Francine Prose on the devil on the site of The New York Review of Books:

“People have always had an appetite for horror and violence. In a fourteenth-century fresco by Nardo di Cione, in Florence’s basilica of Santa Maria Novella, the devil (bat wings, horns, cloven feet) arrogantly rules over his section of the chapel wall, slapping around naked sinners en route to hell. It is one of the liveliest images in the church; it must have been one of the congregation’s favorites. Today, though Satan continues to haunt the private and public cosmologies of the faithful, I—like many Americans, I would assume—can go for quite a long while without having a serious conversation about the devil.”

(Read the complete article here.)

But when was the last time you had a serious conversation about God?

In the Old Testament the devil – rarely mentioned in the Old Testament by the way – is just one of God’s angels, definitely a creature in God’s service.