Rest In Peace: Why I Always Have Hope for the Dead

Someone once asked how I could pray that the soul of a person I know to have been a non-Christian, even the soul of an enemy of Christ like a terrorist, rest in peace. Is this just goodie good words? Am I using language to cover up a harsher reality?

Best reason and experience say there is a Hell and some people will choose to be sentenced there. Yet I do not think I am inconsistent to have hope for every soul. 

Thousands of years of literature, poetry, and art should have taught us a few things about humankind.

Humanity is broken. We are so badly broken that we can no longer fulfill the purpose for which we were created. The smash up is at the deepest part of our being and nothing we do can fix what has gone wrong.

This is why living based on the way I feel is so uncertain. It is true that God created me and thus if I could live “naturally” I would be good, but I am alienated from my best nature in different ways.

That is why I must be “born again,” “saved,” “redeemed.”

God had to do this work by coming and repairing human nature from the inside out. God became one of us in the person of Jesus so we could become like He is.  We can become Jesus’ brothers and sisters and so prepare for eternity . . . the place we long to see every day. This is a great miracle and it was only done once. Jesus is the only pathway to redemption . . . the deep redemption that prepares for eternity.

Jesus loves people. He loves the entire cosmos. He also loves justice, goodness, and beauty. His love for us cannot contradict the demands of justice. He cannot allow Paradise to be destroyed by any selfishness. The sublime beauty of Eternity to Come cannot stand one ugly sight.

And some people will choose to face ultimate judgment clinging to evil, we are told this is so. Though I know that some will be damned, charity forbids me believe that any particular person will be damned. The great virtue of Hope insists that until I see the last Day, I hope that any particular person has been changed and so will see God and dwell with Him forever in bliss.

If I am a true Christian, I hope that no particular person be damned. I know some will be damned.

What happens at the moment of death? I do not know. I know God is good, just, and full of love. Is there a moment of clarity? Is there a moment of choice? Does the noble pagan see the future work of Jesus and get to accept it? Does the ignorant man gain sufficient knowledge at that moment? Does the atheist have his demands for clarity answered?

I have no reason to think it is not so and good reason in the character of God to trust that it might be so.

And so I hope. I hope in God that every single person I have ever known chooses Life. I trust that those who rejected “Jesus” for most of their life because we, Christ’s followers, confused them with our sin, gain one clear vision of the real Jesus. I hope that all those who suffered pain that prevented clarity of reason have that pain lifted. God is with us and at no time more with us than at the moment of death.

I know there is a God. I know He is good. I know He loves us and that He came in the person of Jesus. I know these truths as surely as I know that the world is spherical and that the ocean is full of water. These facts together with experience of Jesus leave me with real hope for every particular soul. So little need be lost, so much can be saved.

Will all be saved? Will some be lost? All will not be saved. Some will be lost. Some will refuse and turn to torment from bliss. I find this hard to believe until I think of my own stubbornness and stupidity. Clarity has not always helped me choose . . . wisely. Perhaps then my goal should be to concern myself with the state of my own soul. I must seek first His Kingdom.

And so I think it totally consistent that when I see death, I hope that Life is coming and not damnation. Some lives give me more hope than others and that is a comfort to us all. Some lives make it harder to hope than others . . . they seem hardened to their own vice and desires. Yet even then I hope. Love is powerful. Jesus is Lord.

Many are invited to the Feast. Perhaps few will attend, but God help me, I hope that every human being I have ever known is part of that number . . . when the Saints go marching in.