The conditions for most of the sorts of behavior that our moral world considers grievous and despicable will not exist in heaven: that’s why Jesus is not concerned with reforming them. There will be no advantage to murder, adultery, or financial skulduggery in heaven; the rewards of gaining control over others will not exist; attempts at intimidation and coercion will be regarded with the heavenly equivalent of bemusement. Jesus barely mentions things like that, because his concern is preparing us for a life spent under conditions entirely different from those to which we have been accustomed.

A moral monster, arriving in heaven, will be disadvantaged, not by his vile history, but by his bewilderment.

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s