“The mind itself can make a heaven out of hell, a hell of heaven” (Milton, line? Vs?)
In the poem, “Paradise Lost” Satan was thrown out of heaven for rebelling against God and all that is good. He was the archangel and is the most beautiful and perfect angel, but he was not so perfect because he had flaws. Some of the flaws he had were pride that led to ambition and jealousy that led deception. The flaw that led him to destruction was pride, because since he was the most beautiful angel, he believed he was the greatest in heaven. He questioned why should he serve God, and evidently led a rebellion against God in a chance to overthrow Him. This was a very pathetic thing to do, because God created him and gave him all his beauty. Lucifer fought God in a holy war, lost, and was cast out of heaven and into hell. Since then Lucifer has sworn to do the opposite of God. “And out of good still to find means of evil” (line 165) this sentence shows how much hatred Lucifer had, towards God after being thrown out of heaven. His first offense towards God was to overthrow Him. Since that plan failed, his next plan is to disrupt whatever good God does. This is Satan’s plan opposed to God’s plan to turn everything that Satan does badly into good.
Pride is the sin, which drove Satan’s adrenaline. It was his energy drink, and it drove him to Hell; and even while in Hell it took him as far as to accept Hell as his domain, all because he was too proud to say that he was in a bad situation. Satan’s pride was leading him to his destruction, the key letter in pride is I and that is what he was thinking about the whole time. Pride led to Satan’s very poor choices. Satan was just thinking about “how could I become in charge. How can I overthrow God and rule everything?
God does not want to force us to serve him and to love him. He created us and gave us life but left the decision to love and follow Him ultimately up to us. The human flaw as to every creation of God is freedom of will. Since we have free will, we make stupid mistakes in life and because of free will many things are bad in life. God is giving us a choice; it is up to use to make that choice, whether you decide to serve him or not is up each person. When you serve the Lord, you know that you will always be safe. It does not mean that nothing bad will ever happen to you, but you would know that you are safe from going to hell. Life is always full of surprises, and no one can know what is going to happen. One’s mind is the most important part of one’s body. The mind is what makes decisions and choices. In the poem, Satan says, “the mind is its own place, and in itself can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.” This states that Satan is so determined to go against God that he would train his mind and thoughts to think a particular way and see the Hell as a beautiful place.
“Better to rein in Hell than to serve in Heaven” (line 263) this sentence gives us insight on how Satan’s mind is thinking. He is not willing to bow his head to anyone over him. He thinks he knows more than God, and he will not give in, no matter how dire the circumstances. In his mind, he believes that he will be the ruler of hell when in fact he will be suffering just like the other souls there. There will be no ruler and everyone will suffer for eternity.
As Satan was in hell, he looks and sees that God was occupied with his latest creation, man. He saw that God had forgotten about him and that he had moved on. He then got the idea that he would infect what God loved most. He came into the Garden of Eden and tempted Eve to sin “And the serpent said unto the woman, ye shall not surely die: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.” (Genesis 3:4-3:5) By doing so, Eve was going against God; as she did, she brought Adam into sin as well. If God wanted his creation, Satan would give it to him, but in a less than perfect state, and not by lying-just twisting the truth, or “putting a spin on it” in today’s vernacular. Because Satan tempted Eve to sin, humans must suffer for those sins and only through In the deception of Eve and ultimately the human race, only a perfect sacrifice would make up for man’s flaw, that of Jesus Christ, a perfect human sacrifice, who can free man from his sin God’s creations have freedom of will. We cannot blame others for our mistakes and must take responsibility for our actions. Adam and Eve had the free will not to eat the forbidden fruit and not to listen to Satan, but they let their curiosity get the best of them and committed the sin.
Do I have the sin of pride in my own life-sure? Is pride bad? Not in itself. It’s what is done with pride. If it destroys another human being, then I have allowed Satan a foothold into my heart. If that pride leads to ambition which leads to deception, then I have allowed Satan a foothold. According to Milton and the Bible, Satan is the father of all lies which begins with his pride and ambition. If I analyze decisions when I go wrong, usually I don’t want to admit my flaw (pride), or I want to get to the top the easy way even at someone else’s expense (ambition), and I might tell a half truth to get me to that point (deception). Sometimes bad things just happen to good people through poor choices; according to Milton, Satan is at the heart of man’s fall, all of us, and seeing it depicted through the blind poet’s eyes, has opened my own to myself. The way I see things, when something bad happens to me, I think about the situation and try and see where I did wrong, because if something happens to me, right away I assume that I did something wrong and am paying for that wrong doing. Sometimes it is not that, sometimes bad things just happen because someone else’s sins intervene with your life and mess up your life at the same time fixing theirs.
Thus, or so, Satan’s pride was his main character flaw. Pride as an angel thinking he could overthrow God; and pride in himself causing ambition that he could actually take on God and win in this battle for God’s creation. Proverbs 16:18-16:19 “Pride [goeth] before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall. Better [it is to be] of an humble spirit with the lowly, than to divide the spoil with the proud.” Satan should have heeded this warning.
Resources:
• http://www.genesis.net.au/~bible/kjv/genesis/
• http://www.divineplan.org/htdbv5/htdb0020.htm