Will man be judged?
Death..... and then?
Only if we look beyond our limits
and see our entire life at a glance, will we recognize its purpose and see God at the center of the world. Death would then not only be the extinction of a light, which it appears to be, but a person's ultimate accomplishment.
All those who never had a relationship to God because they grew up in slums or because God was presented to them as a fairy-tale or a tyrant will, at least in death, have a chance to meet God personally. And why should they not be able to review their relationship to God at this instant?
However, it would be frivolous not to care about God during a lifetime, hoping that there will still be enough time in death. Who knows whether we will then have the strength to suddenly deny our past and accept a new orientation against a way of life entrenched during a lifetime. What we intend to become in the future, we must begin in the present. This ultimate decision of man would either be a confirmation of his earlier behavior, a correction, or perhaps a revocation of his entire previous life.
These decisions are then final and irrevocable, since there are no longer any new aspects, ignorance or wavering. Beyond death, everything is final. "The way a tree falls, it remains on the ground." In the parable of the rich man and poor Lazarus (Lk 16,19-31) the Bible says that death seals man's fate forever. Nowhere in the Scriptures does the teaching of transmigration of souls find any support.
Will man be judged?
How do you imagine the "judgment" to be which awaits every human being according to Christian belief (2 Cor 5,10)? Perhaps you think of a judge's chair in front of which the deceased must appear to be judged by God? Or do you envision an open book with all our life data? All this only makes us realize that man has to answer for his behavior. In other words: injustice will not have the last word! A last resort upholds justice.
Above all, the Scriptures emphasize that God really wants to save people and that He is not interested in a rejecting judgment (John 3,16 ff; 1 Tim 2,4). It depends on the person himself whether or not he reaches the goal of his life.
At the moment of death, a person comes to a comprehensive self-knowledge without any self-deception. Every detail becomes evident. This includes all the individual decisions which, woven together, make up the total of our life. This perspective allows the person to see what was done right or wrong. The judgment is first of all a self-judgment and at the same time, the judgment of God. The message of the judgment is the equality of people before God's justice, bringing seriousness and drama into our life and changing it.
Death - man's ultimate accomplishment
Death..... and then?
Death is not a fulfillment of what we expect from life. The solution is found in life beyond death, in redemption. But what does faith say about man's future? Christ predicts: "I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and whoever lives and believes in me shall never die." (John 11,25; Luke 23,43). Although Saint Paul knows how cruelly death ravages life and how brutally it destroys hopes, plans and communities, for him, dying is no grievous departure, but a coming-home: "My desire is to depart and be with Christ" (Philippians 1,23; 2 Cor 5,8). For the believer, death is not a senseless, irrevocable end but a new beginning. As Christ came back from death so will we continue to live with Him. (1 Thes 4,13)
Death - man's ultimate accomplishment
On his first day of school, a little boy is hit by a car and dies on the way to the hospital. Our impression is that this young human life was destroyed without blooming and coming to maturity. There is something devastating in this unfinished, violent ending of a life. It shows that death does not necessarily strike a man at the moment where he is inwardly prepared to conclude his life.
But are things different at the death of an adult? What have we done with all our questions and doubts? Did we finish working on them? Often, even adults do not have the time to examine and judge their lives. Sometimes, everything we love must be taken away from us, all our masks have to be taken off, and all our roles have to come to an end so that we can see what is ultimately important.
There are always new books with reports about clinically dead persons and what they have experienced at death and thereafter. Dying is different from the experience of all those standing around. Evidently, life does not merely fade away but the dying perceive much more of what surrounds them than their outer appearance seems to suggest.
In addition, many tell us that they had an intensive global view of their past life at the moment of their "departure";&nb sp; everything could be seen very clearly. This experience proves nothing, but is surprisingly in line with the considerations and convictions of some theologians in recent times.
Death is part of our life and dying is not only a matter of a moment but also a process. Whoever goes through this process has made the unique experience of dying ahead of all living human beings. Could this not be the decisive life experience? Death would then bring any belated development to maturity: a child grows up, an adult sheds whatever is still unfinished and imperfect. Mentally retarded and psychologically disturbed persons, even the unborn child, - all of them would then have the possibility to bring their human life to a decision and to maturity in this process of dying.