Someone recently told me, “We don’t all need a God, but we all need a devil.” His wisdom was that while most of us don’t want to believe in God, or we don’t even think about God, the reality is we all need someone to blame … a devil, if you will.
Think about it. We don’t all want to believe in, or put our trust in, God.
We don’t want to acknowledge someone else is in charge or that someone else is in control. We don’t want that because we’d prefer to have that job ourselves.
But we all want a devil. Maybe it’s not the actual Lucifer himself, but we want a villain. We need a bad guy. We have to have a monster to run from or try to defeat. In short, we need someone to blame. Here are three reasons why we tend to do this:
1) Having a devil lets us blame someone other than ourselves.
Just look at social media and you can spot our devils. For many it’s the government. Or the President. For some it’s their boss. For a lot of us it’s a family member. For others it’s their job or company. Maybe it’s bad drivers, or slow cashiers, or the IRS. For many of us it’s even God himself. He’s to blame for our lot in life. Whoever it is, the blame lies with someone else. Not us.
2) Having a devil gives us a common enemy.
When we all rally against the government, or the organization, or “the man” it creates a superficial unity. We are all in this together! We like rebellions. We like District 13. We need to join our forces and work against something. But in many cases we’re just blaming others, so we end up fighting against people who aren’t the issue.
3) Having a devil distracts others from looking at you.
When all we do is talk about our devil … no one gazes into our soul. It’s a constant game of, “Don’t look at me, look over there!” We cast blame and we demonize others so we never feel the pressure to become more than we actually are. We never feel the accountability to grow ourselves rather than condemn others.
Here’s the problem with this. There is a God who loves you and has a plan for you. And when all we do is focus on the problems with everyone else, we not only fail to see this love for us, we do very little to extend it to others.
In my upcoming podcast with a renowned counselor, Jim Beebe, he cites the two things that can make any relationship survive. These two things shift our attention from our devil and make us realize our need for God.