Should Christians Tear Down Statues of Satan?

When you read about all of the Old Testament stories of people tearing down

statues and idols to false gods, I can't imagine that those typically went well

with everyone.

The message of Christianity is that salvation is found in Christ alone, and any who reject

Christ therefore forfeit any hope of salvation, any hope of

heaven.

The issue is that humanity is in sin, and the wrath of Almighty

God is hanging over our head.

They will hear his words, they will not act upon them, and when the floods of divine judgment, when the fires of

wrath come, and they will perish.

God wrapped himself in flesh, condescended, and became a man,

died on the cross for sin, was resurrected on the third day, has ascended to the right

hand of the Father, where he sits now to make intercession for us.

Jesus is saying there is a group of people who will hear his words, they will act upon them, and when the floods

of divine judgment come in that final day, their house will stand.

06 .15 Tim Mueller.

Welcome to Bible Bash, where we aim to equip the saints for the works of ministry by answering the questions you're not allowed to ask.

We're your hosts, Harrison Karig and Pastor Tim Mueller, and today we'll answer the age -old question, should

Christians tear down statues of Satan?

Now, Tim, as we start this episode, what Bible verse do you have for us?

15 .11 Tim.

Yes, so 1 Kings 15 .11 says,.

And Asa did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, as David his father had done.

He put away the male cult prostitutes out of the land, and removed all the idols that his father had made.

He removed Maka, his mother, from being queen mother, because she had made an abominable image for Ashtoreth.

And Asa cut down her image and burned it at the brook Kidron, but then the high places were not taken away.

Nevertheless, the heart of Asa was holy, which was the Lord in all of his days.

So, there's a passage that's somewhat relevant.

Tavis.

Okay.

So, in that passage, they are tearing down the false idols, right?

And they're presented as the heroes of the story, right?

Tim.

Yeah, but I mean, obviously, that's Israel, and America's not Israel, and all that stuff has no relevance.

Tavis.

This does not apply to us at all.

Pretend this passage does not exist.

Tim.

We're a secular republic, and pluralism, and secularism, and I

may not agree with your right to worship Satan, but I will fight to the death for it.

Tavis.

Which sounds so weird.

If you just remove, okay, just pretend you're

an Israelite, for example.

Put your - Tim.

First, they came for the Satanist, and then I did nothing, you know, and then they came for

the Mormons, and I did nothing, and then they came for me.

So, you know, it's very weird.

Tavis Put yourselves in the shoes of an Israelite way back in Old Testament

times, and you somehow have the ability to look into the future and then see that this is

how American Christians interact with other religions,

right?

What do you think they would think about us in terms of our faithfulness?

Tim I don't know.

Tavis I mean, I guess there's -.

Tim.

A bunch of whips, a bunch of whips.

Tavis I guess it is a hard hypothetical just because most Jews reject Christ to

begin with, right?

But it's hard to imagine many of them would applaud our brave stance to defend.

Religious freedom, right?

Tim.

Right.

Well, I mean, it's hard, yeah.

It's difficult to make that case for religious liberty in the way that

the American experiment has done from the Bible in particular.

So, I mean, it's very difficult to make that case as if religious liberty is actually a good thing.

In fact, I mean, as you read through the Old Covenant, one of the things you're going to find is that it's

the opposite, man.

So, I mean, I'm not going to pretend like these are easy questions to answer related to the covenantal

differences, the difference between the New Covenant and the Old Covenant and how Christians relate to the law right

now and how they relate to as members of the New Covenant and

all that.

So, I'm not going pretend like there's just easy answers to all these things

for sure.

But then I think what becomes weird is, I

mean, I can understand how an individual can say, hey, as members of the New Covenant, we're

not Israel, we're a church, we've been given a different mission, we've been given a different

purpose, and then you got to obey Romans 13 and obey the laws of land.

And I don't think that we want to be vigilante terrorists or whatever else who are just

going in and certainly bombing whatever

false religious temples are in the country and everything else.

So, I mean, I think with the statue of Satan kind of issue, you have

a current, there is a kind of logic that says, hey, how far do you take this?

Like, meaning, if you're going to praise a guy for going in there and desecrating a Satan

statue, what does that mean?

What are the -.

Petey.

Which, by the way, we should probably.

Mention that this is actually what happened, right?

So, I think it was Idaho, right?

They, in the state Congress building, they allowed the Satanic

temple to put up a statue of Satan

Jared.

Just display.

Petey.

Yeah, for I think 30 days, because they have some rule according to their Congress

building or rule for their Congress building that any religious institution is allowed to

do that and, you know, Christians were obviously upset about it.

I think a bunch of them protested outside of the building and then someone decided to go in there

and knock the head off the statue, right?

So, that's why we're talking about this subject is because that's what happened is a

Christian went in there and we're essentially trying to figure out was he right or did he

sin, right?

So, we keep going.

Jared.

Yeah, I mean, that's essentially the question, was that an act of submission to Romans 13

and everything else?

Like, was that an act of subjugation?

Was that Paul's strategy that Paul go into, you know, see all the idols in Athens and

encourage a revolt and, you know, encourage all the Christians to tear them down and everything else?

I mean, I think that those are all fair questions to ask about Christians related

to, you know, our strategy and related to our mission and related to the covenant that we're under

right now.

You know, what are the entailments of these things?

I think those are all fair questions to ask, but I mean, I think, you know, obviously, like you look at the left and

there's comparisons made to the left along these lines too, like meaning like the

left has been doing this for years, right?

Like going and desecrating these, you know, southern, you know, statues and

tearing them down and defacing them and everything else.

So, I mean, like there is part of this discussion to where you may be dealing with something like an inescapable

concept, meaning like it's not like whether or not there's going to be blasphemy laws in your

country, it's just what are the protected things?

And so, I mean, the left has been doing this for years and getting away with it and then no one really cares, right?

So, like the issue is there's some moral awareness that, hey, this is evil, it must be stopped.

And so, you know, you can have people on the right who are looking at that and saying, hey, yeah, well, like what do

we do, you know?

Maybe we shouldn't have that up anyways.

And so, you know, a lot of it just there is some sort of relationship to where we are in

this current moment.

Like where are we at in this current moment in history?

Yeah, I think there's like a question too of when you, just from a

governmental perspective, not necessarily like a spiritual one, I think you do have to ask

yourself, is the satanic temple an actual religion, right?

By the standard definition, because they would argue that they don't worship a deity,

right?

So, you know, we would say as Christians from a biblical perspective, they are a religion

and they do worship a deity.

And it's either they worship Satan or they worship themselves, but either way, they do worship a deity.

But then there is the question of, hey, does the temple of Satan

get the same, you know, protections afforded to them by the government that

Christians would or Catholics would or, you know, Muslims or whoever else who have, number one, have

been established for at this point, you know, thousands of years.

Number two, acknowledge a specific deity or

multiple deities.

And the satanic temple, as far as I understand it, was mostly started

just as sort of a, I don't know if I would say necessarily like a

satirical purpose, but borderline satirical, essentially just trying to push

the boundary and make all the same arguments that

Christians would make in an attempt to try and defeat Christians, right?

PW.

Yeah.

So you're in a really weird situation.

So meaning like you're in a situation where you have the first amendment, which basically says that Congress is going to make

no law, which, you know, respecting the establishment of a religion.

And, you know, in the context of how that was originally given, I mean, I think there's a good discussion to be

had about like what that means, like meaning Congress is not going to establish a state Christian church,

like a federal Christian church or something like that.

That's what that intent is to be made.

But then, you know, what's happened is like we've taken that as like basically a

statement that is supposed to be creating some sort of wall of separation between church and state and everything else.

And so meaning like you have the left for many years who are basically trying to remove any vestige of

Christianity in every single public governmental space imaginable,

right?

So like if that's the rules, like if that's the rules, it's like the people's job to, like the government needs to

remove all this, right?

Like you have to keep God out of politics, you got to keep God out of the public square and everything else.

Well, then like the idea of having a public square, which is devoted to like

putting, like you have to replace God because of this, you know, this supposedly like separation between

church and state.

But then you're replacing that with like the active worship of Satan, you know?

Like, so there's some sort of hypocrisy there in, you know, should Christians call them on that?

I would say that, yeah, obviously you should call them on that kind of hypocrisy.

If we have to remove the Ten Commandments out of the courthouse because there's some sort of, because of a misunderstanding of the separation of

church and state, like this principle of church and state, separation of church and state, which is not even in the

constitution, if that's what we're doing, then, you know, obviously like that wouldn't entail putting a

Satan shrine in our, you know, courthouse, would it?

So like pick the rules here, like we have to decide what the rules are.

And so, I mean, I certainly think that like you're living in a culture society where like

you were not, like this is a democratic form of government.

We do have a constitution.

This is about we the people, so to speak.

And so then if you have a government that, like even under the terms of our constitution, if you have a government who

is, you know, acting in an unlawful way, we have a responsibility to resist them for

sure.

And so, I mean, I think there is like a legal discussion we had at that point to say like, are they acting in a lawful way by displaying a Satan

statue in public?

And then, you know, do we have a moral responsibility under the constitution to, you know,

resist that kind of thing?

And so, you know, the individual who did that, I mean, you're going to have to play it out court.

But I mean, that's how you challenge the system anyways.

We do have a system of courts that are designed to settle these kinds of disputes.

And so, you know, this is part and parcel thing.

So then, you know, the guy who did that, yeah, I mean, he obviously did that and then he turned himself in and said, hey, we're going to settle it in the court,

right?

And so, he's basically just saying, hey, you don't have the authority to do that.

You don't have the authority to put a Satan statue up in there and I'm challenging it and I'm going to challenge it through legal means.

And, you know, obviously, you know, there wasn't any violence done to people at that point, right?

So, he didn't go on a murderer's rampage.

He just says, you don't have the authority to put that statue up in the way that you think you did and I'm going to call you

on it.

And so, certainly, yeah, I mean, I think that there's a lot of issues that are revolving around this subject that

certainly are hard, but I mean, I think the reaction that many people have is, many

Christians have had online is definitely to be encouraged by the act instead of just,

you know, more of the same, but then you have, you know, you have people on both sides of that for sure.

Peter.

So, you know, basically what you're saying is, hey, this person's

coming along and challenging the idea that governments should

put up statues of Satan, right, in their buildings.

Is that, and then they're going to take that to court, which taking it to, I mean, you know, taking it to

court is implying, hey, this is something that has to be

arbitrated.

It's not necessarily clear right out of the gate, the wrong, right?

Or at the very least, it implies, hey,

if this person is found to be in the wrong, it will be clear and it

will be arbitrated out that way, right?

Jared Right.

Yeah, so we don't, like a lot of people, what happens in these kinds of discussions, a lot of people misunderstand the kind of government that we

have in general.

And so, like we don't, like the issue is like, we're not under a

monarchy, okay?

So, like we're in a different kind of government that people have had before.

So, we have a constitution, which is the highest human authority over us as a document.

That's what we have.

So, we have like the constitution, which is supposed to be the highest authority over all of us.

And then we're a representative democracy, we're like a constitutional republic,

right?

So, we elect representatives that are bound to

fulfill the terms of their office as laid out by our governing documents in that way.

And so, under the kind of government we have, we have a government where we're

mandated as like by the constitution with this responsibility to overthrow tyrants, okay?

So, like this is like different than like, this is a different kind of government

than being under like a monarchy, right?

So, but then what people do is they treat like the president as if he's our king or something, right?

And they treat like these courthouse officials as if they're our kings.

And so, the way they think about it is like very different from the way the government actually is meant to be formed.

So, they think about it as if like your county rulers are like your king,

and then their king is like the city ruler, right?

And then their king is the state ruler, and then their king is the federal ruler.

And that's just not the way it works.

And because the confusion is so pronounced, like you can get to a point where like the presidents,

each time they get elected to office now, they're signing executive orders

as if they're kings or something like that.

And so, but then our government tells us that we have a duty to resist them when they are

taking on powers that are not delegated to them by the constitution.

So, it's your duty to resist them.

And then you have a judicial branch, which is going to judge who is in the right in those encounters, right?

So, a lot of that is just like that's the nature of the kind of government that we're under.

And if you make the assumption that we're under some sort of

system of kings, right?

With higher kings and other kings, that's just a bad assumption about what's actually happening with the kind

of government that we're under.

So, then you do have to ask, did they have the constitutional authority to put that

statue up in there in general?

And by their own logic, they don't, because by their own logic, they've, and I don't even think this is right,

but I mean, they're saying, hey, you got to take Christianity out of the public square.

So, if you got to take the king commandments out of the courthouse, then you need to take the Satan statue out of there too.

I don't even think that's a right interpretation of the constitution, but certainly if it was fair, it's fair,

right?

And you should be able to call them on the cards on that and say, hey, what are you doing?

Are you even thinking about this right?

So, I mean, certainly it's a messy system for sure, and I think there's a lot of moving parts here.

But then, yeah, I mean, I think you're going to have to have some sort of courageous,

like we're basically, we've inherited something that was, I think, largely good,

and then we're trying to toss it out.

And the only thing that, Christians are either going to try to stop them from

shoving more depravity down your throat to where, meaning if you're going to add

to our government, that now our government is going to be advocating for the public worship of Satan or something like

that, I think you're in a place where it's like, hey, you can stop it when it first starts, or you can just let it go on for years and years

and years and to a point.

Where there's no way to stop it.

Pete.

Yeah, and I think that's where a lot of Christians who were encouraged by

the toppling of the Satan statue are at.

I mean, just personally speaking, I think that's where I'm at with it.

Yes, I think it needs to be arbitrated out in the courts now,

and I think that's probably a good thing.

And I was encouraged that the guy willingly turned himself in

afterwards, trying to demonstrate some sort of

acknowledgement that, like, hey, I understand under the current system we live in, whether it's being

interpreted correctly or not, there are consequences for actions, and I'm willing to take

on those consequences for my actions.

But then I was still encouraged by what he did because of what you're talking about

right now.

I think the people who push this kind of stuff, they hate God, they hate the

true God, and they are trying to do everything they can to get away from Him

and worship themselves, and ultimately, they end up worshiping Satan,

whether that be they're worshiping Satan by

unknowingly carrying out His work for Him, or they just actually

literally worship Satan.

And I think the more that

you just kind of sit back with your hands crossed in your lap and you say, hey,

well, they do have a right to do that, I think you're going to see people more and more

taking that and then trying to take more with it, right?

And so, yeah, I mean, you can sit back and fight for the Satanists'

right to worship Satan, but he's not going to fight for yours to worship the true God.

He's not going to fight for it.

And so, you're just letting them take power, letting them take power, letting them take power, letting them normalize

worshiping Satan, letting them normalize blaspheming the true God, and

then eventually, it's going to get to a point where it's not just like a, hey, you worship your

God, I'll worship my God.

Eventually, I mean, you see it right now.

Like you said earlier, there are blasphemy laws in our country.

They're just not related to the true God.

They're not related to the Christian God.

They're related to things like Satan, apparently.

They're related to certain races.

They're related to certain sexes, right?

They're related to the transvestite stuff.

I mean, you are not allowed to blaspheme certain ideas.

Jared Yeah, I mean, you basically had a citizen, you had a bunch of citizens who just let the government

entrench those kind of practices and have it as normal without any challenge or any challenge.

BD Yeah, and look at where it got us.

Jared Right.

So, I mean, it's just like if the first time that ever happened, you had all these demonstrations

and tearing down the flags or whatever else, you may have stopped it at the very beginning,

but then at this point, it's just so far gone to the point where it's like, hey, what are you going to do at

that point?

There's no cultural momentum behind it, but then the first sign of the Satan statue going up,

you stop it, it may at least curb that element of it for sure.

But I mean, someone's going to have to be willing to go to jail for it, right?

Someone's getting challenged out in the courtroom.

BD So, does that, so the fact that, okay, so in thinking about the Romans

13 aspect of this, because you get sent to jail for doing

what, or because this guy did what he did, he gets sent to jail, does that immediately

imply that he is violating Romans 13?

Jared.

Well, that's what I mean.

I mean, you have a system that's designed to involve a series of challenges to the

government when the government oversteps its authority.

So, we're not like a government, like our constitution is a governing document.

We're not a government that is to set itself up to worship Satan, right?

Jared.

So, but then the idea is we could transition into one if no one stops it.

BD.

Yeah.

Jared.

You get what I mean?

So, we don't have a constitution that is set up in such a way that we have declared Satanism

to be our official religion as a country.

But then what's happened is you have a governing document, and then you have,

I mean, the founders of our country understood how this works, like evil men are going to take more and more

power upon themselves.

And so, we just watched them do, just take on a lot of illegitimate power, right?

So, you're in a situation where, if conceptually you think

about it this way, you imagine you're at school or whatever, and then the bully decides that

he's your king, right?

BD.

Uh -huh.

Jared.

So, then he begins to go around and give his orders or whatever.

And I mean, you can imagine a scenario where the entire school then is listening to this

bully as if he's like the ruler of the school.

And then once that becomes enshrined as normal, then you have everyone else coming

along and lending their support to it.

So, then functionally, you have this phony kind of petty kingship that's been set up,

that it just becomes the state of affairs, right?

By virtue of the fact that everyone is kind of going along with it, that's what they're doing.

Whereas, if someone were to step in at the very beginning and say, hey, you're not really, you don't have any authority

to do this, man.

I'm not going to listen to you, laugh at you, what a joke.

It could stop it at the very beginning, right?

So, there's this concept of taking illegitimate authority.

That's the concept that's actually real.

There's a concept of taking illegitimate authority, and our constitution acknowledges that people can do

that.

They can take illegitimate authority upon themselves.

So, then when you're thinking about that as it relates to this topic, or just

thinking about it more broadly, our government has done that in every conceivable way.

They've taken upon themselves all this illegitimate authority to where the way

that our constitution was set up is you have a bunch of states who came together and who delegated certain

prerogatives to the federal government, and all other prerogatives were reserved to the states.

But that's turned into just this top -down hierarchy

that everyone is just going along with, but that wasn't the original arrangement.

The original arrangement was the states were voluntarily submitting themselves,

delegating certain responsibilities to the federal government, and they would reserve all the rest of it to

themselves.

But it wasn't a top -down system.

It wasn't that at all.

But now it's like, functionally, we've just gone along with these kinds of things for years.

But you can imagine this next iteration of this thing where, you know,

let's say that the Antichrist just reveals himself or whatever, and

whoever he happens to be, let's say that he reveals himself and he sets himself up as the king of America or

whatever, and we all go along with it.

The issue is, and then he establishes the worship of the beast as the primary

religion of our country, and he just does it by his kingly

fiat or whatever, well, you do have a system of government set up where you can challenge that.

You can say, hey, you don't have authority to do that, okay?

So that's the kind of government that we have, and then you work it out in the court system.

So the courts are going to declare, which one was the lawless one here?

Was the federal government declaring the national religion to be

beast worship?

Was that the lawless act, or was it the person who said no to it?

Does that make sense?

So that's where just because someone gets thrown in jail, well, that's what would happen if

you're at the schoolyard bully situation to where you say, hey, no, whatever, right?

Well, the group of thugs get you and take you and hold you down and beat you up.

That doesn't mean you did anything wrong, but someone's got to arbitrate now who is in the right and who is in the wrong if you're

saying no to it.

Does that make sense?

And so that's what our judicial branch is designed to do, is to declare who was the lawless one in this encounter,

and did the government have the authority to do that?

But I mean, you can imagine a situation, like we've just kind of let them

declare LGBTQ stuff to be our national religion at this point.

CBT Yeah, I mean, they're hanging the flags up on the White House.

JG.

Right.

Yeah, so I mean, they're not allowed to hang the Christian flags up, are they?

Because of this wall of, you know, this great wall of separation between the church and the states

found in Thomas Jefferson's letters or whatever.

But I mean, like, you're not, like, the issue is, it's just like, we have a

government where you're designed to challenge certain things, like the lawfulness of doing that.

I mean, and I think primarily, like, it's better to take it in the form of a legal challenge

and sue them, you know?

I would think that would probably be a better thing to do in general.

But then, you know, I think, yeah, like, very quickly, we could just be a

government that is devoted to the worship of, like, the explicit worship of Satan if we don't stop it, you know?

If no one's willing to say, like, we just go along with it, then you don't be surprised what happens for sure.

Pete Yeah, and you know, I mean, when you read about all of the Old Testament stories of people tearing down

statues and idols to false gods, I can't imagine that those typically went well

with everyone, right?

Jared I mean, there's obviously, like, in every, like, in all the encounters, like, I mean, I think a lot of times they did it at

night, you know, because they were too afraid.

But I mean, you know, there is, like, this element of, hey, you take ownership of this is our nation, this is our

people, we're not going to go this way.

And there's some courage that's necessary to do that, like, particularly, I mean,

we're not, like, a monarchy here, you know?

So, like, the government is supposed to represent, like, the people in this way.

They're elected representatives, they're not rulers.

So, like, you know, there is a we, the people, we won't stand quietly for this kind of thing,

element of it.

And so, you know, yeah, there's a lot of issues at play here, for sure.

Pete.

Okay, well, I think that's a good place for us to wrap up the conversation on.

And yeah, like you said, I mean, things have been changing so fast and so much power has been

grabbed, not just by the federal government, but certainly by

progressives trying to advance their ideology.

I mean, the slippery slope thing, like, that's not a fallacy.

I mean, just look at the way things have progressed, look at where we started, even just five, 10 years ago,

and look at where we are now.

And you'll see that this isn't just some sort of, hey, you do

your thing, I'll do my thing.

This is a, you know, from the left, it's like a, hey, you are also going to

do my thing.

Or, hey, you're going to celebrate.

You don't have to do my thing, but you're going to celebrate my thing.

And you can't disagree with it in any way whatsoever.

And so, I mean, you know, I don't necessarily want to put down

someone who's, I'm having a hard time just trying to

process exactly how I want to say this, just because I'm sure there are people, there are

well -meaning Christians who are going the

religious freedom route, and, you know, they're arguing for that because they

don't want Christianity to somehow be, you know,

made illegal or something like that, because they could foresee that being what happens later on down the

line if you abandon the whole religious freedom idea, right?

But then at the same time, I just think you're already seeing that happen, right?

You're seeing it right now.

You're seeing, I mean, there are blasphemy laws in our country, and none of them have to do with God.

They have to do with people worshiping themselves, worshiping the created rather than the

Creator.

And so, whatever the religious freedom crowd is afraid of is already

happening.

And if you just sit back and allow it to happen, then, you know, you're kind of just

inviting it on yourself and kind of sticking your head in the sand, I think,

personally.

But certainly, this is something that we all need to think through and we all need to decide how do we act?

What is going to honor the Lord in our specific context with the specific

agreements we have with our government right now?

You know, how do we interact with people who are pushing religions that were

essentially created to try and get rid of Christianity out of every major institution

possible, right?

By trying to use all of the same rights themselves, they're essentially trying to steal rights

that they don't have any rights for because, you know, like we were talking about earlier, the

Satanic temple, I mean, it's not really a religion in the traditional form.

By the traditional definition, it's not a religion, but then they're arguing that they need to be treated like one.

And it's not that they necessarily care outwardly about

advancing the worship of Satan.

I mean, really, they do.

They do care about that.

They just don't think that they do.

For them, it's more about getting God out as much as possible.

And so, we have to figure out as Christians, how do we deal with that?

Because that is a big deal.

And if we let it go and we just let it fester and fester over years, it's going to continue to look

worse and worse for us as Christians.

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And other ways that you can support us, you can like and comment on the videos that we put out,

subscribe to our YouTube channel, subscribe to the podcast wherever you listen, and give us a five -star review.

Those are some free ways that just take a few seconds for you, but certainly help us out a lot.

And until the next episode, we'll see.

This has been another episode of Bible Bashed.

We hope you have been encouraged and blessed through our discussion.

We thank you for all your support and ask you to continue to like and subscribe to Bible Bashed and share our

podcast with your friends and on social media.

Please reach out to us with your questions, pushback, and potential topics for us to discuss in future episodes

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Now, go boldly and obey the truth in the midst of a biblically illiterate world who will be

perpetually offended by your every move.