If the reward for a pious life is an eternal life in the hereafter?

Question

Doesn't that mean that "good" people who died 2000 years ago are going to get a longer reward than "good" people who die next Tuesday? 2000 years extra of heavenly bliss? Does that seem fair?

Cubanita...but there ARE different "sizes" of infinity! The set of all odd numbers is infinite, as is the set of all even numbers (which is the same size), but the set of all whole numbers is by definition twice as big as either of those sets!

Answer 1

The reward for a pious life is that when you're dead, the people who knew you while you were alive remember your piety.

The reward for a great life, or a life of great influence, is that people alive after you remember and appreciate what you did. Teddy Roosevelt is a great example: his leadership resulted in the construction of the Panama Canal and the creation of the US National Parks system, among other things. Today, when you go to Yellowstone, Grand Teton, Yosemite, or another National Park, you might think of and appreciate Teddy Roosevelt and his good works. In that way, Teddy Roosevelt has "eternal life" or immortality.

Other than that, dead is dead. The human mind - which encompasses the "soul," is nothing more than an electrochemical processing plant. When it's off, it's off.

Answer 2

For most of those 2000 years there's been a lot of construction going on in Heaven so it hasn't been all bliss. Heavy traffic and delays as roads were being constructed, alot of "Pardon Our Dust" signs in the stores, the phone service was spotty and the cable didn't always work. You know, Heaven wasn't built in a day!

I think most of the streets are now open and the cable is up to 10,000 channels (half of it sports although no adult videos -- you win some you lose some) so its all good. If you lived that pious life and died today you won't have missed more than a couple of blissful years.

Answer 3

Anyone who was fortunate enough to have been restored to Life 2000 years ago would have entered the spiritual realm where time is not experienced in a linear fashion as we experience it. Because of that, the first shall be last, and the last first.

Answer 4

1. Everyone gets eternal life-the good, bad ,and ugly.
2. Eternity is so long that 2000 years is too small to measure.
3. I think its fair.

Everyone gets to live forever after the resurrection. And the best part is that you actually get to choose where you will spend all that time.-Isn't that great!

Answer 5

Firstly, what is time? Time is a physical property affected by mass, acceleration and gravity. It is not constant.
God is described as "The One who inhabits eternity." HE is not limited by time. From our standpoint on planet earth, when we leave time, there is no evidence that we won't all hit the throne at the same "moment"

Secondly, no one is "good"! Jesus Himself said that no one but God is good. My heavenly future is determined by the fact that I let Jesus pay my fine. I could NEVER pay it myself!

Thirdly, God is not fair. God is just. And I think that it's really out of line for us humans to think that God has to do anything that we think He should.

I don't mean to be rude in any way, if you want to talk about it more please write me.

Answer 6

While the whole heaven/hell existence idea is stupid, I have to agree with cubanita325. The mathematics don't lie:

(lim x->oo) x = +oo
(lim x->oo) x + 2000 = +oo

Mathematically, they're the same.

Answer 7

There is no time time nor a time continuum in Heaven. So everybody gets the same reward.

Answer 8

There were people born 300,000 years before jesus. They didn't know or care about cristianity. Over 5 billion people living today don't like cristianity either.

Answer 9

Not fair, but that is just part of being human -- luck of the draw as to when you're born and what you're born into. Suck it up, we all get screwed at some point.

Answer 10

infinity = infinity
infinity + 2000 = infinity