Hi Denise,

You wrote,
Why then, do some people have this devout Catholic/Christian faith? Is it that they have succumbed to, or fallen into the church's trap?

We all grow up in the physical realm and learn how to successfully navigate through it just as puppies and squirrels and fish do. We aren’t in control of the shaping process. And so, if we were reared in Israel with Jewish parents, we would learn the type of Judaism our parents knew an practiced and the customs of Israel today. As a result, we would live successfully in Israel as a Jew. What we learned would not be at all suitable for living in Japan as a Buddhist. But we learned what we were shown by example and by word. That then became who we were, just as we became a certain race, gender, height, and so on based on what we were given from our parents in the physical realm.

In a sense, we don’t have free will as long as we continue to be what we were learned to be from childhood, just as puppies and squirrels and fish don’t have free will.

Then, when we become adults, we’re able to look at what we’ve learned with new eyes. We can decide whether what we assumed was true is really true, and whether the religion and culture of which we were a part as children are the religion and culture we want to continue to be part of. But most people don’t look at what they were brought up to believe. They still want to gather acorns like squirrels and root around the bottom of the lake for worms like fish. "That’s just the right way," they think. "It’s just the way if is." They’re prisoners of their childhoods.

Some people are less able to look at what they’ve been brought up to believe. We describe them as closed-minded, meaning they have closed themselves to new thoughts and new ways of looking at the world. They believe there’s one right way and my religion or ethnic background or nation has the right way. All the others are wrong. But if you ask them why they believe as they do, they’ll say, “That’s just the way it is,” or “God said that in the Bible.” When someone says those words, it’s a sure sign they’re still imprisoned in their childhood. They have no free will.

An open-minded person, on the other hand, is willing to listen and hear. That person is willing to rethink what he or she learned in childhood. And as a consequence, the Higher Power (or Holy Spirit) and people on the next plane of life such as guides or angels and their deceased loved ones are able to give them guidance and counsel. They are able to help the open-minded person grow in spiritual maturity and wisdom. The open-minded person, in other words, has free will.

“Let the little children come to me,” Yeshua said, “for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven.” To enter the Kingdom of Heaven, meaning to grow spiritually within, a person must come as a little child, open and humble. Yeshua said we must be “Born from above” (or “born again”). We were reared in the physical realm and learned how to navigate it using our religious beliefs, cultural beliefs, and national beliefs that allowed us to fit into our group, but to grow in spiritual maturity we must be born anew, from above. The old beliefs must be reexamined, and many must die. The new beliefs lead us into the Kingdom of Heaven. Yeshua said, "Metanoia, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand." "Metanoia" was mistranslated "repent." It really means, "Change your mind." To enter the Kingdom of Heaven, a person must change his or her mind.

Those who are not open to new beliefs, even if they’re published Ph.D.s and Nobel Laureates, are spiritual infants. They are ignorant, even though by Earth standards they are brilliant and educated. They will never grow in spiritual maturity until they can stop gathering acorns and performing churchly rituals and start listening to God within them. By closing their minds and focusing on church rituals, they are effectively silencing the Holy Spirit. They will remain ignorant and spiritually infantile.

So your family who can’t let go of their religion and don’t see any other spiritual path are simply unable to break out of the prison of old beliefs. But they’ll learn to be open, in some later incarnation or on some other plane. You can be confident of that.

Love and peace, Craig