I wrote this to a friend who I have been talking to about spiritual things. I like what I wrote and thought I would share it. I am interested in what you think.
"Hey, I feel a desire to tell you a story. Actually it is not a story, but it is the story as I see it, as I understand it. I believe God created us and put us in a perfect world with perfect relationship with him and each other and that is how it was for a while. I think this might have lasted sometime but the Bible only gives it only a few lines so we tend to skip over it or assume it was really short. Anyway, I also believe that an angel rebelled against God. This is Satan. He was not just any angel either, he was high ranking and a big deal. Anyway, he rebelled against God and took 1/3 of the angels with him. Since God is perfect in power as well as in every other way, Satan can't hurt him, that is Satan can't destroy him. However, Satan saw what God loved best, which is humanity, so Satan conspired against us to get at God. Now God gave us this perfect everything, but in order for us to be able to love God freely, God gave us choice. That is where Satan took his opportunity and conspired against God by deceiving us into throwing God the Tyrant off so we could go our own way. However, in doing this sin entered our perfect world and we ended up following not ourselves instead of God, but Satan (think about the story... we did what he told us, we didn't come up with it). The implications of our choice were huge for the whole creation because God had put us in charge. So not only did our perfect fellowship with him get broken, but our perfect fellowship with one another was broken too and the whole world fell. This is not how things are supposed to be. God has a plan for Satan, which is eternity in hell. In fact hell was made for Satan not for people. God made a way to redeem us, this is the part of the story that you probably know best. However, Satan is not in hell yet. He is at work in our world, still in open rebellion against God, still trying to hurt God by hurting what God loves most: us. And the way he can do that best is by keeping people from God's solution to this mess and ultimately taking as many of us down with him as possible. I want to conclude this overview with a final thought. Satan succeeded in hurting God. He really did hurt him, and not just emotionally (as if that wouldn't count if it were the only way). But I won't get into that right now. Maybe you can already see what I mean."
