Can God ACTUALLY judge everyone?

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DetectiveNiko

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I used to believe God judged people using the same criteria.
Then I learned I was wrong.
Then I started believing God judges people based on how culpable they are.
But I have started noticing how problematic that is to the point where proper judgment is a very peculiar process.

Our free will is extremely limited.

Yeah while we have free will, we are uncovering that its more and more determined by biological factors (personality, how emotional we are,etc) and social factors (how we were brought up and where we were brought up)

For example, somebody can get brought up in a family of thieves. That person is going to find pickpocketing maybe normal. We would usually say his culpability is lowered, but th e problem is, this happens to everyone. Everyone has to deal with the moral problems of their own culture.

Hypothetically if somebody were to be raised in a culture and family that are heavily immoral, (where killing is tolerated ,etc…) that person is going to end up living his whole life immoraly, and the lowered culpability is not going to help him in any way.
This similar effect can be accomplished psychologically.

Or take another example, that we can see actually being a thing today and that is terrorists who blow themselves up. Suicide is a grave sin, but these people are not faulty for it. They get brainwashed to think God wants them to kill themselves and that it’s a good thing. Through no fault of their own, they commit a grave sin.

The judgement system in general seems to be heavily problematic as 50 % of people don’t end up being judged this way in the first place,because they die before they reach age of culpability. (UNICEF says 29 000 children under the age of 5 die every day , 21 per minute which is horrifying , and if all these kids got a soul like the church teaches, what is the point of earthly life when most people get judged from somewhere else )

So those are the 2 main problems I see.
  1. Why are we so deterministic (there is supportive evidence) when we have free will to pick between good and bad?
  2. Why is the judgment system so improperly made?
  3. If both of the above can’t be answered, can God actually judge everyone even with the different criteria?
If you are asking for evidence of the first question , here is some I just randomly found a bit ago, though it takes very long to watch it. Its the examples at the start that are important to see.

 
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I once heard a talk on “7 Secrets of Divine Mercy.”
The author/speaker (Vinny Flynn), had this to say about God’s justice. "It’s not fair, it’s just."
I suggest to the OP that they read the parable of “The Prodigal Son.” Prodigal mean “squanders,” btw.
 
The thing is, free will isn’t a purely physical phenomenon, when it comes to moral questions.
As Catholics, we believe all good comes from God, from taking up of God’s Graces. If we had not grace from God, our inclination to sin would be so great we could not go long without mortal sin.

However, we have written on our Hearts some basic things. You will find a basic morality around the world, panculturally, against ie killing, etc.

The phenomenon of having hard hearts is not a new thing to Catholic theology. God softens our hearts and moves us to more gentle love and less sin, and more love. According to Eusebius, the Law given the Jews softened the gentile hearts until the coming of Christ.

By the grace of God, however, these evil inclinations we may have can be defeated.

But to answer your question, forget not that God knows everything. He knows everything that child has been through, his culture, his heart, etc. So we can trust Him to be a surely righteous judge.
 
po18guy said:
William of Ockham’s razor
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Well tell me what are the assumptions here ?
I made claims like free will being either very small or non-exsistent, which there is plenty evidence for, I mean just think about how many things that you are doing are based on where you were born, or what your parents thought you. It seems pretty reasonable to suspect that and not make it an assumption
 
Kathleen18 said:
“It’s not fair, it’s just.”
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Just in what way exactly ? Don’t want to sound like a kid but could you elaborate more on it ? How is it just to judge someone for what they couldn’t have avoided doing ?
 
How can you possibly compare infallible, all-knowing and merciful God to an obviously fallible and often flawed human-created judgment system?

It’s apples and oranges. The human-made judgment system cannot read people’s minds, motives and hearts and is subject to all sorts of institutional and societal biases that would not affect God.

Stop trying to compare God to human activities. It’s always going to be a giant fail.
 
Kei said:
However, we have written on our Hearts some basic things. You will find a basic morality around the world, panculturally, against ie killing, etc.
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That doesn’t exactly say much about morality. Morality just tells people which actions are considered good and which are bad. For some reason this is based in subjectivity (What we think is best for other humans and us) and for others its based in God which makes it objective. So I don’t think it shows much.
Kei said:
But to answer your question, forget not that God knows everything. He knows everything that child has been through, his culture, his heart, etc. So we can trust Him to be a surely righteous judge.
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My problem is , if he knows everything, why not make a system of morality that makes more sense ? Why do we have to reason to morality ? Why are we judged in that way ? I wonder a lot about this but it sometimes just does not make sense.
 
I suggest you contemplate the last paragraph in @kei’s words and what @Tis_Bearself has also said. That is what the quote means.
 
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Tis_Bearself said:
How can you possibly compare infallible, all-knowing and merciful God to an obviously fallible and often flawed human-created judgment system?

It’s apples and oranges. The human-made judgment system cannot read people’s minds, motives and hearts and is subject to all sorts of institutional and societal biases that would not affect God.

Stop trying to compare God to human activities. It’s always going to be a giant fail.
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I am sorry if I in any way offended you in any way.

But if you are not going to allow me to come to reasonable deductions through experience and philosophy, then what about the actual scientific evidence which shows this, like conditioning, where you can literally force a person to do things if you give him something good every time he does that specific thing. Its how you train dogs or any animal. This is one from the many examples.
 
If a moral system can be found via reason, how can it make more sense?

People today harden their hearts, and indeed I can see someone whose morality is not based upon the Rock to loosen it on conditioning.
 
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It wouuld make more sense for God to give a sense of right and wrong from the start, and not make it culturally based. There is a thing such as nature law but even Aquinas said that you have to reason to real morality and that the natural law just tells us that we should pursue good over bad. (Even though that has been put to question aswell, since masochists exsist )
 
DetectiveNiko said:
I am sorry if I in any way offended you in any way.

But if you are not going to allow me to come to reasonable deductions through experience and philosophy, then what about the actual scientific evidence which shows this, like conditioning, where you can literally force a person to do things if you give him something good every time he does that specific thing. Its how you train dogs or any animal. This is one from the many examples.
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I’m not offended, I’m just pointing out to you that this comparison is not going to work. It makes no sense.

God’s ways are not our ways. God’s judgment does not operate in the same way as the human judge sitting on the bench in the human courthouse.
 
Well if that is the point everyone is trying to make then I am sorry, saying "God’s ways are not our ways " is just an easy copout with literally any problem regarding theology.
You might think that I am not having enough humility, but I just can’t mentally concieve it.
 
An algorithmic explanation for all human actions has been proposed since the 18th century (or earlier). There is no way to refute it through a materialist framework, because everything in a purely material universe operates through cause and effect.
 
DetectiveNiko said:
Well if that is the point everyone is trying to make then I am sorry, saying "God’s ways are not our ways " is just an easy copout with literally any problem regarding theology.

You might think that I am not having enough humility, but I just can’t mentally concieve it.
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It’s not an “easy copout”, it’s a belief based on faith.

We are not required to modify our faith because you yourself don’t have faith and “can’t mentally conceive” it.

This is the issue I always have when people are asking us to prove this and that about God, or defend God’s actions in a certain case. God is GOD. He doesn’t exist or operate by the same rules that we’d prove something about a human or defend the actions of a human. We don’t fully understand God. Even the most educated theologians are not able to fully explain Him. If you are looking for a 100% explainable, logical God, you are not going to find him.
 
“…but I just can’t mentally conceive it.” -Niko
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< THAT is obvious. You will see God’s path for you as you mature, but even at 60, I’m not sure why God has placed me on my particular path, or how he judges me. I can only do my best. And NOT blow it off because I fail to fully understand!

Good Luck with your journey, don’t give up, keep questioning, and keep an OPEN mind that you may not like all the answers you receive.
 
He does do that. It’s written on our Hearts.

Some don’t have the finer points. Sin dims us to sin. If anything, a culture wipes our our idea of morality and makes us less moral.

But, we have inclinations from original sin that lead us to do wrong.

You are trying to put a rather bad critique against the Golden Rule and using it against the Natural Law, which is really different.

But, look! We can reason our ways back to morality after numbing ourselves in this vale of tears.
 
The straightest, shortest and most direct path is the most likely.

Meaning: Yes, God can judge what He creates.
 
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