Perhaps you have noticed that our world runs on accusation. As distasteful as that reality is to everyone, we certainly act as though we know we need it. We accept it as a part of life, as a necessary evil. We use it for crowd control, we use it to direct kindergartners toward useful and productive lives, we use it to thin the herd when too many people are running for president at the same time, and we try to hold our families together this way. We are a blackmailed planet.
When we look out over the whole human race, we are confronted with the fact that this spirit of accusation hovers over every last one of us. If some malevolent being were to come down, select one of us at random in order to search that one’s baggage, he would always find something. This is because all of have . . . baggage.
This reality also dampens our courage when we feel pressed to stand up against an evil that appears to be outside the generally accepted boundaries. This is because we know that standing up to it will invite additional scrutiny. It draws attention to us. But we have baggage, we know we have baggage, and standing up to great evil amounts to volunteering to having your baggage searched. No one can afford that, and so everyone keeps their head down. It is better, we think, to be potentially accused than to be accused. The day of reckoning, that day that we all know is coming, would be far better if it were not today.
The particular sins we commit are not the spirit of accusation itself. They are, rather, the fodder that the spirit of accusation needs in order to function. So the problem begins with desire, and it ends with accusation. Lust and pride supply us with the energy to get into trouble, running headlong, and accusation comes in to keep us in line thereafter.
So this spirit of accusation, this devil, has a good cop/bad cop routine. The indulgent cop, the one who seems so nice, invites you to smoke this, sleep with her, take that, strive for the other, and to help yourself to this, which was just sitting there. We chase after honors, orgasms, riches, and all their accoutrements. The world is filled with baubles, and we are enticed to fondle them all. Having done so, like so many monkeys offered some free nuts, we hear the shutter click of the hidden cameras, and that information goes into our file.
And so it is that we find ourselves all standing around with guilty expressions because we know that in our collective and individual pasts it would not be hard at all to find porn sites, embezzlements, molestations, massage parlors, backstabbings, potsmoking, hatreds, resentments, and a bunch of other things not consistent with what the apostle called sound doctrine.
Now Christians understand that this spirit of accusation is the devil, the one who invented the concept of the moral high ground. For the devil is not really running around in subterranean caverns in red tights with a pitchfork and horns. The devil is not an imp, or malevolent fairy. The devil is the bright accuser, and he is filled with a sense of righteousness. The earth is filled with his indignation.
The devil is a high moralist. The devil is self-righteous. The devil is an angel of light (2 Cor. 11:14-15). The name Lucifer means light-bearer (Is. 14:12). Who could be against that? The devil is censorious, a high octane killjoy. The devil is a Pharisee. The devil is the accuser of the brethren, accusing them day and night before the throne of God (Rev. 12:10). The devil wags his bony finger under our sinful little noses.
But here is where we start to get nervous. But don’t we need moral order? Don’t we need to be reminded of traditional values? Don’t we need to be kept in line? If the threat of accusation is taken away, what will prevent us from descending into a world of chaos? What will keep us out of libertine anarchy? These questions are very important, and it is not surprising that we don’t want to give up the devil we know for the devil we don’t. Our mistake is in thinking that the efficacious grace of God is a devil at all.
Martin Luther once called the devil God’s ape. There is a crucial point to be made here, and we have to rely on the Spirit of God to help us with it. But in doing that, we must not ever confound the Spirit of consolation with the spirit of accusation. Too many Christians have misunderstood this, and bring in the holiness of God, the wrath of God, the utter goodness of God, as a way of bringing reinforcements to the devil. They use God as a way of doubling down on the devil’s accusations instead of seeing Him as offering the only way out.
The devil, in this system, is the mean dog, and God is the mean owner of the mean dog. Luther’s image is better. God is righteous, and the devil is not, but the devil works hard to ape God’s righteousness. The indignant righteousness we get when accused by him is a fraud. It looks like the real thing, but only because we are morally compromised and are not in a position to look too closely at it. It order to do that, we must be set free.
But there is still a problem. The Spirit of consolation is the Holy Spirit, and our baggage is filled with tawdry and foul vestiges of our past. Our baggage is filled with unholy things, and the locks we have placed on that baggage — guilt, shame, and fear — do not keep us from remembering what is in there. This is why the devil has so much fun with us at all his security checkpoints. Standing in line there, we find ourselves swallowing a lot and our left eye is starting to twitch.
So how can God be holy and yet not care about what’s in the baggage? That is a question with a glorious answer. The answer is the grace of God, which is a high altar in Heaven, sprinkled with blood.