YOU Are The Saints!

Perhaps because it's the Christmas season I've been thinking about saints. I've been reading a little about St. Nicholas, the inspiration for Santa Claus, and while he seems to have been a genuinely good man the historical devotion paid to him, and other saints, proved disturbing to me.

This blog is about my "divine discontents" and one of my pet discontents is Christians doing or believing things that are not in the Bible. One such thing is this veneration of saints.

Through out Christian history there have been people who showed exceptional devotion to God and the life He would have us live. There is nothing wrong with holding such people in high esteem and encouraging the faithful to emulate them. But when people celebrate feast days, make pilgrimages to saints' shrines and pray to saints as if they were God something is terribly wrong.

The Bible clearly teaches that there is only ONE true God and that worshipping anything besides Him is idolatry. Yet, for hundreds of years the Catholic and Orthodox churches have promoted the virtual worship of human beings they call "saints". They've taught millions of their unsuspecting members that the veneration of saints is an integral part of the Christian faith. It's not.

Saint worship is left over, "Christianized" polytheism. It was a way for the early institutional church to deal with "converted" pagans who didn't really abandon their desire to worship multiple gods. Giving such people Godly heroes to venerate in place of their pagan deities may have seemed like a positive way to satisfy their polytheist urges but it can backfire on the church. When folks realize that practices and doctrines they've been taught all their lives are not in the Bible it can obliterate the authority of the church and discredit the entire Christian message. So this whole saints issue is serious business.

The church needs to follow the Bible's teachings on saints. According to the Good Book the saints are ALL the believers. Every person who sincerely believes in God and Jesus Christ is a saint. Look at yourselves in the mirror, Christians. YOU are the saints! That's what the Bible says. The only canonization process is believing in Christ and living life His way. Do that and you have instant sainthood. What you don't have is people praying to mortals as if they were gods.

Once Christians understand just what Biblical sainthood is they should strive to be worthy of the label. Being a saint is a lot harder than worshipping one. But once they fully realize who they are I know the believers will step up to the plate.