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Thursday, September 08, 2005
Flip Wilson & The Church Lady
There was a television show on in the 70's called the Flip Wilson Show. It was a variety show of sorts, with music and magic and comedy skits and such...shows like that were big then. One of those skits, which, if memory serves correctly had Flip Wilson in a dress & wig, usually ended with this catch phrase: "The Devil Made Me Do It." That phrase wound up on t-shirts of the day, too.
Saturday Night Live has been around for decades, and one particular comic had a long list of memorable characters. Dana Carvey was famous for renditions of presidents and candidates, the grumpy old man, and one in particular: The Church Lady. The Church Lady was this obnoxious overbearing church lady who belittled everybody and would ask various celebrities why they did such stupid things, following it up with the question, "Who could've caused you to do THAT? Oh, I don't know. Who could it be? Who could it be? Could it be....hmmmmm...SATAN?!"
Both of those little phrases gained a lot of popularity in popular culture of the time, and I've found that while they make people laugh, they aren't really biblically accurate.
See, we've got two natures...lemme back up for a minute:
From Galatians 5:16ff (from The Message), "My counsel is this: Live freely, animated and motivated by God's Spirit. Then you won't feed the compulsions of selfishness. For there is a root of sinful self-interest in us that is at odds with a free spirit, just as a free-spirit is incompatible with selfishness. These two ways of life are antithetical, so you cannot live at time one way and another way according to how you feel on any given day. Why don't you choose to be led by the Spirit and so escape the erratic compusltions of a law-dominated existence?"
There's plenty of observations found here, primarily, though, there are two...first, we're commanded to live freely, being controlled and motivated by the Holy Spirit (more on what that means some other time).
Second, we have the option of being controlled by "selfishness." Our own very compulsions can control us as well.
Notice that "the devil made me do it" and "SATAN" aren't in the mix?
Nope, it appears that we're either Spirit-led or led by our self. There's no inbetween...and our self usually leads us to sin.
In other words, we have a choice to make on any given day...or any given minute...that we're going to be led by the Spirit or led by our self.
Tomorrow, we'll look at what the results of those choices are, but for today, why do you think it's so difficult to choose to be led by the Spirit? How do we do that? Do you think the power of self is really that powerful? Why or why not?
Brent 5:04 AM
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