One day last November as I stood in the checkout line at TJ Maxx, I realized that I did not have my wallet, hence no debit card and no driver’s license. In line behind me was a woman (I’ll call her Forty-something) whom I know and with whom I had been exchanging small talk and to whom I had halfway murmured, “I don’t think I have my wallet.”
As I fumbled through my purse, searching for enough cash with which to complete my transaction, she leaned over my shoulder and with suck-teeth “thtt” declared, “Chile, that’s nothin’ but the devil. ‘Cause Jesus wouldn’t let you do anything like that.” There’s this slow turn I do when I am certain my brain has not fully processed what my ears have heard. I did my turn towards her, my eyes squinted, head tilted slightly downwards to the right, brows raised, lips pursed. “I beg your pardon?”
“Devil got me too yesterday. I took my mama to a morning appointment, but the person she was supposed to see had an emergency, so I had to turn around and take her back in the afternoon. I had asked for the morning off from work, but I had to call in and ask for the rest of the day, so you know they got a’ attitude. The devil, chile.” All this spoken in a singsong rush of words.
To my mind, no universal force had conspired against me. In the blur that is sometimes my day, I had hurriedly switched my belongings from a larger purse to a smaller one and had not taken care to check the zippered pocket which contained my debit card and license.
Nor, I suspect, was Forty-something, who assigned a series of happenstance events to some disembodied consciousness, the victim of satanic forces. I’m thinking: things just didn’t work out the way you wanted them to. Poor planning perhaps?
Later that day, I related the story to my daughter (I’ll call her What’s That You Say, WTYS for short–pronounced “wits;” the “y” is silent). I check in with WTYS when I need to know whether or not I have lost my mind. In this case, I found the devil blameless. The focus of our conversation? The new cultural phenomenon, blaming the devil.
Here’s what I’m saying: when I was a child, I both knew and understood the rules of our home, of school, of church, and of community. I knew and understood that if I disobeyed the rules, I would be held responsible and I could expect swift and certain consequences for my actions. My parents never blamed the devil for anything I did. I was held accountable.
So, recently, when I read of the Bynum-Weeks debacle, and that Mr. Weeks allegedly told his parishioners, in so many words, that the devil took control of his fists, tongue, and feet, I knew he had not been reared by my parents. And what were the alleged tears for? His fear of God? But I digress. Or maybe not.
Perhaps my point is this: in our zeal to be individual and free, we have either forgotten, abandoned or never understood (1) that we have a personal responsibility for our own actions and for the well-being of fellow humans; (2) that adherence to a moral structure enables us to find meaning in our lives, to discover our raison d’etre; and (3) that spiritually life is a journey of learning and change, joy and pain, as we discover the highest level of humanity a human can attain in a lifetime. The devil is not in that.
