Keep staring at your bank accounts and you’re staring at the devil’s arsehole. What begins as a harmless glance turns into an obsession that drags you down. Money is the root of all evil, and the devil’s intestine is wide enough to swallow every fear and desire you feed it. Stay there long enough and you’ll find yourself boiling in the hot lava of his hell-stomach, wondering how something so small became the slow death of your soul.
You are driven there because that is all you are driven by. Be honest. You say you are Godly, yet your heart belongs to the balance on a screen. You worship with words, but your daily altar is the banking app, the endless counting of what you have or don’t have. This is not faith. It is quiet idolatry, the kind that eats your soul while you think you’re doing nothing wrong.
Samoa’s national motto declares, “E faavae i le Atua Samoa,” meaning Samoa is founded on God. But what does that mean if our lives are built on self-interest, greed, and appearances? Archbishop Mosese Vitolio Tui spoke of the heart, saying the church has missed the mark, not by a small margin but by a wide and gaping chasm.
“E sili atu lou gā’ī na lo’o mea ilaila solo. O le loto e fai ai le galuega e fa’aleleia muamua.” It is the heart that must first be refined, not the actions performed for applause.
And then there is self-righteousness, the kind we see in those who hold power, whether in church, politics, or society. They profess the name of the Lord, yet their actions reveal a heart untouched by grace. They use His name to get gain, to win supporters, and to secure all sorts of worldly advantages. What a nasty outlook, a mirror reflecting our own conniving selves. It is the same spirit that harassed Christ, the Pharisees, clean on the outside but full of rot inside. This same spirit is alive today, parading its piety while crushing the weak, using God’s name as a mask for ambition and pride.
The core of self-righteousness is the absence of humility. It is the stubborn refusal to admit we are wrong, even when confronted with truth. This pride poisons leadership, blinds the heart, and turns faith into performance. Without humility, we become like those who condemned Christ, quick to point fingers but slow to look inward, living under the illusion of being right while standing far from God’s heart.
When hearts remain unrefined, society reflects that failure. Families tear apart over money. Communities split over pride. Nations go to war over power. Our natural instincts, the habits we think are harmless, become the tools of hell itself. And in our blindness, we keep feeding them, unaware that our hypocrisy is poisoning everything we claim to hold sacred.
We think we are righteous because we pray, give, and sing in church. But when the heart is far from Christ, all of that is performance. We wear religion like a mask while the quiet rot of envy, greed, and fear eats us alive. This is not Christ. This is the devil’s work, dressed up and glorified.
The call is simple, yet hard. Strip away the performance. Stop staring at your wealth, your status, your reputation. Look at your heart. That is where Christ begins His work. Without it, our words and rituals mean nothing. Without it, we are just boiling in the devil’s stomach, mistaking our own self-made hell for faith.
ℹ️ Explainer: The phrase “Devil’s Arsehole” here is metaphorical…
