The Devil Made Me Do It

In contrast to my expectations—and against my most stubborn and misguided intentions—spiritual warfare was on the agenda again at the jail yesterday. I had a safer topic in mind, but no sooner had I began my talk than we were wandering in the thickets.

“Do you think there are dark spirits that like pursue us and take over even when we don’t want them to? Like evil forces or demons that make us do what we don’t want? Cuz, like, I left here a few months ago and I felt like I was in a good place. I was ready to be a better father and husband and work hard. But as soon as I got a bit of money, it was back to the bottle, back to the drugs. And I hate this cycle so much, but I just can’t get out of it… And now my wife is fed up with me, my kids won’t talk to me. I’m just so tired of this, so tired of myself.” At least three other guys told virtually identical stories. Judging by the nods and tears around the circle, there were many more similar stories that remained unspoken.

As I’ve said before in this space, I’m not reflexively inclined to hunt around for supernatural forces or causes or explanations for bad things that happen in our world, whether they happen to us or are caused by us. And I know very well how “the devil made me do it” must sound from the mouth of someone behind bars (I shudder to think of how it would be heard by the victims of the guys I sit with each Monday). I have sat, incredulously, across the table from inmates who have spun the most elaborate and fanciful tales of what “really” happened (tales which always seem to exonerate them in the telling). Sometimes, I want to say, “maybe consider a bit less focus on the devil and a bit more on your choices.”

But the tears and the nods around the circle are real. The helplessness and resignation are real. The frustration and desperation are real. The weariness and rage are real. Of this, I have no doubt. As I find myself saying in many contexts and in many wearisomely polarized conversations these days, “Two hard things can be true at the same time.” It can be true that someone needs to make better choices and take more responsibility for their behaviour and that they feel hunted and harassed by spiritual forces beyond their control. It can be true that we are (kinda) autonomous creatures and that there is an unseen spiritual realm where forces are at work both to sabotage and to support human flourishing.

And I think most of us, if we’re honest, recognize ourselves in the guy’s words in the opening paragraph. Our temptations might not be as severe and the consequences of our relapses may not be as disastrous, but I think we all know what it’s like to want some better version of ourselves, yet somehow, we keep on returning to old patterns, old habits, old ways of relating to others, old dead ends, etc. We may not all feel like we’re being hunted and harassed by literal demons (or we might, but we’re very careful about where we admit this!), but I suspect we are all familiar with the feeling of being powerless to effect the change that we long for in our lives.

I scrapped my plans for the chapel yesterday. Instead, I went back to where I often go when the conversation takes this turn in the jail. I asked the guys to turn to Romans 7. Haltingly, we read these words:

I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do… As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.

 So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me.  What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!

For those of us who have grown up in churchy circles, these are familiar words. Probably too familiar. They can too easily drift off into abstract theology land. But many of the guys around the circle on Mondays have never read the bible and can’t even find Romans without a bit of help. And it is always fascinating to watch their response to these words. There is nothing abstract or theoretical about them. One guy, in particular, was wide-eyed and utterly incredulous: “That’s in the bible?! Whoa, that’s like exactly what it feels like man! That dude gets it. Where is that again?”

That dude (Paul) does indeed get it. He gets what it feels like to be hunted and harassed by forces beyond our control which keep dragging us back to our chains. And he gets what it’s like to collapse (again and again) into the arms of the only One who can deliver us from our sin, from death, from the devil himself.