Most Americans and Europeans have a Christian heritage that goes back over a thousand years. Our ancestors were converted from varying degrees of error and joined the Catholic Church.
Why? There were all sorts of religions in the world. Cannibalism, idols, loose sex practices, animal worship, thieves, liars, slavery, child abuse, and all manner of sin had become institutionalized in what passed as some sort of religion. Some, by the grace of God, were able to escape into the joy of loving God and neighbors.
In every year of every age, people became Christians. Similarly, a number of people with a thousand years or more of Catholicism in their families choose to leave The Church. Mostly, it’s because their vanity wins over humility. It’s not smart to leave The Church.
Many become Protestants. Others sink far farther, into the realms of human vanity that were familiar to French revolutionaries, Greek know-it-alls, the Jewish establishment described by the prophets, and enlightened Babylonians.
Things today are the way they’ve always been. The Loving Programmer has written and downloaded The Creation Program so that the weeds pull themselves up by the roots and hurl themselves into the fire.
A great mystery:
Heaven is a place of perfect happiness. How can those who are there bear the anguish of seeing children and grandchildren break the living link that no longer joins them to the possibility of a joyful eternity in Heaven?
One solution? Their blissful joy is not interrupted by such knowledge. That’s another reason it’s not smart to leave The Church. It’s better to believe and obey and get into Heaven. Those in Heaven don’t miss those who aren’t.
