Hello, Lovely Soul Drop!! How are you?? I just finished watching Lucifer by Netflix, and I can’t help but think that if religion was taught like that everyone would want to be a believer!! I’ll now proceed to talk about why we feel compelled to love the devil. Yes, spoilers ahead, please continue to read at your own risk!
You’re still here, so I guess you finished the complete series or that you really don’t care about spoilers. If not, please reconsider. Alright, what does the devil have that wants us to root for him so badly? No, it’s not only that Tom Ellis is incredibly handsome. It has to do with something else: our own inner demons.
I grew up in a Catholic country, within a Catholic household, and studying at a Catholic school for girls. I was probably the only one in my class who actually read the Bible…twice. When I was around 7 years old I decided I wanted to change religions. At first I researched about Judaism, but that didn’t fit with me either. Finally, I decided to become a Buddhist. My religion teachers were constantly fighting with me, the priests said Atheists would go to Hell in their jokes, and my grandmother decided I was possessed by the devil himself. As you can imagine, I started to resent religion.
Guilt is a crucial theme on this series. It is your own guilt which condemns you to Hell. I felt guilty because I couldn’t believe in God the same way others did. My father on the other hand, he encouraged me not to care as much. His mother was an Atheist raised in Russia while his father was an unorthodox Jew. He was raised as a Catholic by his aunts, but he never turned out to be quite as religious. He was like my aunt, they believed in God but didn’t care much about the Church. They were my first steps to understand that religion wasn’t evil per se, yet many had used it to exacerbate our guilt.
Lucifer Morningstar is relatable due to his intense self-hatred. His father never hated him, and still he felt like he did. We see our hurt egos, our aching souls, and our troubled minds reflected on him. We have all felt lost, unworthy, or even monsters! That’s why we want him to win. We need him to show us that we aren’t the demons we feel we are. Just like the new religion teachers at my school taught me. I was the angsty Atheist teenager we see in movies, but they didn’t care if I shared or not their beliefs. They saw a confused soul desperate for outside validation. We built an amazing friendship based on trust and forgiveness, very similar to the relationship Amenadiel and Lucifer build throughout the series.
I used to hate religion because I felt hurt by it. Now, I understand it can hurt or heal depending on who is teaching it. I befriended nuns, priests, Muslims, Jews, Christians, Hinduists, and even joined Wiccan groups. I learned that most people just want to be better human beings, so they cling to the idea that the gods want us to succeed. They want us to be safe, so they want to teach us how to be better. We want to feel like we deserve happiness. We wish to believe we’ll be alright even if we die or the future is scary. Religion was never meant to manipulate; it was meant to make us feel safe of the unknown.
At the end of the series I was crying like a baby. We watched the characters grow, and we watched them achieve that happy ending we so desperately desire. We love Lucifer because he knows what we desire, but we also learn that his desires and ours aren’t so different. They made angels, gods, and demons…human. A reflection of what we are. Powerful, but frail. Beautiful, but flawed. We relate to them much better because they remind us of ourselves. That’s why we adore the devil. He isn’t perfect, he doesn’t know it all, he gets angry, he cries, he feels fear, and he wants to improve…just like we do. That’s the beauty of the series. We wanted perfect gods because we needed to feel safe. However, imperfect gods make us feel safer. They know what it’s like to struggle, they understand us, so they can help us in a better way that a cold distant perfect deity could.
Regardless of what you believe in, what matters is the content of your heart. I consider myself an Atheist that uses the idea of deities to give me hope, strength, and a role model to follow, even when I don’t actually believe they exist or can do anything to help me. I’m not here to judge anyone, how could I? I’m a mess myself. I’m here to learn from others. I loved the devil, because he gave me hope of redeeming myself. We all deserve a second chance.
So! Did you like the series? Did it change you somehow? Let me know on the comments! I hope my ramblings made any sense. Thanks for reading.
With much love,
Bel Writer.
Podcasts episodes you can listen to:
Let's be Kind Thursday: https://anchor.fm/bellemoon99/episodes/Lets-be-Kind-Thursday-63--Throwback-thursday-e17597p
Let's Connect Monday: https://anchor.fm/bellemoon99/episodes/Lets-Connect-Monday-64--Become-the-river-e15cibm