The Christian life is not easy, but it actually is simple. When we clearly understand what sin and holiness are, then our choice to turn away from sin and be holy becomes clear, too.
We don’t get caught up in the endless controversies and pursuits of this world. Let such dead ways of living bury themselves, because death is their aim. Here we have no lasting city. We seek the City which is to come.
Pagans did get some things right. Salvation does mean rescue from Hades, and it does mean being seated together with the Most High God. But they were wrong when they thought you could get it by impressing the gods.
In the baptism and chrismation that we are given, and in the Eucharist with which we are strengthened and divinized, we are given all that we need in order to become members of the hosts of heaven.
Faithfulness to justice, to righteousness, is what it means to be Christian and what is required to stay within the kingdom of God, both in this life and into the age to come.
To be the sons of God, we do the works of the Father in heaven. If we instead do the works of the devil—which are sin—then he is our father instead. And if we do the works of the Father, then we become equal to the angels, the original “sons of God” who do His works.
Having been given this outpost of Paradise, this place where God’s holiness may be encountered with preparation, where the cherubim with the flaming sword welcome us in instead of turning us away, we are commanded to expand this Paradise into the world.
Sometimes, God makes decisions that really are for the good of everyone involved that, if we made them, would almost certainly not be. But we’re not God, and we don’t know jack.