The Poison of Nice
The Sunday message today is to stop being so nice.
Not even Jesus Christ was nice. (Keep reading…).
His Life is Worth Living program was one of the televisions shows once upon a time. It was a captivating mix of inspiration, challenge, teaching, and stage acting, running on the DuMont Television Network–which was rivaling NBC and ABC at the time–from 1952 to 1955, then on ABC until 1957. Similar series, also featuring this true, good man of the times, followed from 1958 to 1968.
He won an Emmy Award for “Most Outstanding Television Personality” in 1953.
His gaze into the television camera–and at the viewer-was hypnotic, his teaching firm and not flimsy, and he did it all with a wit and charisma that kept viewers wanting more. It was good.
He wasn’t a stand-up comedian. He wasn’t an actor. He wasn’t a star.
He was a Roman Catholic Bishop and later Archbishop of New York City. And his name was Fulton J. Sheen (1895-1979).
My non-Catholic friends, as always, I invite you to keep reading anyway. The message, equally as always, is for all of us.
The vast majority of Sheen’s work centered on the moral aspects of the Catholic faith from the perspectives of natural law and philosophy, and less on what I’ll call obviously Catholic doctrine. This is why he is a voice for everyone. He often spoke directly to the audience, not nervous or flinching in his gaze, yet was still personable and accessible. He had a gift of establishing an authentic connection to those he aimed to inspire, despite the disconnection of airwaves. He was and still is special and unique–I invite you to peruse his numerous recorded shows online.
The Real, Real, Reality of Evil
(And not just psychological damage or child abuse). Yes, these are both evils in themselves, but they are symptoms of something far worse.
Eternally worse.
Jesus wasn’t being metaphorical when he warned about the prince of this world and the reality of hell.
It is not, absolutely not, just about “corruption” or “greed.” These words of course are bad enough, but far too few folks are truly moved by them.
This is about evil, pure and unadulterated. And that word makes people uncomfortable.
They just want to mind their business, let others mind theirs, toss out a few beignets and smiles, and call that the Christian way.
“If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul?”
Guess who said that? Doesn’t sound very nice to me.
Among Sheen’s many little stories and gentle yet convincing moral lessons were his frequent talks about the evils of communism. Listening to his talks after all these years is chilling, as this shepherd of God was clearly blessed with the prophetic vision. Indeed, what we are seeing in American society in 2023 goes well beyond even that. The notion of communism has been captured and surpassed in the public lexicon by the fundamental reality of evil, by the frightening reality of the occult, by the basic yet eternally damning reality of Satanism.
If you think that is an exaggeration just consider what Target was doing with its line of children‘s clothes earlier this year (pictured below). Consider the actors who speak out about the occult and blood sacrifice in Hollywood, such as Mel Gibson, Elijah Wood, Macaulay Culkin, and Ricky Schroder (pictured below). Consider the outbreak of Satanic imagery in music videos. If you want more, there is the yearly reenactment of human sacrifice at Bohemian Grove. Also below is a screenshot of a video from 1933 in Chicago. 1933. Do we think things aren’t worse 90 years later?
Does this not recall the story of the Israelites and the golden calf in the Old Testament?
I could go on and on, but I’ll leave just one more research piece. It is the documentary Out of Shadows, an earth-shattering work that woke both me and millions of people up to the widespread practice of Satanism in high places. Take the time to watch it and I promise you will see the point of today’s article and its thesis on Sheen’s message. This is as real as it gets, folks. Heaven and hell are literally on the line. Nothing about this is nice.
Sheen’s Message Today
We live in a society where being nice is the ultimate virtue. Love is love. Do you and I’ll do me–until it is time to legislate things, of course. Then we see the pitfall in accepting “niceness” as the ultimate virtue. Those we have been nice to and tolerated with their moral bankruptcy turn on us and demand that everyone kowtow to their disgusting, insidious desires.
It is why they are grouping pedophilia in with the former LGBTQ agenda. The plus (+) has been added. Along with some other letters, I believe. See how that works? The Overton Window has shifted, which was the plan all along, which a lot of us were shouting from the rooftops all along, showing ourselves to be true assholes apparently in some circles. We lost friends. They sneak in “love is love” a few years back and now they are going for the jugular with pedophilia simply being a “sexual orientation.”
It’s all so nice, isn’t it?
Look at this list and think to yourself if you’ve sensed that this is actually the gospel of America, the gospel of Facebook and Instagram and every divorced person out there cutting themselves some slack. I am a divorced person, by the way, and years ago I fell for this nonsense. It is nothing but a litany of self-aggrandizing, ice cream covered lies spewed by too many Christians, pure gobbledygook that is nowhere near the pages of the true Gospel.
Of course, in this image, the word “good” is meant to mean “nice.” Just be a nice person. Here it is not the good, the true good, the true holy, that Archbishop Sheen talks about in the video coming up.
Sheen had a message for us concerning nice people. And dare I say it–Jesus Christ was not a “nice” person. The “nice” Jesus is what these devils are trying to convince us of–in the unlikely event they do mention him–when things like the “Jesus Gets Us” immigrant-driven, propaganda-laced commercials come on and it takes everything in me to stop rolling my eyes.
Just read the Gospels. Actually read them. (First find a version of the Bible that hasn’t been watered down by suspect book publishers). And tell me Jesus was a “nice,” tolerant person when he was sticking a finger in the eye of his future executioners, or point blank commanding any sinner he was merciful to not to sin again.
Jesus has been minimized to memes on Facebook and catchy word-letter configurations in commercials. In the grave, Archbishop Sheen is probably rolling his eyes too:
Too many people want to be left alone to do what they want to do. “Do you” and I’ll “do me” was once a popular way of offering false friendship to a person we really didn’t give one damn about. Because if we really cared for them, we would tell them the truth about things, about sin and death and eternity and judgment. It is hard, yes, because we all are fallen, sinful beings to varying degrees, but we must learn to overcome the sinister whisper telling us we’re not good enough to say it, the sinister whisper telling us we are hypocrites for even thinking it. I know that voice, because I promise you, I am among the worst of all sinners, and I know I must repent every single day of my wretchedness–past present and future. But the fact of the matter is simple….
So do all of us, so we might as well step up and say the things we need to say. If they call you a hypocrite or reject you, shake the dust from your sandals and walk away. Until we do that and decide to be honest, dependable, courageous, authentically loving, good people–genuinely good people–instead of just nice, then it doesn’t matter what president is elected in 2024 to save or not save us. No single man this side of heaven will do that, and Jesus Christ makes it clear in his Word that individuals must change before kingdoms can.
Evil is a monster and we’d better be carrying our big boy and girl weapons to fight it.
We cannot fight that evil, a reality I so woefully abbreviate with incomplete words and screenshots today, with a fairy wand. Beignets are nice but they’re too soft. The only way we can carry that cross and fight that evil is to bring out the full armor of God, and if you know what that means in Scripture, you’ll know it is the garbs of a warrior.
And warriors who kill are not being nice at all when they do it.
Be an asshole today to someone. That may bother some of us, both in the doing and the fact that I wrote it. And it most certainly isn’t a word Archbishop Sheen ever used on TV. But I’m not that holy man today who, hopefully, has helped me write all of this from above. Shake someone from their slumber today. Be real. Be truly good. Because the truth that everyone must come to grips with is that you can be both an asshole and good at the same time. After all, this is one reason why they call one of the criminals crucified with Christ not the nice thief, but the good thief. He had an asshole inside him too.
Of course I am not calling my Lord and Savior that word too, although there will be those who will, among all the things I’ve written today, glean only that. When people want to crucify you, there is absolutely nothing that will stop them.
Not even niceness. Not even goodness.
So I did what I did. I wasn’t very nice. I tossed out a few cuss words there for a reason to make a point. It was sort of an act written by a persona to motivate in a way that mild, erudite words sometimes cannot make: Respectfully, if we are more offended by a few rhetorically based words than those evil truths I presented above—which are the demonic antithesis of the only pure good to ever live in Jesus Christ—then I rest my case. That is the crux of the problem.
May everyone named directly or referenced indirectly ask forgiveness and do penance for their sins against America and God. I fight this information war in the spirit of justice and love for the innocent, but I have been reminded of the need for mercy and prayers for our enemies. I am a sinner in need of redemption as well, for my sins are many. In the words of Jesus Christ himself, Lord forgive us all, for we know not what we do.
