THE WORLD, THE FLESH AND THE DEVIL

When I was growing up and going to Sunday School, my classmates and I were warned about the world, the flesh and the devil. Young as we were, we wondered what was so bad about the world – remember, this was long before instant news of any shape or form. Besides, we didn’t listen to the news any way, Cold War or not. Further, we had no idea why we needed to be warned about the flesh because we knew even less about the flesh than we did about the world.

But we knew about the devil. Oh, did we know about the devil. In fact we knew so much about know bad the devil could be that we capitalized the name: Devil. Not that any one of us had ever experienced the devil that is. Thus, when The Exorcist came out in the early 1970’s and I was ordained, I had several parishioners, young adults, scared out of their wits about the devil/Devil.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Even when I was studying moral theology in seminary, we were warned again about the world, the flesh and the devil not only trying to control our lives but the lives of the people we were going to serve upon ordination. By then I had a better understanding about these evil tempters in my life even if I were no longer afraid of them.

What I came to understand and realize was that the world was neither bad nor good. It was and is what it what it was then and is now: where we live and move and have our being, as one of the prayers of the Church puts it. Yes, there is evil out there in the world tempting us to succumb to it. We could avoid that evil by not going out into the world. One way to do that would be to join a monastery and hole up for the rest of our life.

That was and is not me and that is not most of us. In fact the greatest danger to my moral undoing is not the world nor the devil. It is I myself. I am my own worst enemy: me, in my own flesh and bones. The world, as bad and as tempting as it is, does not make me do what I know I should not do. I do it. And trying to blame my failings on the world, or worse, on the devil is both a cop out and wrong.

That does not mean that we should not be wary of the enticements of the world. That would be foolish, and in the end, our downfall – as I have discovered, as I suspect every one of us has discovered. We are not as strong as we think we are; and when we deliberately place ourselves in places where we could succumb to foolish, harmful and sinful actions, sooner or later we will give in. No one of us is that strong. No one.

Actually, both the world and the flesh (us) are innately good. They are God’s creation. It is what we individually and collectively do that makes what is good into something that becomes not so good, into something sinful and bad. And it is our fault and never the world’s or the devil’s. That is sometimes a difficult lesson both to learn and to accept.