[boatbums]

It’s telling Him that the person praying to dead people cause they think they’ll get answers easier out of them, does NOT trust God enough to believe He’ll answer them Himself and stay true to His word and promises. What a slap in the face of God!

That attitude was pretty common in the middle ages and it was this thinking that gave rise to the development of prayers to "Saints" and Mary in particular. From Luther's Theology of Mary, we learn:

[Christ] became a great source of unhappiness in the cloister …he (Luther) refers frequently to his conviction that Christ was indifferent to human woes and must be won over through the intercession of his mother, the Virgin.  The picture of Christ sitting in judgement on the last day dwelt vividly in his mind, so that he could not shake off fears connected with it.  [Luther said,] 'When I looked on Christ, I saw the Devil: so [I said], ‘Dear Mary, pray to your Son for me and still His anger.

Luther'’s frequent mentioning of Saint Bernard speaks of his fondness and familiarity with his writings.  Later recollecting Bernard'’s influence on his own Mariolatry, Luther looked back on the years before his break with Rome and said,   

St. Bernard, who was a pious man otherwise, also said: ‘Behold how Christ chides, censures, and condemns the Pharisees so harshly throughout the Gospel, whereas the Virgin Mary is always kind and gentle and never utters an unfriendly word.’  From this he inferred: ‘Christ is given to scolding and punishing, but Mary has nothing but sweetness and love.’  Therefore Christ was generally feared; we fled from Him and took refuge with the saints, calling upon Mary and others to deliver us from our distress.  We regarded them all as holier than Christ. Christ was only the executioner, while the saints were our mediators. [13]

   He also recollected, “Christ in His mercy was hidden from my eyes. I wanted to become justified before God through the merits of the saints.  This gave rise to the petition for the intercession of the saints.  On a portrait St. Bernard, too, is portrayed adoring the Virgin Mary as she directs her Son, Christ, to the breasts that suckled Oh, how many kisses we bestowed on Mary”![14]   Luther concluded though, that even in St Bernard’'s incessant praise of Mary as she directs the sinner toward Christ, Bernard left out Christ completely: “Bernard filled a whole sermon with praise of the Virgin Mary and in so doing forgot to mention what happened [the incarnation of Christ]; so highly did he… esteem Mary.” [15]   Thus, young Luther partook in Mariolatry, but the mature Luther looking back saw only the excesses of medieval devotion and teaching on Mary.  He saw that she had been adorned with attributes that only belonged to Christ.

[metmom]

That kind of corruption of the nature of Christ is clearly the work of the enemy and he must be thrilled with the fruit it bore.

I know that’s the image of Christ I was raised with in Catholicism and it’s taken me years to deal with the lop sided view of God and Christ that left me.

True, Jesus was harsh in condemning the phariees in their hypocrisy, but He was incredibly gentle with others, especially children.