A House Divided: Why does the devil try so hard to divide us?

The first thing that marks creation from the beginning is God’s extraordinary love. The second thing that marks it is the movement of rational creatures away from this love, beginning with satan himself.  This diabolical contagion unfortunately spread from the fallen angels to all of humankind through our first parents. Biblically speaking, this created a tension in our lived experience here in time that demands choices be regularly made between good and evil, life and death, blessing and curse.  We become life-giving or death-dealing, persons of blessing, or ones who generate and function as conduits for curses. We choose what our life will express, and in turn, we reveal who we’re really following.

“Diablo” means divider, one who throws himself across God’s work and his plans. Division is not just a consequence of the devil’s activity; it is his mode of operating.  It is who he is.  And this is concerning because everything the devil does is meant to counter God’s activity and to mock it.  So, when Jesus says “a house divided against itself falls,” he’s not offering a general life lesson about teamwork. He’s naming something about the nature of evil itself: division is not a side effect of the enemy’s activity — it is the mechanism.

And it is very effective in disabling the witness that love alone can give, the witness that leads directly back to Jesus, who said He willed that all of us be one as He is with the Father and the Holy Spirit, and that by loving this way, everyone would know we were His disciples. Communion is a profound witness to the Trinity and to the nature of the Church herself.  The current division in the Christian Church (Estimates show there are more than 200 Christian denominations in the U.S. and a staggering 45,000 globally, according to the Center for the Study of Global Christianity, Jan 23, 2025…) is a scandal to the rest of the world.  It contradicts everything Jesus said about his Church and everything He prayed for.  

It makes sense that not only does the devil not want this witness of unity given, but he is interested in making us in his likeness, so that the “mark of the beast” be very evident in us, so that who we belong to is without question.  One frightening evidence of his activity in this respect is found today in the movement to deconstruct our essential relationships, primarily family.  And unfortunately, much of the mainstream counseling and “wisdom” promotes navigating through the inevitable conflicts that arise in human relationships by simply amputating the personally disagreeable and contentious family members or “friends” from our lives.  This has resulted in no-contact orders being applied to parents or grandparents to block, supposedly, bad influences that are unwanted, as in traditional viewpoints, conservative values, and spiritual modeling. It is also used at times to “punish” parents for being bad parents according to the offended son or daughter’s judgment.

Signs of this movement became visible in some recent elections, where families were encouraged not to invite other family members for Thanksgiving if they had a different political orientation. 

The devil tries to get us to behave in these kinds of ways, vs the way of the Gospel, because the witness we then give refers itself back to him as the great divider rather than to Christ.  It makes us more like beasts. That is worth thinking about: are you living out of the mark of your baptism as a child of God, or are you marked more by the beast, by the father of lies, by the divisive one, the destructive one, the liar and the murderer from the beginning? 

Pope Francis had a real concern for modern-day sins that tend to divide us in these ways: gossiping, all-consuming materialism, ideological division, jealousy and ambition, etc. These are activities that scatter, that tear apart rather than heal.

Two important Ignatian rules for identifying the activity of the evil one are worth knowing by heart.

Rule 13 — He wants secrecy.

“The enemy of human nature… wants and desires that [his suggestions] be received and kept in secret; but when one reveals them to his good Confessor or to another spiritual person that knows his deceits and evil ends, it is very grievous to him, because he gathers, from his manifest deceits being discovered, that he will not be able to succeed with his wickedness begun.” (Rules for the Discernment of Spirits)

When these temptations are spoken aloud to someone trustworthy, their power breaks. Division flows from unspoken resentment, private suspicion, gossip, grudges you’re nursing, assumptions about someone’s motives that you haven’t actually tested by asking them directly, the community tension everyone feels but no one names out loud. These all obey Rule 13’s logic. Secrecy keeps division alive and protects the source of the division. Disclosure can defeat it, often quickly.

Rule 14 — He attacks your weakest point.

“He behaves as a chief bent on conquering… looks in turn at all our virtues, theological, cardinal and moral; and where he finds us weakest and most in need for our eternal salvation, there he attacks us and aims at taking us.” (Rules for the Discernment of Spirits)

The devil uses your particular wound: a longstanding insecurity, a past betrayal you never quite worked through or let go of, the temperament clash you’ve never named honestly. 

Questions to ask here would be:

• Am I keeping this thought or grievance hidden rather than bringing it to someone trustworthy?
• Is this thought landing exactly on an old wound rather than arising from the actual facts?

If either answer is yes, the thought deserves suspicion — because that pattern is how the divider typically moves.

The remedy here is disclosure and self-knowledge.   Bring the thought to a confessor, spiritual director, or trusted friend and let it be seen in the light. And for self-knowledge — know your own weakest point well enough in advance that you’re not caught by surprise when it’s tested.

Practically, for a community or a soul desiring real unity:

• Speak it instead of nursing it. The suspicion, the hurt, the assumption about someone’s motive — say it out loud to the person, or to a director, before it calcifies into a settled grudge.
• Return to the sacraments, especially confession and the Eucharist. They are the sources of healing and communion.  Prayer together and honest conversation, not avoidance, also assist this process.
• Know your predominant fault or weak point in this area. Where do you personally get pulled toward suspicion, competition, offense, etc., fastest? Know yourself. It is a grace.
• Ask where a thought leads. Toward charity and communion, or toward isolation and contempt? That trajectory tells you more than the thought’s apparent reasonableness ever will.

For Reflection:

1. Where in my life — a relationship, a community, my own heart — do I sense a “house divided” right now?
2. Is there a thought or grievance I have been keeping secret rather than bringing into the light with the person involved, a director, or a confessor? What is it costing me to keep it hidden?
3. What is my “weakest side” — the old wound or insecurity the enemy most reliably finds? Naming it honestly is itself an act of freedom.
4. What would it look like, this week, to choose one concrete act that returns unity to a divided place rather than deepening the division?