“Even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. –2 Corinthians 11:14
The devil can be such a pal sometimes.
How else would you describe a guy who willingly takes the blame for all my faults? I can be a complete goon and at the end of the day he’ll willingly take credit for all my mistakes. “The devil made me do it,” I can say, knowing that my cloven-hooved pal will nod in agreement.
“We’re under spiritual attack,” I say to my friend that I just yelled at. We all know that my season of unrepentant anger towards him has little to do with heart issues that I need to fix. This was all a massive orchestration of the enemy to destroy our friendship, and we both know it. I appreciate not having to delve into the recesses of my heart or take responsibility for my actions. Again, our good buddy keeps me from having to engage in such trying work.
Can you imagine all the ugly stuff we’d have to face if we didn’t have such a friendly chap we could unload all of our guilt upon? And he takes all our troubles with a smile, because he loves taking our guilt. He appreciates it when we give to him our shame and ask him to make it disappear somewhere. And he’s adept at this. He has a myriad of bushes and fig leaves to hide our sins under.
When I cast all my cares upon him, I’m free to truly be me. I’m not weighed down by all this negativity. I can just keep being who I want to be. And when things get ugly and people get impacted because “who I want to be” doesn’t necessarily jive with who they want to be, then once again my pal shows up and becomes my advocate. The problem, he reminds us, is never within us or that our desires are somehow against some objective standard. He makes himself the whipping boy—taking our punishment for societal transgression so that we don’t have to. We can rise above and comfort ourselves knowing that we’re basically good people—not like that mean ol’ devil.
So you see, the devil can be such a pal. He takes my blame, my guilt, my shame, my sin and he hides it away…somewhere…I’m not quite sure where. I don’t really ask these kinds of questions, because at least for now I don’t have to deal with them and I don’t have to change. That’s good enough for me.
