any non-believers are surprised, and sometimes, disturbed to hear, on rare occasions, that they have chosen to download an operating system that keeps them out of Heaven. That thought is an affront to many. “Well, I’m just as good as anyone else, so my soul, if I have one, should get to Heaven, too.”
When we remind them that we can’t get into the country club without paying dues, and that The Loving Programmer has decided to download similar rules of admission to fully access Him, we can see the curtains being closed behind their eyes. Some are affronted at what they see as an unwarranted attack on the operating system they utilize to operate their human program.
We have a clear duty to consider ways to make our position one of love rather than argument. One such conversation may go:
Soul: ” I believe that every good person can go to Heaven. I am basically a good person. I think it would be unfair of God to keep good people who aren’t Christian out of Heaven. What’s more unfair is that a lot of us don’t know that we have to believe and obey Jesus to get into Heaven because no one has ever told us.”
Catholic Fundamentalist: “That’s because most Christians prefer politeness to the blunt facts, which are: Nearly every person in the world has seen a Catholic Crucifix, with Jesus, whipped to the bone and bleeding, nailed to it, Longinus’s spear mark in His bloody side.”
Soul: “So?”
Catholic Fundamentalist: “Some souls, on seeing that, the oddest thing that any religion has openly exposed, ask ‘Why?’ Those who are called to ask ‘Why?’ are called on a journey through time.”
Soul: “Where does that trip begin?”
Catholic Fundamentalist: “With our desire to know truth. When we see the Bleeding, Crucified Christ, and learn from The First Programming Log, that The Loving Programmer downloaded to the prophets to whom He’d given access to future downloads, we see that they mentioned the Bleeding Man on the cross three hundred times.”
Soul: “How did they do that?”
Catholic Fundamentalist: “The prophets made it clear that Christ would be descended from David, and of the House of Judah. He would be born of a virgin in Bethlehem. They said, specifically, that He would ride into Jerusalem on the foal of an ass. They correctly predicted that He would be sold for thirty pieces of silver, that He would be lifted up before men, that no bone of His would be broken, and that He would looked upon by those who had pierced Him. That such predictions were made before the fact was confirmed by the Dead Sea Scrolls.”
Soul: “Then, they may be coincidences.”
Catholic Fundamentalist: “Three hundred such prophecies are beyond reasonably considering as ‘coincidence’. Those who come to the “Coincidence Conclusion” may unsuited for Heaven because they want to avoid believing something that’s never politically correct.”
Soul: “It may have been a plot to establish a new religion.”
Catholic Fundamentalist: “The disciples would have had to have been involved in such a plot. Every one of them, with the possible exception of John, met painful deaths at the hands of Rome and/or the Jerusalem establishment. Would they have plotted their own, painful deaths? Who would have embraced such a new religion? There was truth in their beliefs, and those who see it are saved.”
