The Devil Made Me Do It

You've heard that line before. But is it really the devil at work, or is it a set of self-defeating thought patterns that nudge you toward a mistake, sometimes a big one?

Picture the aftermath. You get fired, or you're in a car accident the police put on you, or you fumble something and a relationship falls apart. At first you're baffled. How did I end up here? When did this happen? Me? The shock takes a while to lift, and underneath it the questions keep circling.

Once the blankness fades, the consequences land, and they can flatten you. How did I get pregnant? How does this change everything? What's left of my car? Is anyone hurt besides me? Will they take my license? Who hires someone with this on their record?

Some decisions have to be made right then, in the moment, and you may regret them afterward. It's easy to get defensive and then defend whatever you chose no matter how it turned out. That's when a person hardens into Mr. or Ms. Never Wrong, and that posture quietly blocks you from learning anything from the mess.

You might also reach conclusions you later wish you hadn't. Did you mean to do it, or did the devil make you? You don't have to be Christian to reach for that explanation, though it does make it easier. Maybe you decide you have no regrets because none of it was your fault, and you settle into denial even when the facts say otherwise. Reality gets hazy fast once that starts.

So you can see how your own self-concept keeps you from seeing your mistakes, and how the lessons buried in them slip away. Not long ago I had a falling-out with a friend and lost her. At the time I didn't realize the heat was affecting her far more than I understood. I was too wrapped up in whether I could cope with it myself. What I eventually learned, and I didn't enjoy the learning, was that I'd ignored the signals she was giving me about her own failing health.

There was an older lesson that fits this. My husband's aunt once helped me get my baby to a doctor in a distant city. She didn't really want to make the trip, and I came to understand that when she said yes she meant no, and she expected me to read that. I was stung to find out she felt I'd used her and was angry about it.

She got as furious with me as my friend did during her heat prostration. The lesson repeated: in certain situations I was supposed to read minds, to read between lines that nobody actually spoke aloud. It irritated me at first, but the point sank in. The cost was steep too. My friend and a close friend of hers were both angry and wanted nothing more to do with me. Same verdict as before: I'd taken advantage, I'd been insensitive.

I was certainly part of the problem. But suppose the devil did make me do it. He'd be glad to stir up conflict among people and push them to act less like Christians. The Lord's Prayer has that line, "and lead us not into temptation." We have to stay on guard, because hurt feelings and confusion make a dangerous pair. That combination has cost me plenty of grief. Can you imagine the devil taking pleasure in it? I think that's close to what God had in mind when he put that phrase in the prayer.

For a long stretch I was coldly rational about that part. I figured I didn't need to pray it since I always knew what I was doing. Then came the dumb mistakes. One of them: making a left turn onto a four-lane highway with my just-bought fast food in one hand. I totaled my new car and ended up in a used Cadillac. I'd always wanted a Cadillac, just not like that. Whose fault was it? Mine? God's? The devil's?

Other times I've been thick enough to walk into the same trap again and again. My fault, or his? I believed strongly that I had to solve my own problems, and I got lost in situations where I couldn't tell what other people wanted from me. I knew I wasn't meeting their standards, but I didn't know why. I missed their hints. There was no malice in it on my side.

Here's a true one about myself that shows the pattern, and I may have told it in another post. My supervisor at a clinic told me I had an odor problem. That threw me, because I bathed regularly, used deodorant, changed my clothes often, and washed or dry-cleaned whatever needed it. I immediately laundered or cleaned everything anyway, and the smell stayed. It was humiliating. The staff assumed I had some problem I wouldn't own up to, like being homeless or living somewhere with no plumbing. Eventually I worked out that it was a perfume reacting badly with my body chemistry. I quit wearing it and the problem vanished. The staff never did connect their theory to the actual cause.

Later, as a Christian, I learned to call on God for the problems I couldn't crack, instead of leaning entirely on myself and treating each one as a test I was bound to fail. In those moments I felt the devil always came out ahead and I'd flunked something. In a roundabout way I had, since I never asked for help. Either there was a lesson meant for me, or I was handing the devil an easy win without meaning to. Often it's the small things that take us down. I don't think the devil wants us happy, free of serious worry, confident that we're all right. What do you think?

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