Is it the devil inside you or around you?

Or is it really just human nature? The delicate distinction between faith and religion has been a much contested issue. Some part of orienting your life around spiritual ideals can be great, some part of it not so great. There are times when you encounter a person with a belief structure that leaves you feeling refreshed. There are other times when that faith structure leaves you feeling somewhat flogged.

Perhaps (at least in part) it has something to do with our concept of what is wrong and how we fix it. That wrong can be externalized and de-personalized so that it’s all about the devil around you. Other people need to change. Other people need to see the light. Other people need to listen to you. Welcome to the wonderful realm of religion, thought control and the faith “mafia”. This is church people who take you on as their personal righteousness hobby. Your life becomes the thing they paint with. They remake you in God’s image (or at least their version of it).

On the other hand, if it’s all about the devil inside you, welcome to the exciting realm of self flagellation. For some strange reason it can be soothing to “beat yourself up”. You need to change. You need to see the light. You’re a bad, bad monkey and you need to grow up. Or even one shade worse, the devil inside you can be all about finding your magic exemption from the need to change. What an exciting excuse this becomes. “I can’t change, I’m not perfect, this is just me…”

I’m not fully convinced it needs to be exclusively one or the other. In fact, I’m not even really convinced that “what’s wrong” needs to be demonized or externalize at all. Might our biggest obstacle be human nature, itself? Can’t we recognize we all take turns at greater or lesser dysfunction? Can’t we also acknowledge that through consistent and reasonable effort we can shift the range and scale of our dysfunction cycles?

It is religious (in an unflattering way) to create a special category for yourself and see the worst parts of human nature in everyone else. Haven’t we all felt a little “flogged” by someone else’s faith when their personal change agenda becomes the template by which we must navigate as well?

On the other hand, it may take the most courageous faith to funnel your energy about the need to change right into the closest mirror you can find. It may take an even more courageous faith to de-personalize it as just another fundamental part of the human journey (in spite of how fun it would be to think of this as something particular to your own tragic failure as a useless individual).

Perhaps we are most responsible for (1) the stuff we change within ourselves and paint on the canvass of our own lives (so be your own righteousness project since your own inner workings are the only one’s not fully obscured), and (2) show it to others in ways that are compatible with true love, not just a gentle kind of loving control.

So maybe the church is also something like a mirror. There is no shortage of angst about all the church could be and should be, and how this seems to be something that’s ultimately up to anyone else but you. But maybe everything you wish everyone else would change about themselves is the very thing you need to change inside yourself.