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Father, I have a question. Why couldn't God and the devil solve their problems and differences on their own without involving us? 1. We got involved in a war that we understood almost nothing about. 2. We got blamed for the war and we bear the consequences of Adam's sin namely sin, death and suffering! 3. We got saved and one day we'll have to give an account of our life on earth and we don't even know whether we will be accounted worthy to enter paradise. This sounds like taxi bosses fighting over routes, then involving us in it!! Is this fair on us, humans?
Answer to Question 9
Just as we were created with free will so too were the angels. God solved the problem of the devil by casting him out of Heaven, but that doesn’t mean that the devil, using his free will, can’t retaliate and fight back at God. Having lost his place in heaven he also lost his bright beauty and became as a frightful beast. Cast down and beaten, the love he once had for God was turned to hatred and from that moment on his only purpose was to oppose and sabotage whatever is from God and whatever God favours. The holy angels are nine ranks, but some say that they were originally ten, the tenth being Satan and his fallen angels. It is also said by some that God created man to take the place of the fallen rank. This certainly would have made Satan envious and revengeful, but man was not created as a ministering angel. God created man so that man may sit by his right side and rule with him. God created man so that man may become a god by grace. God's plan for man was to be superior to that of the angels. Satan wanted to sit at God's side and be a god and for this he was cast out of heaven, but now God created another being who was destined to do just that. Envious of God's love for man, man became the object of Satan's hatred and deployed the force of his hatred to destroy him. He had not the power to destroy man bodily so he craftily sort out to bring man's downfall, to make him, like himself, disobedient to God. The story of man’s fall tells us that the devil succeeded in bringing down man to his own level. Yes we have been caught up in a war of revenge, but through the sacraments of the church, we have been given the weapons to fight the spiritual enemy and overcome him. Christ has given us the means to be saved and all we have to do is fight the good fight in this temporary life and then we will live eternally with Christ in Paradise. How do we know if we will enter Paradise? Christ gave us many instructions that we must observe to be found worthy of his kingdom. If we do not follow these instructions then we should not have any objections if we find ourselves outside of the wedding banquet with the door shut in our face. But at the end of our earthly life we still won’t know if we have done enough, our only reassurance is that we have our hope in the Lord.
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