How Will We Be Judged?

at you with the intention of injuring you and actually does so, won’t you become enraged and feel an urge to retaliate in like manner? You would be perfectly justified in feeling that this wrong should be ‘punished’ because the act was ‘intentional.’ Here it is a question not just of some random happening, but of right and wrong action, good and bad intentions, in a word, of ‘ethics’. The examples chosen to clarify this point are of a simple nature in that the outcome of the action is immediately apparent and, moreover, in the second case, it is possible to make an instant moral judgment. But there are other much more complex situations in life where wrongdoing goes undetected, its effects may be hidden or delayed for long periods, and the culprits may never be brought to book either by moral condemnation of society or in a court of law. Sometimes evildoing is, of course, perceived as such, but the miscreant is so clever and resourceful that he is able to escape punishment,