There is a simple proposition at the heart of classical Christianity: if you are a good person and do good work on Earth, when you die you will enter the Kingdom of Heaven and know the full bounty of God’s unending love. But if you are a bad person on Earth, and you sin without repenting, when you die you’ll end up in Hell for all eternity.

In many Eastern religions like Hinduism and Buddhism, that duality is baked into the singular notion of Karma: good intentions and good deeds will be repaid in the next life with great kindness; bad intent and bad deeds (or sin) will be repaid in the next life with great severity.

Personally, I take a different approach. I’m not going to say, that cheating or lying or murdering should be avoided out of fear of future punishments at the hands of God. Instead, I’d like to make a much more immediate and self-interested case. Watching Trudeau, Tony Blair, Trump and other famous leaders (Putin), pains me to say, these people are not winning. Nor are they going to get off scot-free for their crimes. Actually, they’re paying for it every single day.

In the book, I just finished reading (What Makes Sammy Run? by Budd Schulberg) there’s a passage at the end, which renders this verdict on the empty, broken life of an immoral Hollywood studio boss:

“I had been waiting for justice suddenly to rise up and smite him in all its vengeance, secretly hoping to be around when Sammy got what was coming to him; only I had expected something conclusive and fatal and now I realized that what was coming to him was not a sudden pay-off but a process, a disease he had caught in the epidemic that swept over his birthplace like a plague; a cancer that was slowly eating him away, the symptoms developing and intensifying: success, loneliness, fear. Fear of all the bright young men, the newer, fresher Sammy Glicks that would spring up to harass him, to threaten him and finally overtake him.”

So here’s what I have to say, “Don’t sin or your life will be hell. Not your next life, not your afterlife, but this life right now. Today.”

Find the positive and be unique.

By Brian Nadon

www.vaticfoundation.com