C.S. Lewis, in The Weight of Glory:
It is a serious thing, to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or another of those destinations. (pg. 15)
C. Orthodoxy 
I prefer to view everyone rather like myself, unless they are coming at me with a knife.
I mean, I treat people like people, not as potential angels or demons, or on the road to becoming one or the other.
Likewise I don’t think it wise to wonder too deeply as to whether or not a person is damned or saved, or to dream of myself as being “saved” and people who believe differently as “catching hell” come judgment day. It even unnerves me to sing or hear people singing, “Jesus loves ME, this I know,” or all those other self-congratulatory “I” and “We” songs in church. Oh aren’t I the apple of God’s anthropomorphic eye.
By: Edward T. Babinski on February 19, 2010
at 9:32 pm
I would fully agree with that, and I think Lewis would as well.
He’s not saying we know which way anyone is going (he was, after all, an inclusivist), he is saying that everyone, no matter how unimportant (or damned!) they may appear to us, has an eternal destiny and for that reason (though surely not only for that reason) demands the highest respect.
By: Ken Brown on February 19, 2010
at 10:15 pm
[…] conversation I’ve been enjoying with Edward Babinski in the comments (especially here, here, here and here). We’ve covered a lot of ground but one issue Edward keeps coming back to is […]
By: Is Hell Empty? « C. Orthodoxy on February 23, 2010
at 11:56 am