The first time I heard someone blame Satan I had just graduated from college. Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast and my parish priest and I were standing in an elderly woman’s backyard helping her clean out a freezer. There were crawfish. She had not had power for weeks. It was August in Mississippi. You can imagine the smell.
As we all braced ourselves for the opening of the appliance door the woman yelled out with great conviction, “That is the devil!” to which my priest replied gently, “No ma’am. That’s just crawfish.”
I have become fascinated with our need to call things the fault of the devil. Or to blame a kind of grand evil scheme. Or to look at any other option than ourselves. There are entire church systems that rely on this kind of the-devil-is-in-charge mentality, and they make me very uneasy. They live in denial of their own participation in wrong doing and sin. And they create individuals who enact profound harm all under the defense of false righteousness.
I begin to wonder exactly who these systems and people believe the devil is? Surely he is not the one that Jesus fearlessly called out of Peter. Surely he is not the one who Luther said one little word would fell.
While there are certainly days that it feels like the devil is in charge, this is not a thought I welcome. I hope we cling to that comforting image of a sovereign God who rules with a mighty hand: “Sing praises to God, sing praises; sing praises to our King, sing praises. For God is the King of all the earth; sing praises with a skillful psalm.” When folks talk so much about the devil being after them and their churches, I begin to wonder who exactly they are singing praises to.
Also, this attitude that Satan has us on his s-list is oddly self-important. It conveniently places whoever is not on our side on the side of the lord of the underworld. It’s like 8th-grade behavior with hotter weather and higher stakes. As vitally important as we all think we are, the devil is not using people to plot against us. He’s using us to plot against us.
Recently I heard someone say that we are all the body of Christ but sometimes you end up being the asshole.
Y’all heard me.
The devil does not need other people to mess with us. He just needs us. And worrying about other people plotting against you is really a #bestlifenow scenario for Satan. Envy, fear, accusation, and self-importance are his favorite things.
Certainly, in a house with as much church as ours, we will occasionally wonder if the devil is after us. When our church community has suffered job loss, death, and flooding in a matter of weeks, we are all calling Satan out. But if my husband and I have yelled at each other, been rude to co-workers, or taught our children the world “relentless,” then that is actually our own sin.
(“Mama, what is ‘relentless’ and why do you keep saying it to me?”)
We don’t need outside evil to turn us into asshats. We can do bad all by ourselves.
In Kathleen Norris’s stunning Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith, she writes about words that have challenged and confounded believers. Her passage on the Antichrist is particularly good. She was asked to lead a class at church about this word and went to her pastor for help:
He quickly summarized and dismissed the tendency that Christians have always had to identify the Antichrist with their personal enemies, or those in power whom they have reason to detest. It is an easy temptation: in our own century, the Antichrist has been equated with Joseph Stalin, Adolph Hitler, Pol Pot, and given the current state of political hysteria in America, no doubt Bill and Hilary Clinton as well.
What the pastor said was so simple that it will remain with me forever. “Each one of us acts as an Antichrist,” he said, “when we hear the Gospel and do not do it.”
Accountability is not a word we use a lot here at Mockingbird. But I’m going to use it now. We are accountable to the One who came to save us. And I do not mean this as a behavior modification or a means to make you feel guilty. But I mean when things are not going your way, then perhaps your gut response should not be to blame the devil. Instead, call on the One who made you whole. And recognize why He had to do it.
Jesus had to die on the cross for our sins just as much as for anyone else’s. When it feels like people are against you, maybe you are really just against yourself. Maybe, as all of us do from time to time, you have forgotten Jesus has been for you all along.
COMMENTS
10 responses to “Stop Blaming the Devil: You Can Do Bad All By Yourself”
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I certainly agree that looking for the devil behind every bush or discounting our own sinfulness are wrong patterns for us. I will also say,though,that even though Our Lord is much stronger than any satanic force, it’s not a good idea to discount evil forces in this fallen world. In intercessory prayer ministry, I’ve seen and heard too much to discount
that we have an enemy. We are our enemy many times. We are used by the enemy sometimes. A daily prayer for protection is not a bad idea.
This is a very thought provoking post! It has always struck me that the first few questions in the episcopal baptism service asked of the parents are related to Satan and spiritual forces which seek to corrupt and destroy the children of God. I’m also having trouble squaring this post with 1 Peter 5: 6-11. I completely agree that we are most often our own worst enemy and that sometimes people are prone to feel persecuted when in fact they are just being a jerk and no one is agreeing with them—but like the above commenter, I have heard too much from folks involved in intercessory prayer and from the mission field to dismiss the very real presence of Satan in our world today.
Totally. And I don’t dispute that the powers of the Devil are real. But sometimes churches and church people talk about them so much that they live in denial of their own sin. And thus, their own need for Jesus.
Yes and yes!
This is a topic I could think/talk a lot about! I grew up in a house with a high anthropology but high view of the possibility of spiritual attacks from the devil (what’s that theological word???) and then was involved with churches and ministry in college with a low anthropology and a (seemingly to me at the time) low view on the activity of the devil. So this topic is one I think about a lot now—and have a lot of questions about!
The devil made me spill my coffee AND hurl my coffee cup out into the backyard! #iamanasshat. #ineedJesus
The quote from Kathleen Norris’s book reminds me of David Z’s Good Friday sermon, where he says something like, “the cross reminds us that it’s not us versus them, it’s us versus Him.” A good reminder that evil in my life is largely self-inflicted.
Yes ????❤! It just points us to our need and Bingo!: That’s why we have Jesus. Humbling in its simplicity.
[…] serious thinkers reviving a topic that seems plainly medieval, I find that Sarah Condon’s phrasing better suits my actual life: “Stop blaming the devil: you can do bad all by yourself.” I guess […]
why can’t we blame god.. sorry, i meant satan?? is it simply because he is known to be a vulnerable person who is treated like a monster??