One way to picture The Church is to see Her as John the Baptist saw Jesus, “There is the Lamb of God”. When we look at the Sacraments of The Church, we see sacrifices throughout. Those who participate are willing to give up worship of self in order to worship the loving God Who programmed us with the ability to choose to make that great sacrifice.
Being a Christian is to continually sacrifice the desires of our vanity in order to serve God and neighbor. We see that those people and organizations trying to destroy The Church do so because She offends them by teaching that there is something more important than giving into their own vanities.
When She, by example and teaching, shows that self-sacrifice is better than self-will, Her enemies feel that the innermost essence of their being is attacked. Of course, they are right. Rather than accept Her criticism, and try to align their thoughts, words, and deeds with Her teaching, they resist. By resisting, they may lose their own souls.
It is supposed to be that way. It’s how things were Programmed, and how The Program works. We either fear, love, and obey the God Who lovingly programmed us and a world that provides free will, or we choose not to do so, and die forever.
Hell, in fact, may not be so much a place as it is a continual falling farther and farther from God. The lost soul may see Him, as it falls away forever, punished not by pain, but by knowing that it will never know the joy that it now sees clearly, but from which it is ever more distant.
