Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Serenity Prayer for the New Evangelization

I sincerely hope that the Good Lord accepts my Facebook debating as Authentic Christian Witness. Sometimes, I just can't help myself, and I believe this to be one of my greatest weaknesses.
I find myself at least once a day wishing I had some kind of BadCatholic come-back generator (or just Marc Barnes whispering in my ear Cyrano-style) when I (inevitably) end up in these stupid social media throwdowns. Is this what BXIV meant when he called us to use the internet as our platform for spreading the gospel? When all manners are out the window (by the other party) and the gloves come off, I find it hard to keep my cool. In fact, this morning when I was called a religious extremist for the second time in 12 hours (before 9 am, mind you), I had to honestly stop myself from putting an end to the debate with this nugget: "well, I may be a religious extremist, but you're a putz. *drops mic*." But, somehow cooler heads prevailed, and I managed to just not retort.

So... I went ahead and wrote myself a little serenity prayer for this exact situation. Use as needed and call the BVM in the morning.


Lord, grant me the tenacity to defend the things I know
The wisdom to know the things I defend
And the patience to not call others names when I get branded a “religious extremist.”

3 comments:

  1. LOVE this! I usually don't find myself in those debates ONLY because I can never come up with the right words. Instead I just stew about it and get angry at people I know in real life.

    Defend our faith for all of us- especially those of us (me) who lack the courage to SAY something!

    ReplyDelete

Go ahead and weigh in. As Chesterton once said "Thinking in isolation and with pride ends in being an idiot."