkness, the adversary of God, the author of everything evil, would seem to indicate that there’s no end to how low fallen mankind will go in rejection of its creator.
Then again, there’s nothing about the show “Lucifer” that is in any way true. It portrays Satan as a rather good guy. He’s kind and tender, loyal to his friends.
He even falls in love, stopping at nothing to protect his beloved Chloe (a homicide detective with whom he works in, of all places, the city of angels — Los Angeles).
Above all, the television Lucifer is a seeker of justice and defender of truth, asserting to Chloe in one episode that, above all else, she knows he would never lie.
And that’s precisely the problem with the show: The real Lucifer does nothing but lie. Jesus even says of him in the Gospel of John: “… there is no truth in him. Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies” (John 8:44).
The biggest lie of the show “Lucifer” is that Satan is this good guy out to avenge wrong, and that God is the one responsible for all that is wrong with the world — as if the devil were our friend, and if we could just free ourselves from the nasty clutches of our creator, everything would be so much better.
But nothing could be further from the truth. In the beginning God created everything good; only when our first parents, Adam and Eve, fell for Satan’s lie that God was holding out on them did everything turn bad under the curse of our rebellion. But God is so good he didn’t let his creation stay bad, but embraced it and even became one with it in the enfleshment of his son.
In Jesus Christ, God Himself bore the curse of our rebellion against him in death on a cross and then freed us from it with his resurrection from the dead. Now, all who are baptized and believe in his name have hope for a future life in God’s new creation. They know the truth of God’s goodness, the truth of God’s love, as Jesus also says in John’s Gospel:
“If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:31-32).
Don’t be “Lucifans,” my friends; be “Jesusfans.” For Jesus Christ is the real and only defender of all that is true and good.
Dan O’Connor is pastor of Faith Lutheran Church in Greenfield. This weekly column is written by local clergy members.
