The Devil Made Me Do It!

I was recently talking with a co-worker. This person attends the same Charismatic church that I attended prior to my conversion to Presbyterianism. She often asks me theological questions concerning things that she hears in her church that either peaks her interest or flat out rubs her the wrong way. I believe that the Reformed perspective is completely foreign to her, but over the last year or so the perspective that I’ve been able to bring to the table has made sense to her. We’ve mostly discussed issues of grace, human nature and world views. I always enjoy our conversations because it challenges me to choose words wisely. It forces me to take a complicated subject and simplify it to the point where someone completely new to the ideas I’m expressing can understand it.

Today she was telling me about the sermon at her church on Sunday. It apparently was about spiritual warfare and the effect that Satan and his minions have on believers. She said that she left with a sour taste in her mouth for two reasons. The first was because she said it just felt like they were giving Satan too much power. This is a very interesting critique of the sermon. I think that she grasps something that the leaders of her church fail to understand. That is the fact that all the power that the devil has comes from God. Satan can’t do anything that the lord doesn’t permit him to do. Isn’t that one of the remarkable things about the Job story? There we have the sworn enemy of God asking permission to do ill to one of God’s children. He can’t just go and do as he pleases without God permitting him to do so. In reality, her real critique whether she realizes it or not is that it seems to put Satan on a higher level of power than God. Forgetting that al power is a gift from God, even the devil’s power, is to forget that God is the true source of all power, distributing it and limiting it according to His will. As Christians we should be quick to remember this. It is the only hope that we have concerning Spiritual Warfare. Not that God can out muscle the devil, but that God can completely strip away at any time the devil’s power. It was His to give, it’s His to take away. Amen and thank God for that!

Her second issue with the sermon, and it’s really related to the first, is that it seemed to have a “the devil made me do it” attitude. It came across as if every bad thing that happens, every tragedy, every illness, every murder and theft, is a direct result of the devil. This is always the temptation of human nature isn’t it? To blame someone or something else for all the problems of the world? We see it all the time. Read our article on how the world reacted to the VA Tech school shootings for a perfect example of this. The church however can have a different response to tragedy. For many evangelicals, it’s the devil’s fault. It’s an easy scapegoat and I believe it’s also an honest attempt at understanding tragedy in a Christian world view. “Our God is a loving God. He doesn’t want this to happen so it must be the devil working.” Based in ignorance? Absolutely. An honest attempt at explaining how tragedy fits into the good news of the Gospel? You bet. Those of us with a Reformed background understand it better though. It’s because the Reformed tradition is one that teaches the true state of humanity. The question we need to challenge the “devil made me do it” camp is this. If the devil and all his forces suddenly withdrew from this world, do you really believe that all crime, sickness, all tragedy would just cease? That sin would exist no more? That the human condition would truly be remedied? Of course they would say no and rightly so. The reason for this, according to the Reformed faith and Orthodoxy for that matter is that these things are not a result of Satan, they are a result of the fall! They are a result of man! It wasn’t the serpent’s tempting of Adam and Eve that brought death into the world, it was the choice that man made, completely of his own free will, to go against God’s commandment. If we want to blame someone for all the tragedies of life, then let’s blame ourselves and our constant rebellion of God. If Evangelicals could grasp this truth, then we could teach on things like Spiritual Warfare so much more efficiently. Not only that, but we could teach the power of the atonement much more powerfully because we would have a better understanding of just how powerful of a thing it was that Christ accomplished on the Cross! An eternal remedy for all of this damned mess (and I mean that literally).

John Calvin wrote that man first must understand the nature of God and only then can we understand our own nature. I believe that. Once we grasp even in the smallest bit the holiness, the perfection, the power of God, only then will we begin to grasp just how far off the mark mankind has missed. Then the Church might truly understand that we as a human race don’t really need the devil’s help…we’re doing a pretty good job of messing this world up on our own!