i wish that after people die, assuming they don't choose salvation beforehand, that they get another chance to decide to choose it.
after all, what would be so inequitable about that? what's unfair about someone being dead and looking behind the curtains and seeing the eternal reality and choosing salvation?
after all, life is full of information asymmetry and transaction costs. if these aren't a factor any more after death, why shouldn't a person's decision be recognised and given full effect?
i guess the question can be rephrased as, given that a person can make a fully informed choice after death... why not? the converse of this question is, can our decision before death truly be fully informed? why then should we be judged quite so harshly as when we decide not to choose salvation while we live?
why did God choose such an inefficient way to grant eternal life if he loves us? sure, because he wants freely given love. but how can love be given freely in life when we only can love by faith? and faith is such a terribly difficult thing to explain, to understand, to have. even the bible can only do as well as this: faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. but this is useless to a normal person.
and thus if people get a second chance, the only people who would enter hell are those that do not choose salvation a second time. but is that such a bad thing?
the converse of this proposition is that people sent to heaven cannot thereafter go to hell. but why? will we lose the power of choice after we die? i sure hope not, otherwise eternal life would be meaningless (or otherwise meaningful in a way that i as a human refuse to appreciate). and if we retain the power to choose, we retain the power to sin, which may seem to condemn us, but we know that Jesus' death saves us from even sins in the future. so what would happen if we sin in heaven? nothing, it seems. if angels can be cast out, it's because Jesus never died for them. but note that there can't be sin in heaven. does that mean we forever lose the power to make meaningful choice?
but going back to the question of whether we retain the power of choice after death (i hope we do) and whether this will save us if we are in hell (why not?).
another way of looking at this problem is, can a dead person's sins be transferred to Jesus? can Jesus make holy a dead person who has sin?
isaiah 38:18 - for the grave cannot praise you, death cannot sing your praise, those who go down to the pit, cannot hope for your faithfulness.
ecclesiastes 9:5 - for the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing.
and the worst: john 3:18 - whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only Son.
sigh. religion is such a pain. too many difficult questions, contextual contradictions, vague references, theoretical untidiness, and terrific catch-alls.
here's a strange one: there are people yet to be born and yet to choose. but Jesus has already died for a fixed amount of sin.
is this incredible? is this wrong? i mean, what is this?
there have been very few times i've questioned my religion. this no second chance thing is right up there.
i suppose the simplistic way of looking at this is like this: God wants our faith and our love while we're alive, and when we're dead, we can hardly call our belief faith, given that we'll know what the afterlife entails. and though we may potentially love when we're dead, it isn't what God wants.
which begs the question, why does God want this kind of faith and love? but the answer to that is that nobody knows but God. and God simply isn't a weirdo to us, he just isn't.
(bloody hell).
