By Jeff Scoggins

Practical jokes are a staple of college dormitory life, particularly for freshmen guys. The object of this “immature behavior,” as some believe it to be, is to one-up the joke on the other person. In this tradition my friends, Greg and Doug, and I relentlessly abused each other through all four years at Union College in Lincoln, Nebraska. The occasion I’m thinking of was when Greg and I removed the entire contents of Doug’s room, the bed, dresser, lamps, clothes, books, and so on, and neatly arranged them in the public bathroom down the hall.

When Doug walked into his room and found only his roommate’s things there he exhibited little reaction, but began wandering the hall in search of his belongings. As I recall he was a Resident Assistant and therefore owned a master key, which he used to check each room. Eventually he checked the bathroom. Still with little more reaction than a laugh, he quietly removed the things he actually needed and left everything else in the bathroom arranged as it was.

Doug then dragged a bench only about five feet long from the hallway into his room and slept on it for the next two months without complaint. Someone else eventually cleared the bathroom and by the end of the school year most everything had found its way back to Doug’s room piece by piece.

I can’t decide if this is an especially poignant or especially ridiculous illustration of the idea that Satan takes every good thing that God has given us and rearranges it in the bathroom, so to speak. In other words, Satan continually attempts to replace the good and perfect gifts of God with corrupted versions of that gift. Just look what he has managed to do with sex, appetite, ambition, beauty, music, pleasure, intelligence, entertainment, and even love.

However, Satan is God’s enemy, so really his war against God is not shocking. What is more shocking is that we seem to react not at all to the cruel joke. We seem content with the new arrangement. We might rescue a few convenient things, but we basically leave Satan’s arrangements in tact. We indulge our appetites according to Satan’s prescriptions. We allow our ambitions to clamber over people. We accept the picture of beauty as scrawny, half-clothed, and airbrushed. We learn to enjoy music that makes our hearts beat out of rhythm with God. We allow our intelligence to become a god or an excuse. We swallow the idea that love is giving me whatever I want whenever I want it. We’re contentedly sleeping on too-short benches.

In Matthew 12 Jesus tells about a person cleaning up his life and throwing out the evil spirit who leaves there, but when that spirit returns and finds the place unoccupied and clean, he moves back in with seven companions and the person is worse off than he was before.

Figuratively speaking, Satan has already rearranged your life in the bathroom just as he has mine. Fine. The joke has been played. What’s done is done. Now, take the opportunity to sweep out your life, but don’t make the mistake of the person in Jesus’ story. Don’t leave your life temporarily clean and unoccupied. Fill it up. Invite the Spirit of God to take up residence. Furnish your life with the uncorrupted gifts of God. Consciously choose music that puts you in rhythm with him. Purposely choose food that provides a healthy mind and body. Find beauty in authenticity instead of facades. Make your highest ambition to trust and glorify God.

When we fill our lives this way we allow God to turn Satan’s terrible joke on its head.