On Judgement Day we will not be asked if we accepted Jesus Christ as our saviour. Nor will we be asked if we believe in GOD. We are called to forgive that we may be forgiven, to pray for our persecutors and to return their evil with good. Why? Because to do otherwise is to become like them.
Note that Hawking does not say there is neither a heaven nor an afterlife. He says that there probably isn’t. Probably is not good enough. The life we are called to live by Jesus is a better one than many of us are living now. Every cop who busts a homeless person will be standing on the left hand of GOD. Every politician who turns their back on the homeless, the hungry, the thirsty, the sick, the stranger, the naked and the jailbird may sing in the choir of their church but come the hour they will find themselves before one who will say, “Go away. I never knew you.”
I don’t give a moments thought to whether I will be in Heaven or Hell. This is for the “good folk” standing by and doing nothing. Einstein put it well (and he was not a Christian) when he said, “All that is required for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing.” Annie Besant was an atheist. She said, “Someone ought to do it, but why should I? Someone ought to do it, so why not I? Between these two sentences lie whole centuries of moral evolution.”
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