It doesn’t seem fair to me that someone who grew up in a dysfunctional family without any religion should, in the judgment by God, be judged the same as someone from a loving family where they practised their faith regularly. Am I right in this?
I think we would all agree that such a judgment would not be fair. Since God is all wise, just and merciful, he will surely take into account every aspect of our background and life and will judge each person accordingly.
Let us consider two very different scenarios. In the first case the person was born into a family where their mother and father were united in marriage, they prayed together and went to church on Sundays, and the children grew up in a climate of generosity and love, where they were taught what was right and wrong and learned to practise the virtues.
That helped them live a good moral life and use their talents for the benefit of others.
Suppose another person was born into a single-parent family without any religious upbringing, where they experienced a lack of love, arguments, alcohol or drug abuse, domestic violence and so on.
Later in life they had no religious faith, became involved with drugs and stealing, and had a series of broken relationships. It is obvious that God will not expect as much from the second person as from the first. That is only right.
Other aspects of life too have a bearing on how we live and how God will judge us.
Consider the various talents we have received: intelligence, an out-going personality, an even temper, the opportunity to attend a good school or university, etc. God can expect more from a person with more such talents than from someone with fewer.
Or the responsibilities that different people have. Bishops and priests will have to render an account for how they used their ministry for the benefit of all the people in their care, doing all they could to help them go to heaven.
For this reason, we should pray very much for them when God calls them to himself. And parents will answer for how they formed their children in virtues and faith, helping them to be saints so that they in turn can help many others go to heaven.
It is obvious that, because he is fair, God will judge each person in accordance with the gifts he has received. We see this in Christ’s parable of the talents, where one person was given five talents, another two and another one.
It is an image of God giving different opportunities and abilities to each person and judging them according to how they used them. In the parable, the first person traded with his five talents and made five more, the second made two more and the third buried his talent in order not to lose it and he returned it to his master.
In the final reckoning the first two heard the words, “Well done, good and faithful servant; you have been faithful over a little, I will set you over much; enter into the joy of your master.”
The one who had not used his one talent to good advantage was told, “You wicked and slothful servant! You knew that I reap where I have not sowed, and gather where I have not winnowed? Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and at my coming I should have received what was my own with interest. So take the talent from him, and give it to him who has the ten talents. For to every one who has will more be given, and he will have abundance; but from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away” (Mt 25:14-29).
We see this too in that other familiar statement: “Every one to whom much is given, of him will much be required” (Luke 12:48).
In the judgment, what God expects is that we use well the gifts and talents he has given us, whether few or many, not that we achieve what someone with more talents does. God is fair, he is just. And of course he is always merciful too.