Why is repentance after death "too late"?

[ethereality]

Suppose a man who leads a life based on empirical observation (as it is becoming a dominant philosophy today) denies the existence of God simply because God is invisible; he does not see God, so how is he to know God exists? This man feels he cannot have a relationship with something with whom he cannot physically interact. This man dies and then sees God. Of course this man would then want to go to God. Why does God not allow this to occur if God is good? We see many such men today, and sacred Scripture tells us that no one goes to the Father unless the Father wills it – so this man had no relationship with God because God made it so. How does this idea reconcile with God’s goodness?

An eternal punishment for a finite, temporal transgression does not seem just. If you were to look at our existence on a timeline, our lives on earth would not even show up as a speck on the time line when compared with eternity. Why does what happens in less than the blink of an eye have everlasting consequences?

 

[Michelle_Arnold]

Why do you assume that a man who spent a lifetime denying God exists would suddenly want to be with God should he be confronted by God immediately after death? Why do you assume that the transgression of deliberately denying the existence of the infinite, eternal God is merely a finite, temporal transgression?

Something to keep in mind is the nature of choice. Angels, because they are pure spirit, made one eternal choice either for or against God. Because they do not have material bodies subject to the limitations of change, their choice was eternal and irrevocable. Human beings, because they have bodies, can change over the course of their lifetimes; but radical, life-altering change from the shaping of a lifetime of choices is as rare as a deathbed conversion precisely because our choices shape us into who we are. At death, that lifetime of shaping through the choices we make becomes as permanent and irrevocable as the one eternal choice made by the angels.

A helpful picture of this can be found in J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series.

SPOILER ALERT!

At the very end of the last book of the series (The Deathly Hallows), Harry urges Lord Voldemort to repent for the sins of his life, warning him that Harry has seen what he will be should he not do so. Voldemort cannot fathom what Harry is talking about; he is apparently quite literally unable to feel remorse or to repent for the evil he’s committed. The choices he’s made over the course of his lifetime have shaped who he will be at the moment of death. As Dumbledore once explained to Harry, “It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.”