Don't Say That

The ignorance that people espouse on a daily basis is just astounding.  I know that most of us just want to be well intentioned and bring solace and comfort to people with various saying, but we neglect to understand how sometimes these seemingly innocuous statements can erode and harm our Faith and even deny Christ and God the Father, whom Christ is always leading us to.  We must learn the Faith and come to understand what we say is important, and can affect others in ways we can’t ever imagine.  We seem to have time for everything else, but learning our Faith and spending time with God in prayer asking for wisdom seems to be very low on the priority list.  I guess it is easier to just state heretical platitudes that appeal to the feelings and sentiment instead of Truth, isn’t it?   Here are a few of my favorite heretical statements that society as a whole just seems to love and embrace wholeheartedly.

They have earned their angel wings?   Is there honestly a more ignorant or truly ridiculous statement in the pseudo Christian idea than this one?  Yes, I know, the idea of our loved ones flying around heaven with wings and laying around wiling away the day on a cloud for some reason seems comforting.  This statement though is so erroneous on so many levels and denies the person of Christ.  Human beings do not become angels when we die!  Let me say that again, we do not transform into angelic beings upon death!  This statement is theologically incorrect, presumptive and arrogant!  First of all, only the Church can declare that someone is definitely in Heaven, that is called the canonization process, and when they do this, they then declare that person a Saint, and not an angel.  Angels are purely spiritual creatures, with no body! They will stay this way throughout eternity, and they have been since God made them.  Angels serve a specific purpose in God’s Kingdom and that purpose is different than our purpose in the Kingdom in some ways, and the same in others.  Also, there are good angels and demonic angels, this statement seldom differentiates or acknowledges that, and angels don’t really have wings either!  We negate these mighty and supernatural beings with this statement and deny the incredible and miraculous human nature of Christ as well.  Christ came as a human being, specifically so we could then as humans share in his divine nature.  He DID NOT come as an angel to save us.  So, think about that the next time you hear someone declaring this platitude, and realize that they are doing a disservice to the person who has died, because we hope for them to be a Saint, and they very well may need our prayers to get there.  The fact that nobody prays for the dead anymore and that funerals have become a celebration of their life instead of the praise, thankfulness and gratitude to God for giving this person life in the first place plays into the danger of this statement. Satan hates the God Man and he hates the fact that we have a choice to become like Christ as divine beings if we so choose to join ourselves to Him. As creatures with body and soul, Christ elevates us because He became one of us, he did not become one like the angels!  Don’t play into the Devils hands by undermining this reality.  Satan fell from Heaven over this and is hard at work seeking our falls as well.  The magnitude of importance and amazement that the incarnation demonstrates cannot be overestimated, don’t attack it with this statement.  Please, stop saying this!

God won’t give us more than we can handle.  Again, a statement that demonstrates just how prideful and arrogant we are.  God gives us more than we can handle all the time.  We can’t handle anything without him.  So everything that comes our way is something that we can only handle because of God.  Seriously, can we make ourselves breathe? God gives us every breath we take.  Our reliance on God is paramount if we want to reach Heaven, we can’t do that without him.  So, rely on God, and start asking Him for the Grace needed to handle every situation that you come up against in life, from the smallest to the most enormous and overwhelming.  He wants to make our burdens light, so lets go to Him and allow him to do that! Trying to carry the burden ourselves is not the way to Heaven.  So, lets get over ourselves and how much we can handle, and go to God with everything.   The way we do this prayer by the way, and maybe if we aren’t so busy trying to handle things on our own, we will have time to go to him in prayer, so he can take care of it for us, and handle it Himself. Of course, when we do this, we need to surrender to Him and allow Him to handle things His way and according to His will.  That seems like a huge tradeoff and sacrifice, and well, it is and it isn’t. It is a sacrifice, which is what our very lives should be to God anyway, and once we get over how great we are at handling everything, we might come to realize and know that God can handle things much better and with better and more miraculous results than we ever imagined or thought possible.  So, stop saying this!!!

I have many more of these sayings that drive me crazy but let’s end with this one.

What would Jesus do?  This is the one that is the most stupid and really highlights again our arrogance and pride.  What did Jesus do?  If we are unsure of what Jesus did in certain situations then we should be looking look to the Church that he left us with – the Catholic Church.  She gives us guidance and guidelines on just about every moral issue and complication we could ever encounter.  That is the reason Jesus left her with us and for us.  That is why he lived!  He lived on this Earth for so many years to establish his Church, it’s the whole reason the world exists, for the creation of His Catholic Church, which is not just composed of us living on Earth today, it encompasses all of the Heavenly and Earthly realms and unites all together.  The problem is that our pride is so overpowering because of Satan and the Fall that we don’t want to look to the Church and subordinate ourselves to Her authority, which is the authority of Christ by the way.  We would rather try to make cute little sayings so that we can justify and twist things in ways that yield answers indicating we can do what we want.  We appeal again to the feelings and sentiments.  We like to acknowledge that Jesus surrounded himself with sinners and met them where they were, but then dismiss the part about how those simmers were transformed and changed by Christ!  Jesus was and never will be tolerant of sin!  Yes, he loves everyone, but that doesn’t mean that he denies us the ability to reject Him and His Church and walk away, even if we do so under that pretense that we are “following” Him.  We are all very good at doing this, it is why tens of thousands of Protestant denominations exist, so Jesus’ words can be twisted and formed in a way that we can do what we want!  So, again stop saying this, if you follow the Church you are well on your way, to doing what Jesus did, or would do!

Take the time to learn the Faith, take the time to get to know the real Jesus.  We have the opportunity and the privilege of receiving him and spending time with him every day if we can, in the Eucharist.  We just need and must take the time, and make the effort.  Getting to Heaven takes effort, we just don’t skate on in, we need to claw and fight, and drag everyone we can there with us.  This is a battle, and it is not easy.  If you think it is, you are doing it all wrong and not following the way of Christ.  If all this is easy, and we seem to have all the answers the chances that all the answers we have, and want, are wrong! 

We have obligations as Christians, if we are truly Christian anyway. Those obligations come with real and difficult choices and ways to live.  We must fight the desire to conform and twist the Truth for ourselves, by doing this, we will fall short every time, and might just miss out on how great this life and the next one, when serving and humbling ourselves to our God can be!