Death and Afterlife: Improve your Essay Technique

The idea that everyone deserves to be saved and go to Heaven is very broad and universal, but it’s also unrealistic that everyone will go to the same afterlife regardless of our actions in our earthly life. If this was the case then our actions are meaningless and society would descend into chaos with no fear of consequence. This implies that there is a judgement process. Also taken from Matthew 25 it declares that God ‘will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.’ The ‘sheep’ are the good and helpful and the ‘goats’ are merely people who aren’t evil just not as upstanding as they could be by, for example, not donating to charity. This judgement process shows that not everyone deserves to be saved and go to Heaven, only the sheep. There is no middle ground between ‘goats’ and ‘sheep’ and also no consideration for faith or belief in God which is interesting for such a typically Christian view. But is this fair? Eternal punishment does not seem like a fitting punishment for simply failing to take certain opportunities of kindness so this judgement is not fair. This goes against the idea of a classic theistic God that is omnibenevolent as they would not punish for simply a lack of sufficient good deeds. An omnibenevolent God should be all-loving therefore everyone should deserve to be saved and go to Heaven but this is not the case presented in the Bible.

One thought on “Death and Afterlife: Improve your Essay Technique

  1. corag22

    Hi Amy, just had a thought… does Calvin philosophy of the ‘elect’ and not knowing that you are the ‘elect’ tie in with Kant? If Calvin believes that it’s best to be a good christian, work hard etc, and then in the end you will know if you’re judged; is this like Kant’s ‘treat as means not ends’ in a way? As Kant would also think [if he was arguing for this] that we have to follow our duty [as Christians] and keep in line with our duty so as to not treat people as means (and the whole universalisability thing of if everyone did this…). I’m not sure if I can link this, but I just thought it might be a… thought.

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