Anti-Witchcraft series II: Why is the Devil in the details?

If the Devil is in the details then what about God?

For a while I have wondered humanity’s affiliations with the underworld and this led to my previous piece on “Suffer not witchcraft to live”.

I came across the idiom, “The devil is in the detail” a while ago and recently got curious about how it came about.

A collection of questions came to mind,

• Why is the devil affiliated with details? Of course I get the fact that in every endeavour, the details can be complex and problematic and possibly beyond rocket science but why compare this with the devil? Why not compare it with an angel?

• The second question arose when I researched and discovered that the original phrase was actually “God is in the details”, so how on earth was “God” replaced with “The Devil”? Are we more accustomed with the Devil than God? Can we relate more with the Devil than with God? And in this season of Halloween, does the demoniac appeal more to people?

Why is the devil affiliated with details? Why not associate an angel with details?

So let’s answer the questions given above from a biblical perspective.

The works of the devil are obvious, a thief, a murderer and he pleasures in destruction (John 10:10). The devil is not a creator, there is no iota of originality in him. He specialises in counterfeits and second-hand products. A thief never innovates, neither does he have ideas that inspire new frontiers of development. A murderer sniffs life out of any situation and a destroyer cannot create meaning.

I beg to argue that it is easier to be a thief than to be an innovator, and you need little work to kill as compared to giving life. It can take but minutes to destroy a structure with a bomb but imagine it took 5 years to build Burj Khalifa.

The work of an angel or God seems to be more complex than the activities of the devil. God works to both create and defend against the works of the devil (Gen. 1:1, Ex. 35:35, Ps. 104:24, Jer. 10:12). The details needed to do both is enormously much.

The final verdicts - if details are anything to go by then it truly is God that is in the details and not the devil. I can understand why people say the devil is in the devils but I would prefer to say “God is in the details” and in fact there is a version that goes “the good God is in the details”.

God is in the details. QED!