Platitude Man

A little known secret about Linnet and myself. Quite often, when the need arises, we drop the spirit-filled silence, don our cape of self-righteousness and summon our super powers of “Christianees” to become Platitude Man (copyright and patent pending) and his faithful side-kick Cliché Girl (no copyright as Linnet wants nothing to do with this spiel). Yes, that’s right. When salt is needed in a wound, there is only one man to call. More dangerous than 10 normal superheroes to any wounded heart within earshot, Platitude Man’s “super Plat’s” can destroy any form of healing with impossible-to-live-up-to Christian one-liners. And once his job is done it’s: Up, Up and away with a shout of “Just pray about it” to the mere mortals still stuck without answers...
You probably know that the first rule of humour is that you must exaggerate the silly things in life that we take so seriously until they are shown for the foolish things that they really are. So I hope that I made you laugh with my little superhero tale. The sad fact, however, is sometimes I am stuck without answers to something God has done in His love and wisdom, something that causes pain or anguish. So I bring Platitude Man out of retirement, reach for my cape and superhero gloves (that’s so I don’t get too close and actually have to touch someone) and spit out something that sounds good and “Christian” but in all reality is, at best, legalistic, or at worst, just plain wrong (but dresses nicely in sheep’s clothing). Cliché allows me to look spiritual when I’m just as lost on what God is doing as everybody else. What I should do is remember that we serve a wild, passionate, unpredictable (would you have guessed the cross as the answer to man’s sinfulness?) and loving God whose ways are sometimes just plain frustrating. But rather than having us sit and ponder them, He calls us to reach out to a hurting world with a truth that we don’t fully understand.
I confess—I don’t have all of the answers, but I know this: when I tell someone to “just pray about it” because I don’t want to be caught out, it grieves both them and the Holy Spirit. Why? Because what they really needed was for me to say, “I don’t have an answer. Let’s pray about it together.”