Satan Shoes

Satan has been getting a lot of attention lately. The latest marketing ploy is advertising Satanic footwear—shoes emblazoned with Satanic imagery and apparently contain a drop of human blood. With only 666 made, they sold out in less than a minute. No surprise there.

Yes, as a Christian, seeing people glorify and rejoice in shoes dedicated to Satan disturbs me. Additionally, the pervasiveness of this one marketing campaign flooding social media feeds is also equally troubling. The last thing I want to see is a pair of ugly-looking, poorly designed Nikes, let alone ones that are for Satan.

First off, Satan is real. Satan is not an archetype or a symbol of an abstract concept of evil. No, as the Bible teaches, Satan is a real created being with a will bent on deception and destruction. The early church, the Apostles, even Christ himself all treated Satan as one who exists and influences the world (including people) around us (Jn. 8:44, 1 Pet. 5:8). Additionally, most in the world today believe that an evil spirit is personified and again, impacts their daily lives. However, in the West, we don’t believe in a real Devil. We are materialistic—rejecting any form of supernaturalism or spiritual reality—and find attributing anything to Satan as hogwash or a throwback to archaic superstitions. Yet, in our denial of Satan’s existence, our modern civilized society makes us a target-rich environment. In other words, his assaults on people and his influence can easily take place, especially in a culture that doesn’t even believe he is real and therefore caught unaware.

Now back to those ugly Nikes. Satan’s tactics aren’t about having a flashy media campaign nor does he typically come right out in the open and manifest evil. Satan is far craftier than that. His way of doing things is more subtle and more subliminal which is more insidious. In the very first appearance in the Bible in Genesis 3:1, Satan takes on the form of one of the creatures in the garden and subtly insinuates that God is holding back from Adam and Eve. In the temptation of Christ in Luke 4:1-12, we see Satan tempting Jesus with good things, like food, safety, and popularity. We see every time that he counters Satan’s temptation with the Scripture and overcomes him.

Satan disguises himself, Paul says, as an “angel of light” (2 Cor. 11:14), cloaking his evil with a façade of goodness and pleasantness. This description is contrary to Satan's popular depiction as a red-skinned imp with horns and a pointy tail or some gruesome figure of the macabre. He is attractive (not physically per se) and alluring, hence the reason why so many fall into the trap that he sets.

I am not so concerned with shoes with Satanic imagery as I am with Satan’s deception and subtle influence that has been going on for many years in society at large. He has had decades in this country to influence and change a nation that once thought life was important and should be protected to now slaughtering innocent lives by the thousands by way of abortion. Compile that with the diminishment of marriage, the elevation of sexual gratification and yes, you could say that in 2021, the Devil is having a heyday.

Nevertheless, although Satan is alive and well and we are seeing the results of his influence, we must remember that he is a defeated foe. Jesus Christ has crushed the head of the Devil (Gen. 3:15) and triumphed over him by way of the cross and his resurrection. Therefore, as Martin Luther wrote in his hymn A Mighty Fortress is Our God,

The Prince of Darkness grim, we tremble not for him;

His rage we can endure, for lo, his doom is sure,

One little word shall fell him.

Sure, Satan may have shoes in his name but the resurrected Christ has crushed him with nail-pierced feet.