How Does Satan Encourage Us to Sin?
Beware! A sworn enemy lies in wait!
How many times have you fallen into Satan’s trap and his temptations?
How do you think Satan encourages us to sin?
Is the existence of Satan beneficial to us or harmful?
Can we turn Satan’s attacks to our advantage?
God has created the entire world based on the mathematics of human existence and for our growth. This means that He first assessed what the human needs for growth and development, and then created other beings based on his needs. Therefore, everything in this world, even things that appear to be calamities and disasters, are in fact great blessings that help us reach the purpose of our creation and get closer to God. Satan is one of these blessings.
For those who have not achieved self-knowledge and are unaware of the purpose of their creation and the reason for being in this world, mentioning Satan as a blessing from God may seem a bit strange and thought-provoking. However, for us, who have been together since the beginning of the school of humanology and have continuously followed the discussions, raising this issue should not be too strange. This is because we know that the world is a gym for human development, and in every gym, there must be a worthy opponent to make the training meaningful.
There must be an opponent who always challenges us, attacks our weaknesses, and even knocks us down. Without such an opponent, how can we identify our weaknesses? From this perspective, Satan is truly a great blessing, and struggling against him makes us stronger day by day, of course, as long as we recognize the type of his tactics and equip ourselves to counter them. Knowledge of Satan’s strategies is our greatest asset in this battle. This is where we can turn his attacks to our advantage.
In this article, we discuss one of the most common attacks by Satan known as attack from the left. In this type of attack, Satan skillfully and subtly invite us to break divine boundaries and commit sins.
How Does Satan Trap Us?
Whenever we decide to improve our lifestyle and take steps toward getting nearness to God, we must be prepared for Satan’s relentless attacks. As we mentioned before, Satan only attacks those who are on the Straight Path, and anyone not on the Straight Path is a servant and slave of Satan and an agent of leading others astray, with nothing to lose.
Our relationship with Satan and his companions is similar to the relationship of a tightrope walker with some of the spectators. The tightrope walker always tries to stay away from distractions and focus on continuing his path on the tightrope, while some spectators try to disrupt him with distractions and noise, hoping to witness his fall! Satan and his followers do exactly the same to us. But how does Satan tempt us to commit sin?
Satan is a master psychologist and knows us and our weaknesses better than we do. His attacks are tailored to each individual’s beliefs and personality. For example, Satan would never suggest abandoning prayer or the hijab to a devout person. This is because he knows it is useless and impossible for the person to follow such a temptation. So step by step and undercover, he moves forward and works to first make divine limits and boundaries seem insignificant to the person and make her slack and lazy in observing them. And once he is sure that the initial steps have taken root, he takes the final step and completely leads her astray from the Straight Path.
Satan possesses the ability to identify our vulnerabilities and exploit them to his advantage. He employs our moral weaknesses and character flaws, subtly guiding us towards his desired path. For example, Satan tempts a lazy person to delay the on-time prayer by just a few minutes, but continues this temptation every day until eventually that person postpones the on-time prayer to the last minute. After achieving this goal, he gradually questions the essence of prayer and he sows the seeds of doubt by raising questions like, “What is the necessity for the prayer to be of this length? Why must we pray in Arabic? Why is the hijab necessary during prayer? Why do we have to perform ablution in this way? These outdated rituals are irrelevant in our modern world.” With these doubts firmly planted, Satan delivers the final blow, depriving the individual of even the delayed prayer. This same tactic is applied to other religious obligations. Satan challenges the boundaries set by God, encouraging individuals to break them and commit sin.
Of course, Satan’s temptation to commit sin is not limited to dishonoring obligations and committing outward indecencies. Inward indecencies are also one of the main traps of Satan. In fact, the hell of inward indecencies such as backbiting, envy, arrogance, suspicion, hypocrisy, hatred, and the like is much severer and more painful than that of outward indecencies. This is because although they directly affect the soul and disrupt its balance, they are hidden and concealed, and we may not even be aware of having such traits within us until the Day of Judgement.
Committing Sin and Its Relation to Nourishing Our Existential Dimensions
Alongside moral weakness and character flaws that make us susceptible to Satan’s temptations and committing sin, an imbalance in nourishing the faculties of the soul also plays a significant role in this regard. In fact, one of the sensitive points that Satan takes advantage of is this imbalance in nourishing the faculties of the soul.
God, in His infinite wisdom, has prescribed guidelines for nourishing each faculty of our soul through religious principles and commandments which maintain balance within our soul. When we disregard these boundaries and overfeed one or more faculties of our soul, this balance is disrupted, providing an opportunity for Satan to attack. Therefor while many of our actions are not sinful, they create a fertile ground for other sins.
For example, overeating and physical inactivity, which pertain to our faculty of sense perception, are not inherently sinful, but they can indirectly lead to sin by fostering lethargy and hindering the fulfillment of our religious obligations. Watching too many movies and TV shows, even if free from inappropriate content, is not sinful in itself, but it strengthens our imaginal and estimative dimensions to the point where they gradually overpower our supra-rational dimension. This weakness creates an opportune moment for Satan to take advantage. Due to the importance of maintaining balance in nourishing the faculties of our soul, we will address this in detail in a separate article.
In this lesson, we discussed Satan’s attack from the left through encouraging us to commit sin. We also became aware of some of Satan’s tactics in leading individuals to sin. However, a more important question arises: What precisely is sin, and how is sin defined from the perspectives of humanology rules and the mathematics of creation? We will answer this important question in the following lessons.