From God Kits to Guardian Angels: How Easy It Is to Complicate Faith—and Neglect Love
“22 Because with lies ye have made the heart of the righteous sad, whom I have not made sad; and strengthened the hands of the wicked, that he should not return from his wicked way, by promising him life:
23 Therefore ye shall see no more vanity, nor divine divinations: for I will deliver my people out of your hand: and ye shall know that I am the Lord.”
There is a strange humor in looking back at where I came from.
I was searching for God. I had heard the Word, or at least enough of it to know that truth mattered. But instead of simply receiving what God had revealed, I began trying to discern who really possessed the Word.
Who understood the secret meaning?
Who had been chosen?
Who could read the signs?
Who knew what was about to happen?
My search eventually brought me into a small online religious group led by a woman who claimed she had been called as an end-times prophet. She believed she belonged spiritually to the tribe of Asher. Her friend acted as an interpreter and claimed a connection to the tribe of Dan.
They had charts.
The charts assigned spiritual powers, personalities, gifts, and tribal identities. According to this system, I belonged to Dan too.
That seemed to explain things about me. Dan was associated with the serpent in Jacob’s blessing, so I began believing that I could discern people’s motives. I could supposedly recognize hidden intentions. This “gift” could be used for good or evil, depending on how I handled it.
It sounds absurd to me now.
But at the time, I admitted that I was “Dan,” and the group welcomed me.
For several weeks, I sat back and listened. There were prophecies, warnings about chemtrails, and videos of people speaking toward rainbows in the sky. They believed the world was about to burn. They were waiting to be taken into the clouds.
We were told to prepare ourselves.
We were even encouraged to assemble “God kits”—supplies that could be discovered after our disappearance. When the government began investigating the mass exodus of believers, and when frightened people came searching for answers, they would supposedly find these kits containing information about God and the Bible.
Think about how heavy that is.
I was not simply being asked to love God and serve my neighbor. I was being asked to prepare evidence for a supernatural evacuation of the chosen remnant.
I had become part of a story in which everything was charged with secret meaning. Every cloud mattered. Every bodily sensation might be a message. Every conflict revealed spiritual opposition. Every personality had a tribal explanation. Every world event was another sign that the final hour had arrived.
The religious imagination can become endless.
And yet, while we speculate about hidden identities, prophetic timelines, governments, bloodlines, signs in the sky, spiritual rankings, and the end of the world, we can neglect the commands God has already made perfectly clear.
Love God.
Love your neighbor.
Forgive.
Repent.
Tell the truth.
Care for your family.
Perform the task in front of you.
Feed the hungry.
Control your tongue.
Pray for those who hurt you.
Do the laundry.
Get up in the morning.
Thank God.
Faith can be made so extraordinary that ordinary obedience begins to feel beneath us.
But God, in His mercy, brought me somewhere entirely different.
He brought me into the Catholic Church.
There were no tribal personality charts waiting for me there. No one asked whether I possessed the serpent-like discernment of Dan. No prophet examined my powers. No interpreter assigned me an end-times role.
Instead, I was brought to confession.
I had to tell the truth about my sins.
I had to stop studying everyone else’s motives and begin examining my own conscience.
I was washed by mercy. I was purified gradually, not through secret knowledge, but through repentance. I was strengthened not by discovering my supernatural identity, but by receiving Jesus Christ in the Eucharist.
And then I was given things so simple that my former religious mind might have overlooked them.
Say your prayers.
Go to Mass.
Confess your sins.
Receive the Eucharist.
Read the Scriptures.
Practice charity.
Fulfill the duties of your state in life.
Thank your guardian angel in the morning.
The distance between the two worlds still amazes me.
I went from preparing a survival kit for people who would be left behind after my ascent into the clouds to trying to remember each morning:
“Thank you, guardian angel, for watching over me.”
That may sound smaller.
It is not.
The extraordinary religious life placed me at the center of a cosmic drama. The ordinary Catholic life slowly removed me from the center.
The Chosen People
I no longer needed to be one of the chosen people who understood what everyone else was missing. I needed to become a man who could apologize. A father who could remain patient. A sinner who could enter the confessional without excuses. A Christian who could love the person actually standing in front of him.
That is much harder than identifying chemtrails.
It is easier to imagine yourself discerning the motives of nations than to remain charitable when someone irritates you.
It is easier to wait for the world to end than to complete today’s responsibilities.
It is easier to believe that you have a prophetic gift than to admit that you were wrong.
It is easier to prepare a “God kit” for strangers in the future than to show mercy to your family in the present.
This is one of the great dangers of an unformed religious mind: it can mistake complication for depth.
We assume that something must be profound because it is difficult to explain. We assume that God’s will must be hidden behind signs, codes, sensations, charts, and private revelations.
But God has not neglected to tell us what He desires.
“He has told you, O mortal, what is good, and what the Lord requires of you: Only to do justice and to love goodness, and to walk humbly with your God.”
Walk humbly.
Not float above everyone with secret knowledge.
Not construct an identity from biblical symbols.
Not become the interpreter of every person’s hidden motives.
Walk.
Humbly.
With God.
The supernatural life is real. Grace is real.
The Holy Spirit truly forms us, purifies us, corrects us, comforts us, and leads us into truth. But His work often becomes visible through very ordinary changes.
A man becomes slower to anger.
He stops needing to win every argument.
He tells the truth sooner.
He becomes more patient with his child.
He performs neglected responsibilities.
He prays when he would once have panicked.
He confesses what he once justified.
He learns that love is not a feeling of spiritual intensity but the decision to seek another person’s good.
This formation is supernatural precisely because we cannot produce it by fantasy or force.
It is God working within our actual lives.
He does not need us to manufacture grand missions for Him. He does not need us to repair His plan, decode His next move, or preserve His reputation.
God knows what He is doing.
That truth has become a source of tremendous peace for me.
I do not need to understand every event.
I do not need to interpret every sensation.
I do not need to assign a spiritual meaning to every conflict.
I do not need to save the Church, expose the entire world, identify the remnant, or prepare for my disappearance.
I need to remain faithful.
The Church has given me sacraments rather than secret identities.
She has given me the Eucharist rather than spiritual charts. She has given me confession rather than self-appointed powers. She has given me a guardian angel, the communion of saints, the Scriptures, the commandments, and two thousand years of wisdom.
And still, most days, my work is wonderfully ordinary.
Wake up.
Thank God.
Take care of my son.
Go to work.
Speak honestly.
Resist anger.
Complete the task.
Ask forgiveness.
Pray.
Rest.
Begin again.
The old life felt supernatural because it was dramatic.
The new life is supernatural because it is grace.
God took a mind searching the skies for signs and slowly taught it to notice the person nearby.
He took someone fascinated by hidden motives and taught him to examine his own heart.
He took someone preparing for the end of the world and taught him how to live one faithful day.
That is not a lesser spiritual life.
That is purification.
That is freedom.
And that is how God, who needs no help managing His creation, patiently teaches us to love Him, love one another, and do the good that is already in front of us.