Devil on Your Christian Shoulder

In those old comics, there's yer main character needing to make a decision, and there's a tiny devil on one shoulder, and a little angel on the other.  The little devil tells him to do exciting, fun things he wants to do, but maybe shouldn't, and the tiny angel tells him not to do those things.  And offers no better things to do, normally.  The angel is Nancy Reagan.

    For some of us, it was a bit different.  As far as we could tell, there was just the one thing: an angel sitting on our shoulder, telling us not to do any of the exciting or fun things that we wanted to do. Many of us kind of suspected that the devil who wanted to do fun things was, simply put, us.
   But it wasn't really an angel on our shoulder anyway, it turns out. We were meant to think that, of course.  It always seemed like an angel to us when it was saying "no."  Because we were taught that only devils/naughty girls say "yes."  God certainly doesn't say yes, right? To anything good?

   Thing is, how were we ever going to love a spouse, a child, dare I say it, God Himself, so long as we had an angel-of-light-garbed devil on our shoulder, whispering away, making us unable to reach out in love to far more mundane good things?  I mean, I wanted to go see a movie, go hear people sing the songs they'd written, see if I could like wine and beer at all.  Good things like that.  Normal things.  Life things.  Love things.  Sanity aids, even.  But when nice people who I liked casually invited me to go do mundane nice things like this, I had a handicap.  A special need.

   I didn't believe in my heart for moment (eventually) that it was wrong to do these good things, but there was that sparkling, white-robed little harp-playing devil on my shoulder, saying:

   "But how is that okay for a Christian?  It sounds like it would be really nice and everything, but think of what GOD wants for you. A life of failure, sacrifice, service and endless tedium.  You KNOW that.  It sounds fun, and isn't wrong in and of itself, but if it's fun, HOW could it be ok?  How could it be in keeping with God's special plan for you to be miserable and have a life that doesn't work?  To drive that Ferrari of your life into a brick wall for Him? It could be okay for other people, maybe.  Not for you, though. You know what YOU'RE like..."

   And other such stuff.  I don't know what was being whispered in Peter's ear when he was actually walking on actual water.  I can only imagine.  (You're just doing this to look cool.  Jesus doesn't do miracles to satisfy your frivolous whims.  If you get scared, the magic will wear off.  You only have enough magic pixie dust for three steps.  You're not remembering to think your happiest thoughts.  Remember, you're keeping yourself up, through your positivity, and the strength of your own faith.  God wouldn't help you do this, anyway.  Not really.  He is toying with you. He knows what you're like and what you're thinking.  You're no Jesus, that's for sure. He's going to let you drown and then put a hilarious story in the bible about how you drowned trying to walk on water.)
  And all this whispering that I was hearing made God, who'd presumably sent this little voice coming into my ear at all times, pretty unlovable.  He sounded a lot more like me, hating myself whom God loved, actually.  So I had trouble loving having God in my thoughts.
   I wasn't good at loving anyway.  If I loved a band, I couldn't even get out the door and hear them play.  If I loved a movie, ditto.  So God was definitely beyond my loving skills.  And really, who could love a Sky Bully (TM Joss Whedon) of that kind?  Not me. He clearly didn't love me.  Wasn't into happiness. Was anti-life and anti-love.  Anti-joy.  Heaven was going to suck!
   When I started to try to build an adult life, time after time when things fell crashing to the ground, every time I dreamed a dream and it popped like a burst bubble, I had the choice to:

a) take it as sent directly from God, as a crap-package addressed to me, and go off and pout, give up and stifle my anger,
b) or else keep getting back up, and keep waiting for a God I could love to show up, amid all the chaos and soul-grinding tedium. To wait for the God of the bible to reach out, rather than a purely imagined him, with all of my messed up, shame-addicted, self-loathing psychology stamped all over his purely fictional face.

And He did.  Show up for real.  You see, God seems to have taken exception to this former view of imaginary him.  He's not the principal in The Breakfast Club, after all.  He likes to have fun too.  (invented, it, and the capacity and all the various means for having it, as you know.  Invented the clitoris, for example, which serves only one purpose.) Important to invite Him along when intending to have fun.  He's an excellent wingman.

Yesterday, I went to see Malificent with someone who hasn't ever really been to the movie theatre before, for well-intentioned "religious reasons."  And we enjoyed it, she and I.  The movie is a retelling of Sleeping Beauty.  I was very impressed, having started out with low(no) expectations, which is what I seem to need to do to enjoy movies, lately.

   It was the 90s (starting more or less with Spawn and Shrek, and moving on eventually to stuff like Twilight) when writers really started to really flip all the hero/villain roles, because the old ones had gotten stale. 

   "Gasp!" gasped many Christian adults. "They're muddying and perverting children's stories with what used to be perfectly straightforward black and white, good and evil morals back in the days when America was white and Christian.  They're scheming to make our children grow up to be morally ambivalent!"
    "No," I said. "They're taking simplistic, one-dimensional stories with evil people who stay evil for no reason, and good people who are 'just good, y'know?' and infusing them with more nuanced, thought-provoking stuff.  Explorations of growth, change, redemption, repentance, forgiveness, grace, mercy and other evil, unscriptural, anti-Christian stuff like that."

    But we went to the movie theatre, she and I.  And the really good part?  She and I were finally free to go see that movie yesterday.  To see what the story was, and be encouraged to think about bitterness and growth and change and redemption and repentance and all of that.   Those little devils dressed as angels seem to have buggered off somewhere, as they weren't fooling anyone anymore. No point their even showing up nowadays.

Of course, I didn't really think there was actually a little angel on my shoulder, back in the day.  That's just me using descriptive language in a vain attempt to try to help people understand what it was actually like.  Those demonic ideas, though, were literally coming into my actual ears, right out of the mouths of people all dressed up as terribly serious Christians, who genuinely thought they had my best interests at heart, but were unable to do anything but see fear and evil in what interested my heart.
  Years past, these devil-words had come into my ear, for example, right out of the mouth of she who sat beside me yesterday and cheered for Angelina Jolie, and was all weepy over her little daughter having a cameo.  Yesterday, she didn't see evil and harm and disobedient wayward license.  She saw a story about love and forgiveness and redemption.
   Because times change, and fear, superstition and evil are eventually unmasked and repented of.  And relationship, life and freedom can come out to play.
   Sometimes people pray and that stuff happens.  And eventually good makes us feel good instead of ashamed, and bad looks...well, pretty silly actually.  And we laugh and feel good together.