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***<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n I continue to be struck by a quotation from then-Elder Russell M. Nelson that was, I believe, cited in the September 2014 issue of the\u00a0Ensign.\u00a0 <\/em>Back in 1992, he wrote:<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n We were born to die and we die to live. \u00a0As seedlings of God, we barely blossom on earth; we fully flower in heaven.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n This is one of the great arguments for the desirability of life after death. \u00a0Not for the truth<\/em> of the idea, of course \u2014 it\u2019s certainly conceivable that the universe might simply be the kind of place where hopes remain ultimately unfulfilled, where purposelessness and extinction triumph \u2014 but for its desirability.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Because the simple fact is that we all die without reaching our potential. \u00a0We\u2019re all eventually defeated by failing energy, declining strength, faltering minds, and\/or death.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n This is true even if we reach a hundred years of age. \u00a0But it\u2019s most painfully obvious with regard to little babies who die in their infancy, to small children whose lives end before they\u2019ve fully grown, to young people whose development is never completed. \u00a0Disease, war, crime, and accidents have brought so many lives to premature ends!\u00a0 How many symphonies have gone unwritten, how many songs have been left uncomposed, how many medical breakthroughs unfound? \u00a0How many novels and poems were never begun? \u00a0How many acts of nobility and kindness have remained unperformed? \u00a0How many dances were never danced, how many books were never read, how many sights never seen?<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Nobody leaves this life having done and experienced all that he or she could potentially have done and experienced.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Nobody.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n But, mercifully, we have all eternity ahead of us.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n (For related thoughts with respect to the specific case of Ludwig van Beethoven, see here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n ***<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n God loves all of his children, even if they have sinned grievously or have rejected him. \u00a0In Moses 7, we see God weeping \u2014 to the utter astonishment of Enoch \u2014 over the suffering of those who have turned their backs on him and on his other children. \u00a0He doesn\u2019t cease caring for them. \u00a0His love is far deeper than that of even the best mortal parents, who commonly \u2014 and often very painfully \u2014 still love their children even when those children are behaving hatefully or self-destructively.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n For that reason and others, I\u2019ve always inclined toward something like universalism, and I\u2019ve long loved Pope John Paul II\u2019s response to a question about whether Christians are obligated to believe in Hell. \u00a0\u201cYes,\u201d he replied. \u00a0\u201cBut we can hope that it will be empty.\u201d<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n However, God honors human agency. \u00a0We are free to reject him. \u00a0And, thus, it\u2019s possible, even likely, that there will be some who will never accept the gift of Christ\u2019s atonement, who will refuse to repent or ask for mercy, who will defiantly turn away from divine grace. \u00a0Such, I presume, are the \u201csons of perdition.\u201d \u00a0I believe that their numbers are, and will be, relatively few.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n For everybody else, though, there will be at least some degree of salvation. \u00a0And I personally have deep faith in the patient and never-ending love of God, which leads me to hope, at least, that most people will eventually receive the fullness of all eternal blessings.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n I don\u2019t believe that we can be saved in a state of either indifference to divine law or defiant refusal to repent. \u00a0However,\u00a0I also doubt that anybody who sincerely seeks truth and goodness will be punished merely for having made a mistake. \u00a0Moreover, I believe in repentance and progress beyond this life. \u00a0The great plan of happiness is very, very, very good news.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n I\u2019m not God.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n I\u2019m not even slightly confused about that.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n And one of the implications of my not being God is that I\u2019m not obliged to judge the eternal destination of the people around me or of the people about whom I read in history and hear on the news.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n I find that deeply liberating. \u00a0When I consider many people that I\u2019ve known who were genuinely bad in certain respects but remarkably good in others \u2014 Oskar Schindler will serve as a good public example of the kind of person that I have in mind \u2014 I\u2019m enormously relieved that the task of judging them falls to Someone else.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Obviously, I\u2019m often obliged to judge people on smaller issues for the shorter term. \u00a0Do I trust this person as a financial advisor? \u00a0Should I vote for my department to hire that person? \u00a0Does she seem reliable enough to be a babysitter? \u00a0Should I vote for Councilman Gladhander?<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n But I sometimes do wonder on what basis the ultimate Judge will decide.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n And it occurs to me that the fundamental issue isn\u2019t so much whether Jones affirmed proposition X or denied proposition Y or accepted creed Z as what it was that Jones fundamentally wanted<\/em>. \u00a0What was the principal intent of his heart?<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n During this mortal life, only a relatively small proportion of the inhabitants of Earth will have heard so much as the name of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints<\/a>, and a far smaller percentage still will have had any really clear idea about the Church\u2019s teachings. \u00a0But that can and will be fixed in the next life, and via the work of the temples in this one.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n However, over their lifetimes, most members of the human race will have had quite adequate opportunity to demonstrate what they wanted, what they really valued and desired. \u00a0In the useful phrase of the late German-American Protestant theologian Paul Tillich (1886-1965), their lives will, to a large degree, reveal what was, under all their activity and their talk, their \u201cultimate concern.\u201d \u00a0Or, if you\u2019re more comfortable with Star Trek<\/em> references, their personal \u201cprime directive.\u201d \u00a0Over time and despite the occasional lapse, we show what we most want, what we value. \u00a0\u201cFor where your treasure is,\u201d says the Savior at Matthew 6:21, \u201cthere will your heart be also.\u201d<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cAll who have died\u00a0without\u00a0a knowledge of this gospel, who would have received it if they had been permitted to tarry, shall be\u00a0heirs\u00a0of the celestial kingdom of God; also all that shall die henceforth without a knowledge of it, who\u00a0would\u00a0have received it with all their hearts, shall be heirs of that kingdom; for I, the Lord, will\u00a0judge\u00a0all men according to their\u00a0works, according to the\u00a0desire\u00a0of their hearts\u201d (Doctrine and Covenants 137:7-9).<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n And the Lord is, we\u2019re told, watching us carefully. \u00a0Lovingly, yes, but also carefully and discerningly. \u00a0As Ammon taught King Lamoni, God \u201clooketh down upon all the children of men; and he knows all the thoughts and intents of the heart\u201d (Alma 18:32<\/a>). \u00a0Similarly, the New Testament Epistle to the Hebrews indicates that God \u201cis a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart\u201d and that \u201call things are naked and opened unto the eyes of him\u201d (Hebrews 4:12-13<\/a>).<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n I\u2019m serenely optimistic about the fate of people, whatever their creed or lack thereof, who genuinely sought to do good, to find and serve the truth, to be faithful to what truths they knew or sincerely thought they knew. \u00a0They\u2019ll be fine. \u00a0I\u2019m less confident of the fate of the wicked, the cruel, the disingenuous, the coldly calculating, the malevolent, and the selfish. \u00a0Even there, though, I withhold final judgment. \u00a0I have no idea what made them what they were or are, and it\u2019s not my place to pronounce judgement upon them.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n I take this notion quite seriously. \u00a0Thus, on several occasions when people have posed to me what they plainly (and understandably) consider the ultimate test of my stance \u2014 \u201cWell, what about Hitler?<\/em>\u201d \u2014 my reply has been that, while I certainly wouldn\u2019t want to be in his position and consider him as good a candidate for an eternity of torment as anybody of whom I know, I really can\u2019t say what went into making him the genocidal monster that he was, and that it simply isn\u2019t my role to declare his ultimate fate. \u00a0I leave that to the Lord.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe see only the results which a man\u2019s choices make out of his raw material,\u201d C. S. Lewis once wrote. \u00a0\u201cBut God does not judge him on the raw material at all, but on what he has done with it.\u201d \u00a0In other words, as Lewis is also reported to have advised: \u00a0\u201cDon\u2019t judge a man by where he is, because you don\u2019t know how far he has come.\u201d<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n