Which tvtropes terms do you think best describes the bible: God and Satan Are Both Jerks, or God is Evil while Satan is Good?
For most of the bible, Satan is largely a non-entity. You would think, to listen to the religious, that the bible was filled with episode after episode of Satan and "Lord" duking it out, like Batman and the Joker endlessly doing battle. But for the most part, it's "Lord" conducting his own war on humanity.
Satan freed humanity from ignorant servitude in the Garden of Eden, and exposed God's dishonesty. But then he also participated in the harassment and torture of Job. He also "tempted" - aka "tested" - Jesus, and given he has neither the power nor authority to give the whole world to Jesus, this has "Lord's" grubby fingerprints all over it. Unless he does have the power and authority to give the whole world to Jesus, in which case Xians have a very large problem on their hands.
I do find it amusing that Satan still has a key to "Lord's" house and can just come and go as he pleases. And even when "Lord" spots Satan, he doesn't summon up his god-powers to destroy Satan, or even say, "you don't belong here, get the hell out." Instead, he says, "hey, while you're here, what do you think of my pal Job?" When Satan points out that Job is loyal because you gave him all this stuff, obvs, Lord says, "I give you permission, authority and power to screw with his life, you're just not allowed to touch him directly"
Satan should gone to Job and told him what "Lord" had come up with. "Lord" would have either had to lie and shown himself to us as the villain, or would have had to tell the truth and shown Satan to be the honest hero. Since Satan has no reason to protect "Lord," the story really only works if Satan works for "Lord."
Or it's just a bad story with continuity that betrays the fact it's written by ideologues who want you to accept their flawed, authoritarian morality, rather than understanding or even caring to tell a coherent story that maintains its internal consistency. Much like The Acolyte.
But the majority of the evil in the bible is conducted by "Lord" himself, and/or the humans, often at the command of "Lord."
And they warred against the Midianites, as the Lord commanded Moses; and they slew all the males.
[..]
Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him.
But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves.
With Gods like these, who needs Satans?
And with a god like this, anyone who is identified as a literal "adversary" against him has got to be at least benign, maybe even benevolent.
I'm sure some apologist would turn around and say that although Satan wasn't in the bible directly that much, he was influencing and "in the hearts of" people who did bad things. Which eliminates their ability to insist that "god didn't tell them to do that" when I bring up terrible things believers did in the name of "Lord." And I bet I can find far more of those. Not just in the bible, but throughout history.
So, in short, I think Satan is overblown in general, though it is, of course, obvious why priests would be determined to convince you otherwise. Part of the scam of selling you an imaginary solution is to convince you of an imaginary problem.
If I was to place Satan onto a character alignment chart, I'd put him under Chaotic Neutral.
But given a binary choice between "God and Satan Are Both Jerks" and "God is Evil"/"Satan is Good," I'd have to pick the latter over the former.
