Judgment Day: Why I think God Has His Work Cut Out For Him written by Chris

Disclaimer: This ended up being a really long post. So you might not want to bother continuing if you don’t have a few minutes. I won’t be offended I promise. I need to keep practicing the art of the quick blog post I know. Anyway, don’t take anything too seriously. I just think it’s fun to think about this stuff.

One thing that I have always felt good about in my religious tradition is the belief in a truly compassionate, father-like God. A just, unbiased lawgiver who cares about everyone equally (the parable of the shepherd going after the few lost sheep comes to mind). It is so much easier to connect with a god who just understands everything perfectly. He has experienced everything and has perfect empathy for your situation. He can see the big picture and he knows when and where you have gone wrong and is interested in helping you find the correct path.

I have read about the various gods worshipped in the temple religions of the ancient world and they seem so emotionally detached and unconcerned with their loyal followers. They come across as very egocentric, requiring only demonstrable admiration and reverence. Interestingly enough personal morality was not even a requirement of the ancient polytheistic religions of the Middle East, nor the Aztec and Mayan religions, the early Hindu religion, or even the folk religions of Asia. These gods mostly just wanted to have lots of rituals performed and lots of animals killed and eaten by a devoted priesthood on their behalf. This was all that was needed to please them. They did not, for the most part, really care if you thought impure thoughts, lied, stole or dealt unjustly with your neighbor. This seemed so strange to me when I first read about it since I assumed that all religion has always been, in some way, about self-purification or refining your personal character to conform to a more celestial standard. Apparently I was wrong.

I’ve always been pleased with my understanding that god is personally involved with my progressive journey through life as well as the life of every one of his children. I was taught that he is not distant and unconcerned, nor is he interested in having his ego stroked by redundant rituals.

Part of God’s role is also to be a perfect judge. He is the only one qualified for the role because he’s the only one who has all the evidence. Many religions share the belief that after this life there will be an answering for your actions; A weighing of your good deeds against your bad, an evaluation of the purity of your heart, and then a consequential reward or punishment based off of your test scores. Often times the subjective nature of right and wrong becomes so unclear that we are happy to declare that we are unqualified to judge other people’s actions (judge not that ye be not judged). God is the only one who can see the situation in all of its complexity and make an appropriate verdict and we’ll leave him to it.

But compare the type of Judge that God is to say, a common judge that we would find in one of our court buildings. One of these judges is probably not declaring verdicts based off of a familial love for those on trial and a sincere desire for their future happiness. In fact we might be angered to discover that a judge is acting on such bias. I would assume that he would be more concerned with the safety of everyone else in society who might be endangered by the criminal’s possible future actions.

So how can God actually be totally empathetic with all of his children? Where does he draw the line and hold an individual accountable apart from the preconditions and involuntary factors that have contributed to their choices and personality? For example let’s say someone commits a murder motivated by racism. How much more is the situation complicated (for a loving judge) if it is performed by someone who has been indoctrinated since birth with the idea that it is God himself who has declared (in scripture) that violence is justified against certain groups of people? Is it then forgiven? Is part of it forgiven? Does he get any points for honorably observing the rules of God as he knows them, or nothing for just being flat wrong in the end?

Now, to further illustrate this dilemma, think of some of the most despicable sinners you can envision such as pedophiles, rapists, murderers, thieves, adulterers etc. We don’t need to speculate what awaits them after judgment do we? If the kids who shot up all those students in Columbine don’t have a world of hurt waiting for them in the next life then there is no real justice right? We may be wrong on some of the small things but truly evil acts are easy to spot and identify right? They happen to good people, and they are carried out heartlessly. They are chaotic in nature and make us feel powerless and afraid.

Imagine, for a moment, what the back story of one of these villains might be. How were they raised? What type of a home did they come from? What was their relationship with their parents like? Has their view of the world been molded in any way by anything a family member or peer has impressed upon them? Have they been raised in a racist culture? What about their biology? Have there been any chemical abnormalities that they have had to deal with or handicaps that limit their judgment? What about their ability to empathize? Are there any imperfections in their brain? Are they chemically depressed? How have these chemical imbalances influenced their view of the world? Did their mothers smoke or drink while they were developing? What other characteristics have been involuntarily chiseled into their genetic makeup by past ancestors?

Epigenomes, for example, record information such as how well your great, great grandfather ate as a child. That information is passed through to your DNA and your chemicals and appetites are adjusted based off of that information in order to increase your posterity’s chances of survival. Sometimes however within a short period of time our situations change dramatically and we are still programmed to get a lot of something if given the opportunity because it should (theoretically) be in short supply such as sex and food. Your desire for these things is strongly influenced by the living circumstances of your ancestors. If you struggle with your appetites it is, in part, because of these influences in your genetic makeup.

I’m not saying it is justified to indulge in these things, only that it complicates a truly fair judgment of your soul. Can an individual be judged apart from these factors? If not then it seems that your post mortal inheritance is a matter of how the dice fall for you. Guess what? You lack the brain function to properly empathize and relate with others. You are what we call a Sociopath. Enjoy hell. If god still loves the “real” you in the next life you can bet the victims you killed will be giving you the cold shoulder.

To me it often seems that the people we want most to rot in hell tend to be people who have been very unhappy and tortured during their existence. They may have succeeded in their efforts to destroy the happiness of others but the consequences of these actions (even during life) will not decrease their anxiety or personal conflict. Is festering hatred a form of suffering? Destructive behavior reflects such inward traits as fear, shame, hurt, or powerlessness. For whatever poor reasoning a villain might give for their actions, I’m pretty sure they, like everyone else, are trying to define happiness on their own terms and see their actions as justified based on their definition. We can hate them for their ignorance but how does God see them knowing exactly where that ignorance took root?

Do you ever catch yourself condemning someone who has just made really bad decisions? Does a chain-smoker, for instance, who forks out wads of cash every day to continue his habit, the whole while decreasing his over-all health and quality of life, really need our judgments on top of his own self-inflicted punishment? After suffering through lung cancer does God really need to give him an additional kick in the pants for disrespecting his bodily temple? Hasn’t he reaped the reward of his ignorance? Maybe somebody warned him that smoking leads to unhappiness and addiction before he lit his first stick but did he really know how foolish the decision was at that time? He was ignorant true, but wasn’t his flawed reasoning really attempting to secure future happiness, perhaps through acceptance by his peers?

I am not necessarily trying to justify wicked actions (BTW I don’t think smokers are wicked) but if you are like me, you probably think “It’s a good thing that god has the ability to take everything into consideration before making a judgment. I’ll just leave it to him to work out.”

But where do all those preconditions end and where do you (the one on trial) begin? How far does God have to dive into your background check files before deciding to try you as a spiritual adult? At what point can he say “you should know better.”

To complicate things further I think we should also recognize the influence of a force of unperceived, evil beings bent on our destruction who have the ability to influence our actions, or at least provoke situations and thoughts that target our vulnerabilities. If an evil spirit is tempting one person, doesn’t that mean that he isn’t tempting someone else? How does God look upon individuals who made a mistake based off of enormous unrelenting pressures from Satan’s followers while someone else is ignored? I think this would complicate things even more for God. You can’t say that in his final judgment he wouldn’t take into consideration the fact that some people are pummeled with Satanic temptations while some are not? Whose actions are on trial? yours or your tempters? I get the idea that Satan isn’t that concerned with tempting everyone in a fair, even-handed manner. But if God is to correct the chaos brought by Satan, his judgment must accommodate those tested unfairly. Is it better when you think a sinful thought or when it is placed in your mind from Satan? How come we seem totally capable of coming up with bad ideas unassisted (not that we can judge which ideas those are)? You might respond that the only thing that matters is your response to the temptation wherever it comes from but wouldn’t it be a tougher test for someone who is receiving more temptation?

Many of these thoughts may ring of cognitive dissonance. There may be no way of knowing if there is any substance to these ideas and they are quite possibly all bull crap. There is probably a simple explanation that could clear up all confusion on the matter and I’m sure at least one reader will have all the answers. Personally, I feel that it is still important to allow ourselves the freedom to explore such issues. I disagree with the idea that curiosity is dangerous. I think we should always be asking questions, even the ones that we know will more than likely never be answered. I even think we should ask questions that challenge and test the firmest beliefs we have. Sometimes it makes them stronger.

I don’t have a clue about how god judges people (Big surprise I know). I don’t know that he even does except for what I read in scripture and am told by prophets. Apparently it’s not that big of a concern that we know the details. Perhaps it’s for the best. What prophets do tell us is that God loves us and has the perspective to understand what really matters for us in the long run. He promises the most fulfilling and lasting happiness imaginable to us if we stretch ourselves. That is at least a very comforting idea.

Anyway I hope I didn’t waste your time if you were under the impression that this rambling post was leading somewhere. Sometimes it’s interesting to consider things from a different perspective though isn’t it?