God Doesn't Need Another Angel
A Plea to Stop Using Religious Platitudes
As a hospital chaplain, I have some wishes for the betterment of humanity.
I want everyone to recognize loss, name their emotions and talk about advance care planning.
But at the top of my list is stopping the use of “Religious Platitudes.”
I am referring to the vaguely religious sounding phrases that well-meaning people offer to someone in pain. Here is a list of the comments that get under my skin:
Everything happens for a reason.
God needed another angel.
They’re in a better place now.
Time heals all wounds.
It is God’s will.
God has a plan.
You just have to have faith.
Let Go and Let God.
God won’t give you more than you can handle.
God doesn’t close a door without opening a window.
We may have uttered lines like these in the past without realizing the hurt they can cause. I admit to having said variations of these phrases until years of training helped me see the folly of my ways. Let’s examine how these mindsets entered our societal vocabulary and why we need to eliminate these phrases from our lexicon.
Why We Use Religious Platitudes & Why They Are Harmful
Only Allows for the Positive
You may have heard about Toxic Positivity - the dynamic of only focusing on the positive aspect of one’s experiences. This is the “Good Vibes Only” mentality that has been pervasive in society as of late. There is a benefit to optimism and “looking on the bright side,” but touting Toxic Positivity excludes the acknowledgement of pain and loss and the fullness of human experience.
Employing Religious Platitudes is a form of Toxic Positivity, but with a spiritual bent, which can be even more dangerous. We minimize the totality of spirituality and beliefs to that which will fit on a bumper sticker. The shallow interpretations of theodicy, or the nature of suffering, is trite and without any scriptural basis. As we repeat them, we are making gospel out of something that was never gospel to begin with. We are shortchanging the depths of religion and spirituality.
In focusing only on the positive, we silence people’s lived reality. I’m reminded of my conversation with Tanya, a nurse I worked with who was solidly in the sandwich generation. A single mom, she cared for her adolescent children and her mother with dementia. Her daily schedule was exhausting. When she had a massive car accident she was told by everyone how lucky she was to be alive. Church members told her it was “God’s grace” that saved her. Tanya however was overwhelmed by how long her recovery was going to take with multiple broken bones. She worried about her financial situation as she had to go on medical leave from work. She was struggling to find people to help her care for her children and mother. When no one else was around, Tanya told me “I’m sick of being told to be grateful and to be strong. This shitty thing happened and it has upended my life.” Everyone in her orbit was shouting PTL and internally she was whispering WTF.1
Creation of Distance
As a society, we are uncomfortable with emotional messiness. Tossing up a platitude is our way of putting a bow on a tragic situation rather than sitting in the mess and potentially getting dirty ourselves.
When we lob one of these at someone else, it sends the message that we do not want to hear about their pain. It silences them from sharing further with us. It might make us feel better in the short term, but it creates distance between the caregiver and the care recipient. It adds to the loneliness of someone’s situation. Even though we may be well-intentioned, it is a way of us removing ourselves from the pain.
When I was present at the death of one patient in the ICU, her parents called their pastor in for solace. A tall, older man in a black shirt with white collar arrived as the medical team was cleaning up her body after she died. I stood by him and the parents in the hallway. He inquired about when they’d want the funeral to occur. He stayed for a total of 10 minutes and as he departed said “Just remember, she’s in a better place now. I have to go and meet a friend for lunch.”
My mouth almost hit the floor as I watched him scurry off. Not only was he preaching a religious platitude, but he was doing so to help make a hasty exit.
I am often asked why so many people turn away from religion. There are lots of reasons why, but a major one is inauthenticity.2 Religious platitudes are the perfect example of how out of touch with reality we religious-type people can be at times.
Stealing Meaning Making
One of the problems with these trite religious phrases is that in articulating them, we put our own theological framework onto other people. We interpret what we think God/the Divine/the Universe is up to in their lives. This robs the person of their own experience of existential meaning-making.3
For example, when I was first diagnosed with epilepsy, before my seizures were under control, someone from my church said to me “This is God’s way of telling you to slow down.” Similarly, when I was reeling from perinatal loss, I was told by a friend “Everything happens for a reason.”
Reader, I did not take these statements well.
Many years later, now I believe that my epilepsy diagnosis changed the course of my life and my losses enabled me to help others in a significant way. That took over a decade of meaning making and introspection for me to uncover and claim for myself. But when I was in the throes of my medical crises, that was not what I needed to hear. It is almost as if the people saying these things wanted me to move on quickly to acceptance and that’s not where I was.
To interpret God’s will for our own lives is one thing. It is natural for us to look for meaning in our own experience. It can be a powerful source of coping. But to interpret a divine message and make that assumption for someone else’s painful experience – that is usurping their own belief system. It is a lack of patience for their own growth through adversity.
Professor and writer Kate Bowler’s book (which has the best title ever) Everything Happens for a Reason and Other Lies I’ve Loved is an excellent memoir about the impact of these platitudes. Throughout her book, Bowler wrestles with her academic research of prosperity gospel theology “ie. Your faith will make you well” as it relates to her stage 4 cancer diagnosis. She writes candidly about the problem with foisting reasons upon other people,
“Everything happens for a reason.” The only thing worse than saying this is pretending that you know the reason. I’ve had hundreds of people tell me the reason for my cancer. Because of my sin. Because of my unfaithfulness. Because God is fair. Because God is unfair. Because of my aversion to Brussels sprouts. I mean, no one is short of reasons. So if people tell you this, make sure you are there when they go through the cruelest moments of their lives, and start offering your own. When someone is drowning, the only thing worse than failing to throw them a life preserver is handing them a reason.”
Internalizing Divine Misconceptions
If someone hears a religious platitude as truth, they internalize it and take on some attributes of the Divine relationship that causes harm. Or to say it more bluntly - If I’m told that God took my child because God needed another angel – then I’m going to think that type of God is sadistic and evil. Or if I’m told my suffering is a test from God, then I’m going to assume it’s my fault and I don’t have enough faith. So, there’s something wrong with me or something wrong with God. Either way, it causes me deep spiritual distress.4
I ran a bereavement group that included Ivan, a widower who liked to describe me as “smart, despite being a minister.” The first time I met him, he told me how he hated religion and God. He said, “God has forsaken me, so I returned the favor.” When his wife fell ill, he was told by those in his circles that if he prayed hard enough, she would be healed. After she died, he lost his faith completely. “How can I believe in someone who toys with us just to get our attention?” These pithy sayings that come out of our mouths without thinking can have a lasting impact on someone’s spiritual psyche.
So what do we do instead?
I recommend: Show up and Shut up
In the face of great pain, our words can often make it worse.
In seminary, I had a professor who buried his child a few years prior and was on the receiving end of some terrible theology. For an assignment he had the class sign our names to a piece of paper saying “When there is tragedy, I promise I will be present and not say anything when there’s nothing to be said.” In other words, sometimes what we need to do is “show up and shut up.”
Silence is hard for many people for lots of reasons.5 But I promise you, your presence is enough.
The first few times my interns are attending to a death, they are shocked when the patient’s family genuinely thanks them for being there. “But I didn’t do anything. I didn’t even say much,” they sheepishly confess to me afterwards. “Exactly” I tell them, “less is more.”
Cultivating the right kind of silent presence is hard and takes a lot of practice. So if you find yourself wishing you could say something, here are some suggestions instead of those empty platitudes:
“I have no words to make it better.”
Make it explicit that you are not going to offer empty words to try to make anything better when that’s not an option.
“This sucks.”
Or some variation depending on the audience - This is awful/tragic/horrible, etc. There can be power in simply naming the terribleness of the situation.
“How are you really feeling?”
Allow them to share about their pain and then remind them all feelings are valid. And don’t let them say they’re fine.
“I’m here with you in it.”
And then you have to really be there with them. Fulfill the show up part. Don't disappear.
“I promise to punch the next person who tells you that everything happens for a reason.”
Ok, maybe not that last one, but you can proactively warn people against the tyranny of religious platitudes!
If you’re still not convinced of the danger of our words and/or need some inspiration for what to say instead - here’s a video I show during my chaplain orientation to help my interns realize the ways they have tried to “fix” people’s pain with positivity in the past.
Writer and celebrity social work professor Brene Brown’s viral TED talk that was later animated helps us see the ridiculousness of the things we sometimes say in an effort to help.
What are the religious platitudes you’ve heard the most?
How can you help ban these from our collective lexicon?
Would you sign a paper that promises you will “show up and shut up?”
PTL is common in Christian circles for “Praise the Lord.” I’m guessing you know what WTF is short for!
I am in the midst of writing all those reasons why religion can be problematic - so they will show up in your mailbox soon.
Keep an eye out for a future post on how we make meaning for ourselves.
Spiritual Distress = future post for another day.
Another future post, I better get started on writing these…Let me know which one you’d like to read first!
Christine, I want to shout this wisdom from the rooftops. The older I get the more I realize that often there is nothing meaningful to speak and our presence is more meaningful in times of trouble when we hush our incessant chatter.
I do, from time to time, tell people that they can punch the next person that says some of these things and that they can say the hospital chaplain gave them permission.
I also wrote a small book called "This is Hard: What I say when loved ones die" to help with finding words to say. And hear.
Thank you.