A sort of musing-on-words post.
One of the more awkward conversations you can have is the “they’re an angel, now” one with someone who’s lost a loved one—besides the obvious even to me point that you don’t pick a fight about it because that will do more harm than good. I’m still startled at the negative reactions some people have to the word “saint” applied in a non-metaphorical way.
After MDV laid out how the demigod from the latest Disney movie couldn’t be considered a proper big-G god, combined with Dan’s description of Maui as a Polynesian Hercules, I started musing….
Concluded that a lot of Protestants do believe in Saints, as we know them. They just call them angels, and tend to dramatic representations that are much more obvious that they work only by God’s power. (That came by way of envisioning addressing prayers c/o The Almighty. Glowy gold script, bright white envelope. Uh…did I mention I haven’t been sleeping much?)
Look at TV angels, at least in nominally religious programs, and you get:
*Humans
*Who died
*and are doing God’s will
*usually with some personal focus related to their life on Earth.
Now, since it’s Hollywood, there’s some created drama about losing one’s salvation after one is already an angel, yadda yadda—because that’s totally what God would do, punish someone for doing the right thing. I can’t complain too much, that trope brought the movie Tombstone into being, and that’s an enjoyable drama, but bad theology.
Not sure how useful it will be, but I thought the observation might come in handy the next time you’re in a situation where you’re thinking: “But angels weren’t ever human!” Maybe they’ll listen if you say “when someone is dead and in heaven, we call them a saint, not an angel.”
Thank you Foxfier. “But angels weren’t ever human!” Exactly. Not to far in the past, people on public conveyance: buses, trains and planes were counted as souls. The human person with transcendent soul. So many souls were lost on the Titanic. Since atheism and the watered down atheism, secular humanism, that is, a creation without “their Creator”, man’s soul has been denied to him. Innate human rights, that are our unalienable civil rights, free will and reason are attributes endowed to man by “their Creator” have been denied to him.
Subtle indoctrination and subliminal suggestion have inculcated atheism and the belief that man is nothing more than an animal to be disrespected and treated irreverently to be murdered, cheated and enslaved.
Barbarism and insanity are the results.
A 1960 film with Sean Connery as 007, You Only Life Twice has a picture, a full size picture of Our Lady holding Jesus with St. John and maybe St. Catherine in the office of SPECTER, the really bad guy. ONLY BAD GUYS ARE RELIGIOUS…Ian Fleming , author of 007 believed that all law was the “crystallization of prejudice.”
Good will for the common good, patriotism, has lost its place in our culture.
Probably our best hope is to try to get people to be rational– really rational. In the last few weeks I’ve seen way too many people dismiss evidence that contradicts their view by changing the subject to personal qualifications.
Facts don’t work that way…the lowest of unrepentant sinners can be right, even if they disagree with the most holy saint, IF THEY ARE RIGHT.
It’s the truth that matters.
I think part of the confusion is that we refer to some angels as saints. I guess all angels would be saints because every angel we know by name is referred to as a saint.
There’s been a rash of people calling in to Catholic Answers and similar shows asking how Saint Michael can be a saint when he wasn’t a human, and them explaining it means that they’re with God.
Hehe, I need to post that “saints” article I made…..
The Angels who are called saints chose to be true to God , a free will choice that made them saints. So, too the human being must make a free will choice to be with God in heaven.
“Ian Fleming , author of 007 believed that all law was the “crystallization of prejudice.” All law is the crystallization of truth.