Maybe people are just assholes. Why is it that whenever something goes wrong, Christians are the first to start blaming the "devil" for all the bad stuff? When I was in ministry, the church would go through a bad period where people were getting upset at different things, and, inevitably, someone in leadership would quip, "Well, the devil is at work." I see this happen a lot too when there's some sort of national calamity. It's the devil's fault. Or you'll hear someone who's accused of murder say that the devil made them do it. The last of these is patently ridiculous, and merits absolutely no commentary, but one of them does.
Bad stuff happens in churches all the time. Given my last post, you can see that the church has been a great source of pain for me, especially when I was in occupational ministry. Christians have said and done things to me that, frankly, don't belong in a back alley somewhere, let alone a church. People get upset at a ton of random stuff like music styles, the sermons being too long, people not "dressing right," and everything in between. This happens, not because the devil is at work, as if there's actually a little red man on their shoulder telling them act like petulant children, but because the vast majority of people who inhabit churches on Sundays aren't actually followers of Jesus. They say they are, but their words, actions, and attitudes betray them. No true follower of Jesus would really give a crap about the style of music, because they would be too busy focusing on the words to notice. No true follower of Jesus would care what anyone was wearing, because they understand that God looks at what is inside a person, not what's on the outside. They wouldn't engage in any of this petty bickering because they had surrendered to God and were too busy focusing on stuff that matters; feeding the poor, seeking justice for those who have none, and loving everyone around them. The reality, however, is that these people aren't followers of Jesus at all, they are simply actors. They put on a good show (although not that good if you look close enough) so that they can achieve some eternal reward (what is the reward for being a prick?).
Maybe all of this isn't the work of some pitch-fork wielding, malevolent force, but the result of people making horrible choices that God has given them the ability to make. After all, he did give us free will and the ability to make our own choices, and most of the time, we make the wrongs ones.
