Fearful of leaving your family's religion - read this

[RedRod]

For those of you unwilling to break with a family tradition or have been accused of failing to uphold the family’s religious principles, just consider this. Go back far enough in your family tree and you will finally reach an ancestor who was not a Christian. Indeed, s/he had most probably never heard of Christianity before and knew only the prevailing religious beliefs of that time and place. Curiosity prompts your pagan ancestor to listen to a missionary one day who invites those present to be baptised and accept the Lord as their Saviour and your ancestor, moved by the missionary's words accepts this offer and becomes a Christian. From that moment forward, a family tradition is born. In the centuries to follow believing parents pass their beliefs to their children and they so on to theirs. Ask yourself this question. Was it wrong for this ancestor of yours to break with long-held and passionate felt family and tribal pagan tradition to become a Christian? I wonder how those pagan parents felt when their son or daughter, once they had just been ritually admitted into this foreign cult, must have felt upon learning of their conversion. Shock, anger, disbelief, dismay and a sense of betrayal of family values and core beliefs – just as parents react today. If it was wrong for you to leave your family’s particular religion, then it must surely have been wrong for that distant ancestor to have abandoned his/her family’s traditional beliefs to become a Christian. To argue otherwise is just special pleading.