What You Have In Common With The Most Obnoxious Person You Know

liberate us from our own chaos

Take a moment and think of That Person Who Drives You Bananas.

You know the one. The one that just makes your skin crawl. They are the tippiest-toppest level of obnoxious. They might be someone you see every week at Mass, or they might be someone who constantly comes across your YouTube algorithm. They might be blood related to you, or you may have never met. They might be me!

Of the giant cesspool of sins I find myself swimming in, looking at other people and thinking I Am So Much Holier Than You has got to be in my top five. (Aren’t I such an inspirational spiritual leader?)

I come to this delightful little trait by way of good intentions¹. I have a desire deep in my bones to see earth as it is in Heaven, and when I see people doing things that I believe to be the antithesis of that, it downright pisses me off. For a long time, I had no idea that I was walking around judging people. I thought I was simply “rebuking the sinner” and “calling things out”. Jesus, I would self-righteously remind people, flipped tables! (Because clearly, I was Jesus in that scenario. And, let’s face it, in most scenarios in my head.)

When you give a crap about how human beings are treated, it’s natural to find yourself falling into a tribalistic mindset.

Because there are times that people deserve to be publicly named and critiqued. And there may very well be a sinner in your life that you need to rebuke. Relativism, or the culture’s constant insistence that there is no one overarching truth but simply a wide myriad of perspectives, isn’t a Christian route to take. Some things are just, well, wrong, and to claim otherwise is incorrect.²

But when you’re walking through life with your own history and baggage and little-t traumas, like we all are, it’s very easy to switch from thinking I believe, with the information I have, that that action is wrong to that person is dog shit. So many of us let our triggers run the show of our spiritual life.

Let me walk you through an embarrassing example, since apparently today’s letter is just going to be me putting myself on blast. I used to have multiple hate-follows on social media. (I am not proud of this.) Almost every single time they posted something, I saw no truth in it because I was too busy kicking back and smirking. One of them was a “progressive Christian” (their words, not mine) who frequently posted long lectures about why this or that Catholic teaching is incorrect. They delighted in lambasting “the trads” and basically writhed in their own self-righteousness. They saw themselves as some kind of hero of the church, when really they were (and probably still are) a glorified gossip in a high school bathroom. They had a long history of alienating people, burning bridges, and making everyone around them feel like crap because those people weren’t quite as Into Justice (TM) in the very narrow way that they were.

I unfollowed (I also literally deleted Twitter, because sometimes you need to chop the hand off). And although there’s a dysfunctional little corner of my heart that misses the drama, I know my soul is infinitely better off. Because they didn’t make me think any better about justice, or activism, or Catholic social teaching. What they really did was turn me into another version of themselves.

That’s my person. Yours might be Candace Owens, or the leader of your mom’s group at church, or your brother, or AOC, or your next door neighbor, or a popular writer, or Tucker Carlson, or your pastor, or a member of your school board. They are Bad. You are Good. And before you know it—

—you’re doing the exact same freaking thing they are.

Oops. (Or as we say here in the midwest, Ope.)