this post was submitted on 07 Oct 2024
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I have the feeling that over the past years, we've started seeing more TV shows that are either sympathetic towards Hell and Satan, or somewhat negative towards Heaven. I just watched "Hazbin Hotel" today, which isn't too theological, but clearly is fairly negative towards Heaven.

In "The Good Place",

Spoilers for The Good Placethe people in The Bad Place end up pushing to improve the whole system, whereas The Good Place is happy to spend hundreds of year not letting people in.

"Little Demon" has Satan as a main character, and he's more or less sympathetic.

"Ugly Americans" shows demons and Satan as relatively normal, and Hell doesn't seem too bad.

I only watched the first episode of "Lucifer", but it's also more or less sympathetic towards Lucifer.

I have a few more examples (Billy Joel: "I'd rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints", or the very funny German "Ein Münchner im Himmel", where Heaven is portrayed as fantastically boring), but I won't list them all here.

My question is: how modern is this? I've heard of "Paradise Lost", and I've heard that it portrays Satan somewhat sympathetically, though I found it very difficult to read. And the idea of the snake in the Garden of Eden as having given free will and wisdom to humanity can't be that modern of a thought, even if it would have been heretical.

Is this something that's happened in the last 10 years? Are there older examples? Does anyone have a good source I could read?

Note that I don't claim Satan is always portrayed positively, or Heaven always negatively :).

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Right now I can think of the buddhist "tale of the bug".

Two (human) friends died and were reborn. One in heaven, the other as a dung beetle (a type of bug) on a dung pile.

The guy in heaven tried to "help" his friend by going down to Earth and carrying his friend to the skies. But his friend refused, because the dung pile was now his home, and he didn't want to leave at any cost. Only then the guy realized that it is not heaven that makes you happy, but finding the place that you're destined for.