This is a wonderful statement from the Protestant perspective and I thank you for it. In the light of the Passion of the Christ, and the intense suffering and ignoble and painful drawn out death that Christ suffered, the Protestant idea of taking up the cross of Christ means actually taking up the beach chair, flip flops and mai tais on the beach in Hawaii?
No wonder the Reformation succeeding in the worlds of Phineas T. Barnum - suckering a rube every minute.
I really do sorrow over people who think like that because it tells me that they have no idea of the joy and love God wants for his children and they miss out on so much of the goodness of him and the easy yoke and light burden that Jesus promises those who follow him. They are easy and light because he is there with us helping us carry it and not behind us in the cart with the whip.
I have said often, and maintain to this day, that the appeal of the Protestant churches over the Christian ones is the relative ease and convenience. This helps provide even more justification for that belief. Paul speaks of driving himself on as if by whips, and you speak of ease. If you guys cannot get Paul right, how can you hope to get Jesus right?
A total misconstruing of what I said. You are disappointing me. I stated that the "taking up of our cross and following" Christ does not mean that we do this to pay for our own sins since that is what he did for us ON HIS CROSS. I, in no way, implied that the cross we take up is a lazy, hazy day at the beach. When we take up our cross we submit to his will and bear with joy whatever suffering we encounter for the cause of Christ in the world. It is those who trash the work of our Lord who believe that their own "suffering", be it persecution or a toothache, a firing squad or a hairshirt, can in any way be compared or replicate what he suffered for our sakes. Some of the followers of your religion even went so far as to beat their own bodies bloody mistakenly thinking that they had to manufacture at least a semblance of suffering or they wouldn't be holy enough or good enough to merit everlasting life! How totally grievous and condescending to the real purpose of the cross. We certainly should take up our cross but he sure didn't mean we also got crucified on it to please him.
Paul certainly spoke of his drive to win the lost to Christ and he disciplined himself so that his life and the way he led it could never be used as an excuse for the unsaved to reject the gospel. But NOOOO, that explanation isn't good enough for y'all, instead it is twisted into some surreal masochistic behavior done not for sexual pleasure but to somehow please a sadomasochistic God who simply giggles with delight when his children scream out in pain. Just what kind of God is it that you all are trying to sell us anyway? A God of LOVE or a God of gleeful rapture over human sacrifice? And it's "Protestants" that teach a God of hate??? Please don't insult us with that drivel.
Frankly, what you say and "maintain to this day" is of little account. It is far easier to be a puppet, turn of your thinker, and just believe what we, the majesterium, tell you what to do and believe.