I’ve heard it said that while we judge ourselves by our intentions, we judge others by their actions. I suppose sometimes we also hope that God judges us on our intentions as well, maybe because the idea of a loved one ending up in Hell is such a painful one. It reminds me of a saying by Kant (I think — may have been Spinoza) where he states that man always acts in the manner which at that time seems good and right to him, in his own eyes, regardless of whether he would have thought about it as wrong (or even evil) at any other time. Perhaps we too easily pray for this subjective standard to be used in our judging and the judging of those we love instead of a more objective standard standard we often wish on those we see as “evil.”

Your story reminds me of something I heard once when I was in Catholic school in my country of origin. A mother had been in a car crash and her 5 year old kid had been killed. She asked the priest, “Father, is my child in heaven?” The priest then answered, “No. Your child was never baptised so he still had his Original Sin.” Talk about a good story to tell a bunch of 6 year olds.

For the record, I am no longer Catholic.

I was also reminded of this story when I heard Tony Dungy’s son had committed suicide. Dungy later came out and said he was confident his son James was in heaven because he had accepted Christ, and could not have been blamed for his apparent mental state. Even in the case of Mortal Sin, and the mental state of a person is a determining factor in whether they go to Heaven or Hell after commiting mortal sin. (I wrote about it a bit here.)

Thanks for the interesting post.