Saturday 16 December 2006

Will us be judged after death?

Someone asked this on one forum or another. The question was really about existence of God, but the question-asker didn't specify what he meant. There was some arguing about making definite questions with only one meaning. Then someone pointed out that judgement is made by living people for living people. This sounded interesting and so I wrote;


I disagree with the person who claimed that we are judged while we are alive. Many of our accomplishments can only be seen in the right light years after we died.

I mean, there are lots of inventors - and even more artists and authors - who were disregarded as good-for-nothings, but are today worshipped in certain circles like gods.

Even Jesus, as historical figure, died with few friends and followers. Few of those who lived lived on decades directly after his death thought of him more than as some nutso who got few followers.

Only after we have been long dead, can our accomplishments and deeds be judged objectively. In few hundred years Hitler might be remembered as the guy who prompted Europe to finally get it's stich together after 1500 years of internal feuding. Today we are still too close to ground zero to see these things objectively. What will last and what will not. EU might still break, and new war torch Europe. It is too soon to say.

Napoleon was undoubtedly the Hitler of his time. He conquered most of Europe and the rest of the Europe feared him. The Beast, was he called. In the following decades he didn't get much of good PR. But what he did then is one of the main reasons why democracy spread at Europe.

I'm not saying Hitler was a great man, I'm just pointing that it's too early to say so. We area still writing the history of early 20th century. . .in the end, it is the historians who will judge us and decide who are the good guys and who the bad.

And, if there was God, so would do he. Free will means nearly infinite amount of chances and ways things will turn out. And that's why there are limbo, for people to be somewhere till the cards they threw into the air when they were alive to settle where they would.

The answer to the question is 'yes'. There is judgement, and it's called history.

"Sometimes I feel that humanity doesn't have history but crime register.." - Kari Suomalainen