angels to live a comfortable existence in heaven ever afterwards; although the question of whether you can allow your beloved, your chosen one, to be obliterated is highly relevant. What is vital is that the brief life of the Redeemer should be so dazzlingly wonderful, that men should be incapable of forgetting it. Once you are involved, you must be confident of victory over evil in the hearts of men.
The Church's attitude throughout history has been different. She has insisted on the worship of the risen Christ, who during his lifetime disclaimed the praise that he was good, almost to the exclusion of any practical study of his earthly life, with a view to seeing whether and to what extent men could follow his lead. The emphasis nowadays is on communion with Jesus, but it is communion in a life lived by secular standards. Secular standards are the only ones most people know, as they go about their ordinary jobs. The inspiration to live a life by any different standards has virtually died. Thomas a Kempis's idea of imitating Christ may have resembled a creeping in the master's footprints, but it was better than not trying to imitate him at all.
The situation is like that in the Royal Navy between Trafalgar and the 1914-1918 War. No doubt the official policy of the Admiralty was that every flag-officer must have the Nelson touch, because Nelson was the Navy's hero; but in fact the line of battle doctrine was perpetuated, endless battle regulations were circulated to deal with every situation, and the initiative of subordinates stifled, according to Captain Roskill in his book, The Strategy of Sea Power. In other words much which Nelson in his genius had disregarded and tried to destroy, was perpetuated in his name. The parallel is exact. Much that Christ attacked, and died in the hope of destroying, is perpetuated by the Church in Christ's name. It is a tendency inherent in any secularly minded institution.
This being the tendency, how would you, the creator, try to guard against…