{"id":1699,"date":"2024-05-26T03:20:00","date_gmt":"2024-05-26T03:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=1699"},"modified":"2026-10-02T01:32:24","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T01:32:24","slug":"the-devil-made-me-do-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=1699","title":{"rendered":"THE DEVIL MADE ME DO IT"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Although I was young at the time, I remember seeing some performances of a comedian who was popular on TV in the 1970s, Flip Wilson.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n

If you remember him, you probably remember a sassy character he created named Geraldine. (This was 50 years ago, when it was allowable – and even encouraged – for people to openly laugh at a man in a dress.)\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n

In his comedy Wilson\/Geraldine popularized the phrase “The devil made me do it!”. One of his bits was about a preacher’s wife who gets dragged into a clothing store and almost physically forced into buying an expensive new dress by the devil himself.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n

Obviously the joke was about people who take no responsibility for their own actions, pinning all the blame for bad decisions on the overwhelming influence of Satan.<\/p>\n\n\n

But I think we are more prone to the opposite mistake – not even recognizing that we have an enemy out there who DOES wish us harm and DOES want to influence us in such a way as to drive us further from God.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n

Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. <\/i>\u2013 1 Peter 5:8<\/p>\n\n\n

If we don’t even acknowledge the reality of Satan, how could we possibly be on alert against his schemes?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Although I was young at the time, I remember seeing some performances of a comedian who was popular on TV in the 1970s, Flip Wilson.\u00a0 If you remember him, you probably remember a sassy character he created named Geraldine. (This was 50 years ago, when it was allowable – and even encouraged – for people […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1700,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1699","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1699","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1699"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1699\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1701,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1699\/revisions\/1701"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1700"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}