“How I treat others is a reflection of who I am. “
Patti Maguire Armstrong
WHO IS PATTI MAGUIRE ARMSTRONG?
Patti Maguire Armstrong is a TV talk show host of Ladies of Another View and an award-winning author and journalist. She was managing editor and co-author of Ascension Press’ bestselling Amazing Grace Series. Her newest books are Holy Hacks: Everyday Ways to Live Your Faith & Get to Heaven and Big Hearted: Inspiring Stories from Everyday Families. She has a B.A. in social work and M.A. in public administration and worked in both those fields before staying home to work as a freelance writer. Patti and her husband, Mark, live in North Dakota, where they raised their 10 children. Follow her on Twitter at @PattiArmstrong and read her blog at PattiMaguireArmstrong.com.
How To Stop Judging People?
In this episode, Patti Maguire Armstrong tells us about how to stop judging people. She explains:
-Why is judging people a sin? What does Jesus say about it.
-How should we not judge people?
-What should we do if we’re being judged unfairly.
10 STEPS TO STOP JUDGING PEOPLE
I contacted Patti after I had read her post on NCR on how to stop judging people. She’s been on the podcast before and this is a subject that was on our calendar after much prayer. There are so many beautiful points Patti makes about judging people. Why we do it?
And I’m guilty of this myself. It’s like at first glance we’re always assessing and sizing people up. Instead, of being open to God’s way of looking at people.
This podcast was eye-opening for me also because Patti gives us strong tips to help us not to judge other people but also what to do when you’re on the receiving end. This really resonated with me. I’ve been at that end, when people make assumptions at work and where I’ve lost out on opportunities because someone has judged me because of the way I look, or where I come from, my religion, my lack of connections and so on. So, it almost brought me to tears when she explained how we should give back to God and to the people who have hurt us.
This episode is chock full of great advice and Patti with her usual gusto explains how we need to be humble and surrender to the will of God. She keeps reminding us that the measure we mete out to other people is what will be meted to us by God.
ENJOYED THIS PODCAST?
We hope you enjoyed this podcast. Check out our podcasts on Mother Teresa and Anger. Finally, if you liked this podcast, like us, leave us a comment and share our episodes on social media with those who may benefit from it. If there is a particular saint that you would like to hear about us, tell us and we’ll add him or her to our future episodes.
We are on iheartradio, Stitcher, Itunes, Spotify, Pandora and tunein.com. We’d love to hear from you. If you hear us online, please rate and review us.
Episode Transcript
Pamela: Welcome to a new episode of the “Christian Circle” podcast. Today, we have one of our old guests who’s back again with us. So, Patti, please tell us a little bit about yourself and your ministry, even though you’ve been on this show before.
Patti: Hi. Thanks, Pamela, for having me on again. And this is beautiful, that two Catholics can connect across the miles, all for the same reason, is just to give glory to God, and to grow closer to God ourselves, and use whatever talents and gift that He gives to us. And, for me, I am a mother of 10 children. Our youngest just finished his freshman year in college. I never was not spiritual. I had been baptized Catholic. Hadn’t practiced it very well for many years, and didn’t even think it was important, but slowly grew in my faith and started to realize the truth.
Learned to pray the rosary in my 30s. And since then, always try to pray it every day, and the chaplain of mercy. So, anyways, I got a degree in social work, but I had had a year of journalism, got a master’s in public administration. I worked in those fields for a little while, and then fell back on my freelance writing, and just really felt that that’s what God had been calling me to do. So, I’ve written a dozen books and many articles, especially with the National Catholic Register.
10 Ways to Stop Judging Other People
Pamela: So, I saw the article that you wrote on “10 Ways to Stop Judging Other People,” and I think we’re guilty of this all the time. I mean, we consciously, subconsciously, we’re always making small judgements. So, before we go into why judging people is a sin, can you give us a few examples of how we judge people, especially in a negative manner? And I think on NCR, you use Susan Boyle’s example, but anything from every day that we use to judge people, an example?
Patti: You know, I said in the article that we judge like…it’s like our mind is on autopilot. And we seem to judge automatically. If we see somebody who looks awkward, or is dressed funny, or we’re watching somebody on TV, we can say, you know, “We don’t like the way they act. They’re foolish.” And I did use the example of Susan Boyle because in 2019, she was on “Britain’s Got Talent,” and everybody thought, “Oh, my goodness.” She looked ridiculous. She seemed a little slow-witted and everybody expected her to make a fool of herself. Instead, she blew everybody away when she’s saying, “I Dreamed a Dream” from Les Misérables, and everybody was wowed. And even one of the judges, Piers Morgan said, “Wow.” You know, “What a lesson for all of us. We expected you to be laughing stock. Instead, you delivered a stunning performance. Amazing.”
So, on one hand, we were all like, “Oh, my goodness, here me have judged her, and she is incredible,” but did we really learn to stop judging people? Because what if she had not been able to sing well? Would we have all felt justified in judging and making fun of her? And it might be your neighbor, it might be, you know, somebody at your book study, or at church, it’s like our mind just automatically goes to judging people. So, the whole reason I wrote the article.
And if I can mention my book, “Holy Hacks: Everyday Ways to Live Your Faith and Get to Heaven,” I wrote extensively on ideas on how to stop judging, how to forgive people, and how to gain in humility, because those are the things that lead to sainthood. Those are the things that lead us to heaven. And so, I think the first step is to stop judging people, because if we judge them, then we tend to gossip about them, and we’re hurting…
The key is…I’m gonna give you some incentive to stop this, is that you hurt yourself more than you hurt them when you judge people.
Pamela: How is that?
Patti: Well, Jesus told us pretty clearly.
Pamela: Yes.
Patti: And that’s the thing, is we forget this. Most of us are familiar with Scripture where He did tell us not to judge others, but He went further than that. He said, “The measure with which you measured will be measured back to you.” This is in Matthew 7:1. I’m gonna repeat that because it’s like, you know, if you just sit and contemplate that, you will never want to gossip, you will never want to judge anybody because whatever you do… When I was a kid, there was a saying, and I don’t know if it’s still out there. I don’t know if you ever heard of it, Pamela, but it was, if somebody was saying something to make fun of you, or, you know, call you a name, you said, “I’m rubber and you’re glue, whatever you say to me bounces off and sticks to you.”
Now, that’s a little iffy. But guess what? Jesus said it too. Jesus said, “The measure with which you measure will be measured back to you.” It really will bounce off of them and stick to you. And, you know, just to talk about some of the other Scripture, He said in James 4:11-12, “Do not speak evil against one another. The one who speaks against a brother or judges his brother, speaks evil against the law and judges the law.”
And it says not to judge your neighbor, that it will come back to you. Jesus told us, “Whatever you do to your brother, that you do unto me.” So, whatever bad thoughts you’re thinking of somebody else, you know, you’re hurting Jesus, first and foremost, because He knows your thoughts. And in Luke 6:37, “Judge not, and you will not be judged. Condemn not, and you will not be condemned. Forgive and you’ll be forgiven.”
So, getting back to the very first Scripture that I said, you know, “The measure with which you measure will be measured back to you,” we get to control how we are treated. Like that is an incredible deal He made with us. So, if we love, if we’re kind and merciful, if we don’t judge, God is gonna treat us that way too. So, we get to control our destiny. And if that’s not incentive to stop judging other people, then I don’t know what would be.
And the next step is, okay, how do you break those habits, right?
Pamela: Yeah. How do you stop doing that?
Patti: Well, the first step we just talked about, when you realize how you’re hurting yourself by judging, that’s step one, because you start to lose your incentive. And let’s talk about the incentive, we need to take that away in order to stop doing it. Why do we judge people? Why do we do it so naturally and easily? And I think we all know if you sit down and think about it, we judge others to feel better about ourselves.
So, we can look at other people and feel we’re superior, we’re smarter. We do this or that better. We would never do anything so foolish, or whatever we’re judging, everything under the sun. When we judge them negatively, it’s because we think we’re better than them. Why do we wanna do that? Because there are some insecurities within us. I don’t think there’s anybody that doesn’t have some.
And when you look at a mother Theresa, she was so humble and so lowly, and yet, she was so self-confident. She was not insecure because she knew pride is when you’re so full of yourself but you think it’s all from you. Humility is when you celebrate your gifts that God has given you, and you know they’re all from God. So, a humble person isn’t beating themselves up saying, “Oh, I’m nothing.”
A humble person can say, “I’m everything based on what God has given me. God is everything. And so, whatever I am is only a reflection on what He has given me.”
Patti Macguire
And then Mother Teresa used to say, “When you know who you are, nothing can touch you.” Criticism isn’t going to hurt you and neither are you gonna be susceptible to pride because you know it’s all God. And it also brings you a self-confidence.
I don’t know if you remember… I forget the year, but Mother Teresa spoke at a prayer day breakfast. Yeah. Clinton, President Clinton had invited her, and Al Gore and his wife, Tipper, Hillary, were there, and she spoke and she said… She stood up in front of all these people that were very pro-abortion politicians. They weren’t the only ones there, but the president and vice president surely were. And she said, you know, “Shame on you, America, if you can’t defend the most defenseless, the babies in the womb.”
Now, these are in my own words, those are not her exact words, but that is basically what she said. She got a standing ovation, except the Clintons and the Gores just sat there. They did not stand up. Well, who has that kind of self-confidence, to get invited by the president of the United States to speak, and this is what you say, you were not afraid to speak the truth.
So, Mother Teresa was so confident, and yet, she was so humble, and she is not the type of person that goes around judging people, wasn’t that type of person. And when you think about it, who do you wanna be around? Do you wanna be around a judgmental, gossipy person? No, because you feel vulnerable around them. You know that there’s…we all have something we can be judged on, many things we can be judged on.
So, when you’re around a critical person, you feel uncomfortable because you expect that there’s going to be knives put in your back, or you’re gonna be talked about or criticized. You don’t wanna be around that person. And I will go a step further, and I would say, you don’t want to be that person. And when you judge others and you talk about it, that’s gossiping, and then people know who you are. Even though maybe you’ve found a kindred spirit who’s enjoying the judgment as much as you are, in reality, neither one of you trusts the other person because you know who they are.
So, one of the things I wrote for ideas, to increase in humility, because by increasing in humility, you’re decreasing in your judgmental attitude is, you know, make a little 3×5 card and say, “However I treat others is a reflection of who I am.” And it’s gonna help take away that temptation. And another thing you can do, once you take away that temptation, once you make yourself aware of it, you are going to notice yourself doing it. Like I said, it’s like we’re on autopilot. And why can I talk about this? Because I’ve been there. I understand like, I can talk about myself. So, I know that this is how it works.
But I also, because of my Catholic faith, because of the word of God, I know that I have to fight against that, and try to be better, and take that temptation. And so, when you find yourself in a situation where you’re tempted, like say, you’re somewhere and there’s a Susan Boyle in front of you ready to perform, and it appears that she’s going to make a fool of herself. Instead of waiting for her to do that and laughing at her, whatever the situation is, pray for that person. If somebody is reading at church and they’re stumbling on their words and they’re doing a terrible job, don’t criticize them. Sit there and silently say a prayer for them. The people that you want to judge, we feel… I’ll tell you a little secret about myself.
I used to write for the “National Enquirer,” and that’s a big gossip tabloid. And that is a way that people enjoy making fun and they like people’s downfall. They write about it, and then everybody can read about it and enjoy it. And we feel like, “Well, that doesn’t count. I’m not judging them, I’m not gossiping them because I don’t even know them. Like, they’re just a Hollywood star. They’re just a singer. They are just a famous person or a politician.”
They’re still a child of God, like it or not. And God loves them as much as He loves you. Remember that. Even if somebody has made you mad. You know, you can bring up people that work for Planned Parenthood, and it can make my skin crawl, but then I have to say, “Wait a minute, I need to pray for that person, they’re a child of God.”
And, in reality, that person who’s doing so much damage to the world, they have more power to do a good than I do, because if they were to convert and change their tune and go from pro-abortion to pro-life, the world would stand up and take notice. So, the people that we see as enemies to our country, to our faith, to the unborn, do we remember to pray for them, or do we just judge them? And, remember, we can judge their actions. I can say, “Of course, abortion is wrong.” I can judge that, but I shouldn’t condemn the person as being inhuman or worthy of my scorn. Their actions might be worthy of my scorn, but they’re worthy of my prayers. And so, we have to start turning around the way we think if we wanna stop these bad habits of judging people.
Pamela: So, among all the things you listed, I think there’s also one that you mentioned, was that you see Christ in every single person you meet and then remind yourself of your own faults and flaws, right? And sometimes we fail to see the beam in our own eye, and we’re always looking for the speck in other people’s eyes.
Patti: Yes. Thank you for bringing that one up. You know, I’m not saying beat yourself up, because that’s not humble. If you are saying, “Oh, I’m no good. Oh, I’m not worthy,” because you’re trying to be more humble… Jesus told us to love your brother as yourself. Well, that means you got to start by loving yourself, right?
Pamela: Yeah.
Patti: So, you don’t wanna make yourself more insecure and feel more worthless, you want to love yourself, and then work on loving others. And by taking the beam out of your own eye, it doesn’t mean you don’t love yourself, but we all have areas of improvement. And if you’re ready to criticize somebody, there’s your beam right there. You’re criticizing people and you’re ready to make fun of them or judge them less than you. So, just realize, “Wait a minute. How many things can somebody criticize me for?” There is always going to be characteristics or things that we can judge one another on. We simply are not perfect. That’s just the way it is.
Pamela: So, on the receiving end, you know, what do we do if we are the ones who are being judged unfairly? And that can make a few people very, very angry because there’s absolutely nothing that you can do. Like, you can’t control the other person, but what should we do if we are on the other end?
Patti: I’m glad you asked that. One thing, my husband and I pray every Friday the Litany of Humility. If you look up this prayer, the Litany of Humility, one of the things is to die to yourself in a way that people’s criticism, people’s judgment of you, you take a step away from that. As you strengthen your relationship with God, you realize this world is fleeting, and their judgment of you doesn’t have to control you. Does it hurt?
Probably most people. Some people don’t care. Some people are very thick-skinned and they don’t care. But for a lot of us, it does hurt. We don’t wanna be judged harshly. We don’t wanna be judged unfairly. But one very powerful thing that you can do, it’s hard, but you can do it, and it’s powerful. The hurts that they’re causing you, you can offer up and give it back to them.
And for a lot of people, that’s a new thought, “Wait a minute, they are doing these horrible things to them and I am gonna offer up my pain and suffering they’re causing me and give it back to them? They don’t deserve it.” But, remember, the measure with which you measure will be measured back to you. You can’t give to somebody else without receiving. And I started doing that, and it accomplishes so many beautiful things.
First, I have to stop myself from getting angry, and anger is very, very damaging. I occasionally have interviewed exorcists, and two different exorcists I know, specifically talked about experiences where they are trying to exorcise a possessed person. And it’s not just a one-and-done thing, so sometimes there’s ongoing work. They have come up against just stall, and like nothing seems to be working, and they will ask the person, “Have you forgiven this person that’s done this to you, or have you forgiven the person that wounded you?”
When there is unforgiveness in a person’s heart, they cannot get rid of the demon because it is the way the demon acts in our lives, by us being angry, by us hanging on to unforgiveness, we give the devil power over us. When we let go of that, we usher in the graces that God has for us. So, if somebody is judging us and said something hurtful to us, we negate all that power from the devil and we fill it with divine power, that also pours out on us. I have had some experiences recently, in one week, it happened twice, where somebody got me very upset, said some hurtful things, I was very upset, and I had to sit myself down and just kind of meditate on, “Okay, wait a minute.”
And these were family member, different relatives. I thought about, “Okay. I love this person.” I thought of good memories with that person. That I want the good for them, and I decided, I said, “Okay, God, the hurt that they’re causing me, I’m giving to you to give back to them.” It’s a sacrifice. So, we can offer up our pain, and suffering, and our crosses.
We give that back to God. We unite them with the cross of Jesus, and He will take them and do good, just like our prayers do. And in both these situations that just happened recently, within a couple of hours, those two people came to me and apologized. And one is a relative that I don’t see very often and lives far away, and we just had a beautiful phone conversation, and I was able to share with him what I had done, how I had…he had apologized and I offered up…I told him that I offered up.
I felt really bad and I was upset, and I thought, “He really was just being irritable and woken up on the wrong side of the bed. He was grouchy and said some real snide, hurtful comments.” And he said… You know, I think he thought he was being snarky, but really, he was being hurtful. And so, I was able to share with him how I had handled it, that I’d given it back to him as a gift, and thought about loving him and I prayed for him.
And what a beautiful phone conversation we had. So, that is one of the things. We are gonna be hurt by others, and it might be way bigger. It might be a job. Maybe we might even lose a job or somebody did something to harm us in a big way. It doesn’t mean you don’t have to try to defend yourself, or try to correct a wrong, but you can still love and forgive and pray for that person, and offer up the pain for them.
It’s like, “Yeah. Offer up the pain, but no, do I have to give it to them?” I would highly recommend it because, remember, the measure with which you measure is coming back to you. So, if it’s hard for you to do it, what a great gift you had, you did it anyway. You willed to do it. Your will comes first. Your feelings maybe have to follow later. But as hard as it was to do, the harder it is, the bigger the gift that you have given to them, and it’s coming back to you also.
Now, I’m not saying, “Oh, everything’s for you,” so you’re just thinking about yourself. We have to think about them first. And, remember, you have to love yourself. You’re supposed to love yourself. So, it’s not selfish to want good for yourself. But in order to get that for yourself, you have to want it for the other person first. And, really, that is all Jesus is asking us to do.
Pamela: This is a new idea to me. So, what you’re saying is basically not just that you love and pray for them, but how do I actually give it back to them? I mean, I don’t understand that part.
Patti: God does it for you. You just have to will it and tell Him.
Pamela: Okay.
Patti: So, there’s nothing physically we have to do. It’s just like prayer is a mental exercise, so is offering something up and giving it to that person. I mean, not that you can’t be kind, you can always show kindness and goodness. You know, sometimes people send a little card, or a gift, or do something kind for a person that’s hurt them. Yeah.
You can do all that stuff too, that is a way of giving back. But as far as offering up your pain that they caused you, you just have a little conversation with God about it and say, “Okay, you know how I feel. You know I’m hurt, Lord. You know my feelings, You know my anger, I don’t wanna be angry. I don’t wanna hurt You. I don’t wanna sin. Help me. Help me to be forgiving. And even if I don’t feeling in my heart, I choose to forgive. And I’m giving You this pain, Lord, I’m giving it to You to give back to them.” And realize, if they are not being nice, if they’ve done something unkind, why would you pray for them? Because if your prayers are answered, they’re going to be sorry for what they did. They’re not going to continue doing it.
So, in that respect, you have everything to gain and nothing to lose by praying. Okay. For a lot of families, it might be their parents or their children that have hurt them. A lot of parents are grieving the fact that their children have left the Catholic faith. In some situations, I know of several very hurtful situations. And I’ve had conversations with friends in tears where a child has done something so hurtful, very callous. And I know it was the Holy Spirit that, all of a sudden, gave me this insight. I said, “Do you realize, they already felt this way but you didn’t know it, now you know it. So, nothing has changed in that respect, but you now have a gift to give back to that child that you love unconditionally.
The hurt that they’ve given to you, you can return as a gift of love. By offering that pain up in union with the cross of Christ, telling Him, ‘I give this back to my child,’ you have something now to give them simply because they hurt you.” You don’t want them to hurt you, but you are neutralizing it. The devil wants you to be angry. The devil wants you to strike back. You have defeated him when you do the opposite.
So, think about that. Any kind of hurt, any kind of sin, somebody fell prey to the devil. They gave into temptation. They gave into anger, resentment, and they hurt you. That is the work of the devil. And so, you don’t wanna keep his power going. Instead, you neutralize it by forgiving and by praying for that person, and by praising God, you have totally defeated evil. And that is why exorcists say they can’t do anything if there’s unforgiveness in a person’s heart, then everything stops there.
Everything just kind of becomes arrested. You can’t move forward. And that’s how we move forward in our own spiritual life, is by forgiving. And, I mean, it’s all humility, judging, anger, forgiveness. I mean, these are all some of the…they’re all connected to one another. Sometimes one thing might happen separately from another, but sometimes it’s like all one big thing. And so, that’s why I did a whole chapter on humility, because it really is a starting point to grow in holiness. There’s no saint in heaven that wasn’t humble.
Pamela: And, in the end, I think it’s good to remember that, especially during this time of social media where you’re being judged constantly, that God’s opinion is the only opinion that matters, right? Nobody else’s opinion should matter as much as His does.
Patti: Amen. Yes. A hundred percent. And we do have to guard ourselves sometimes on social media because it’s become a sport.
Pamela: Yes.
Patti: You know, some of the memes are very funny. They’re snarky, they’re funny. And when you’re frustrated over a situation, you know, especially politics these days, when you’re frustrated, striking out with the meme, making fun of somebody is a way that makes you feel better, and then everybody laughs, and haha. I would just suggest a little bit of caution there.
You know, it’s a fine line between laughing over a situation or striking back…you’re striking for good over evil, but be careful because the devil always gets into everything, and he wants to use it for negative. Speaking out against evil is good. Making fun, and ridiculing a person who is promoting an evil you are against, that’s not good. So, you know, t’s a fine line, you know? Sometimes it feels like it’s in the gray area. So, I would just caution people to say prayer. And I suppose, when in doubt, leave it out, right?
Pamela: That’s a good one. Yeah.
Patti: And sometimes it takes a little bit of…. There’s some stuff I thought is really funny, but then I go, “You know what, I’m not gonna do it.” And you know what? You could go a step further. So, say there’s a meme making fun with somebody in a very clever way, but you’re thinking, “Wait a minute, but this isn’t Christian.” If you choose not to use it, also say a prayer for that person and offer up your sacrifice. You had to sacrifice not to use that because you knew it would get some laughs.
So, you made a little bit of a sacrifice for that person. And so, do that too. And you just took a little step towards God and holiness, opened up the door to more graces for yourself, and you just prayed for that person. When you think about all the things you did by maybe not using a meme, praying for that person, and offering it up, like, what you did was huge. It’s not a little thing. And when you think about the gain that you got, you got way more than…is a greater value than a few laughs from posting something that was mean.
Pamela: And, especially when you think, “Oh, should I do this or should I not?” It’s probably the Holy Spirit telling you probably should not be doing it.
Patti: I know. Like, I’m sure, Pamela,
you’ve been in that situation where you’re either speaking quickly or you doing something and you have that moment.
Pamela: Yeah.
Patti: You have that moment where something is causing you pause, but sometimes your desire to do it is so strong, you just go, “Ah.” You know? You brush just by that little bit of concern that popped up. But then later, I think, “You know, I think that was my guardian angel telling me, ‘Don’t do that.'” So, we really should listen to that little voice. You know, back in the day, there used to be cartoons where there would be the devil on shoulder and angel on the other shoulder, and they would be fighting and trying to convince the character to live. Both of them want little character to listen to them. You know, that was a cartoon, but don’t you think it’s real?
Pamela: It’s true. Yeah. It is.
Patti: I mean, we’ve all had that experience where what we wanna do and, you know, there’s like a little voice saying, “You shouldn’t do that.” And that really is that angel on one shoulder and the devil on the other.
Pamela: So, if people wanna read more about, you know, how they cannot judge people and, you know, bring in more humility in their life, which, in the end, is still a gift from God, a grace, actually, what can they read to know more about this?
What literature would you recommend?
Patti: Well, definitely, the Bible. And if you’re doing internet search, look for scripture passages on not judging. You could look for quotes. It’s so easy to find things today, quotes on not judging others. The article that you noticed and contacted me today to talk about is “10 Ways to Stop Judging Other People.” Now, if you listen to this, you heard most of it, but that’s an article that if you wanted to save and read over.
And my book, “Holy Hacks: Everyday Ways to Live Your Faith and Get to Heaven.” Trust me, I’m not writing these books to get famous or to get rich, because that doesn’t happen. But, really, it’s all about me trying to listen to the Holy Spirit and going where I’m led. And “Holy Hacks” started out as an article. It got huge amount of attention, and the publisher came to me and asked me to do a book on this.
And whenever you write, you can’t help but grow deeper in your own faith because you’re challenging yourself, you’re going deeper. You’re learning more and investigating. And so, I wrote extensively with ideas on how to do that. And read the saints. There are so many books on the lives of the saints. And, on one hand… This was a revelation to me. So many of them were…you know, Saint Monica’s mother-in-law was not very nice to her. Her husband ran around on her and she kept returning love. She kept giving them love until she converted. So many of the saints converted the people around them. Saint Martin de Porres, I love him. And he was so humble and people came to love him.
A lot of the saints that were humble and lowly that maybe were made fun of, over time, people fell in love with them, and it was because of their humility. We love humble people, and yet, everybody’s, you know, encouraged to be prideful. But then one of the reasons, a characteristic we don’t like in other people is a prideful person. But think about the world, think about social media. We are all pushed to become prideful. Nobody is getting encouraged to be humble.
And yet, who are the people we love? We love the humble people. We don’t like the prideful ones. And so, read the lives of the saints and realize that it wasn’t lack of self-esteem that sometimes they turned the other cheek, but it was for love of God, and how much they accomplished, and how many hearts they opened through that love that came from them. So, I always recommend “The Lives of the Saints,” for good examples.
Pamela: So, for those who wanna know more about your books, those who wanna know more about your writing,
where can they find you online?
Patti: You can find me at ncregister.com. I go by Patti Maguire Armstrong, M-A-G-U-I-R-E. And you can also get my “Holy Hacks” book at Ave Maria is the publisher of that. Ave Maria Press. I even had a cloistered nun contact me and say it was her favorite book. A cloistered nun. So, I thought, “Wow. That’s pretty exciting.” I often read books and do book reviews, and I always encourage people to go to the publisher. You can go to Amazon, and I’m not gonna tell you can’t, but I like to see the publisher that publish the book to be the one that you support because they’re trying to get good Catholic books out there. You know, most of us aren’t doing this for any other reason that we’re putting ourselves in God’s hands, and asking Him to use us.
And, you know, that’s why when I used to write for the “National Catholic Register,” I wrote for a lot of secular media. I wrote for “Woman’s World” for 10 years, and I’m not criticizing that, that would…very much. I guess I did in the beginning. Well, anyways, I realize that it’s an opportunity to reach the secular world as a Catholic. And those opportunities are rare where we have a platform that’s not religious, but we can bring our religion to the platform, and that’s what I’m able to do with my TV talk show.
And this is all about where God is leading me. I did not apply for this job. I was asked if I would do it. Same with my book, at “Hacks” I was asked to write this book. And so, I ask God every day, “What do you want me to do? And instead of it coming from me, I’m asking it to come from You.” And then I kind of go where I feel led. It becomes clear. When you do that, God will take you up on your offer. He has a plan for all of us. He’s more than happy to let us know what that plan is. We just need to ask.
Pamela: Any last thoughts that you have?
Patti: No, I just wanna thank you for what you’re doing, Pamela, because here you are, a doctor, and God doesn’t always ask us to do just one thing. So, thank you so much. I enjoy being on your show, and you agree to be on my show. And so, it’s just a blessing to have this conversation with you. Thank you.
Pamela: So, thank you so much, especially because it is 4th of July weekend, and you’re probably busy, and you still agreed to you come on. So, I’m so grateful, and thank you for talking to us again, Patti. Thank you so much.
Patti: You’re welcome. God bless you.