Beware a False Christ with No Power to Help Us

Posted on June 21, 2025 by Father Joe

Put bluntly, the counterfeit Jesus of posturing Christians has no power to save. He is not real. Such souls will have a true existential shock when they encounter the true Messiah and Savior. Those who trust in the Lord are summoned to a transformation in Christ. Mentally configuring Jesus into our own alter ego is a backward act that serves no purpose other than self-deception. Of course, this false Jesus may have substance in that the demonic can masquerade as holy personages and deities. This assessment of idols extends back to the first martyrs. They suffered torture and death at the bloody spectacle of the arena for failing to worship the emperor and the pagan pantheon of gods. The associated bloodlust was a sure indication that the pagan deities had an association with the demons and the devil. We must always be wary of a darkness that feigns being light.

Saints are made on earth, not in heaven. We are molded by our actions and by the intervention of divine grace. Actual grace helps us to behave as God’s children in this world, ensuring that we will be receptive and retentive of saving grace. Sanctifying grace makes us worthy of heaven and the beatific vision. Finding an analogy in modern science fiction, numerous futurists predict as an alternative to terraforming planets, that a super science might seek to biologically augment human beings to accommodate planetary environments otherwise inhospitable for human life. While this is farfetched, it is our conviction that divine grace and the sacraments condition us for the sacred environment of heaven. Humanity must be healed of original sin, weaned from concupiscence, and made able to breathe the air of eternal joy over that of proximate pleasures. The mutable and mortal must give way to the perfect and immortal. We must be reborn or made brand new. Similarly, the absence of grace will not only fail to sustain the new man but leave the natural man gasping for air. This world is passing. Heaven is the only way to get off before it is too late. The devil would prefer to leave us stranded. That is enough for him to steal souls. But the devil is not satisfied with inaction, he exploits human weakness and fear. He imposes vice over virtue. He would condition us for a habitation of bondage and darkness. It is somewhat ironic that we associate hell with fire because it is a flame that offers no illumination. It is a fire that blinds and casts all in the darkness of night. By contrast, our Lord calls us to a new beginning, a new day.