06 July 2010

Why God created the Devil

My friend Armando Fuentes Aguirre says that God created the Devil so that people would have someone else to blame besides God when things didn’t go exactly the way folks wanted them to. Apparently it worked pretty well for awhile and people got into the habit of thanking God for all the good things in their lives and blaming the Devil for everything that went wrong. By and by the Devil realized what had happened and he became very burdened by the fact that the sole purpose of his existence was to receive blame and he asked God why he had to receive all of the blame and not have anyone to share it with. God thought that was a reasonable question and said, “You know, Lucifer, you make a good point. I guess that is because I made you so smart to begin with. People are naturally reluctant to blame me and so they blame you for every little thing they don’t like. To be fair about it, the people ought to have a choice on whom to blame without any fear of retribution”.

God thought about this for what would seem like several centuries to us but for God it was only a few milliseconds and He came up with a brilliant solution. He created the Government so that people would have something else to blame besides the Devil. Well, things went fine for awhile and people were content to praise and thank God for all the good stuff and blame either the Government or the Devil when things went wrong according to how they were so inclined. By and by, however, the Government decided that it didn’t like being thrown in with the Devil by association because someone in the Government was always being blamed when things went wrong. The higher up in Government you went the more likely you were to receive all the blame. After all, the Government is supposed to be "of the people, by the people, and for the people"…right? Shouldn’t the same people who elect you to public office share the blame?

About a hundred and fifty years ago the Government found a way to ameliorate its blame problem and decided to charter Corporations. The Corporations consist of individual investors and other Corporations and the Government, not being as smart as the Devil but almost as crafty, arranged it so that no matter what a Corporation does, the individual investors are free from responsibility and thus free from blame and other than losing their money they can wash their hands of any culpability just like Pontius Pilate. You can blame the Corporations all you want but nothing can ever happen to them because they are mostly just smoke and mirrors. Things get shifted around a bit when something goes wrong but they really never die. This is because it just so happened (and to this very day nobody really knows exactly how) the Government gave to the Corporations more rights than to individuals. Some say that this was in return for a promise of campaign contributions and other monetary considerations. Anyway, the result of all this is that these days, in addition to having the Devil and the Government to blame, we have the Corporations to blame, and we can personally avoid blame altogether…unless perhaps we are a Pope, a Potentate, a President, a Prime Minister, or a World Cup Fútbol Coach.

11 comments:

Unknown said...

Cool and sauve, Bob! The Devil made me do it! Not me! I don't lie, cheat or steal. Ha! I am the root of most of my own problems. By the way, there's a bug in the Gumbo blog. Drop by sometimes and chat. No links are getting through to other blogs. Sob! Probably caused by Beelzebub.

Dan in NC said...

Brilliant! Loved your verbose verification of ALL I suspected - in three short paragraphs! I've read and enjoyed your blog over the last 18 months, but I felt driven (da devil made me do it!) to comment!
Cheers!
Dan in NC

Anonymous said...

Bravo! Judy

www.travelwithkevinandruth.com said...

Great story Bob, thanks for that!

1st Mate said...

How about all the other popular scapegoats: The rich, the religious, the godless, illegal aliens and our parents, the media...among others. It's a wonder we ever get around to blaming ourselves for anything!

norm said...

Just blame me and your good to go. Water off a duck

Steve Cotton said...

A tale worthy of your Jesuit training. Nice job!

GlorV1 said...

Hi Bob. Sometimes people just blame other people for their problems. Forget the devil, I'll blame you, they'd say. tee hee. Great post. Take care.

bordersaside said...

This was a fun read bob thanks for posting it.

Anonymous said...

There's a much easier, more convenient and easily the most prevalent scapegoat than all of those; "Anyone but me..."

bob in exile said...

Right now its more popular to blame everything on Mexico.
But I really dig the article and reccomend that my friends read it.

Blog Archive

About Me

My photo
I was born and raised in Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A. I have been living in Mexico since January 6th, 1999. I am continually studying to improve my knowledge of the Spanish language and Mexican history and culture. I am also a student of Mandarin Chinese.