Sometimes I’m grateful there are limits to
human knowledge.
Suppose you could see the future with
reasonable certainty and could judge within a few minutes of conversing with friends,
family members and acquaintances which of them will eventually be saved or how
they really feel about you. Might you not be just a little inclined to change
your behavior toward the ones you believe will never come to know the Lord, or
toward the ones who bear hidden grudges or agendas, or simply don’t care about
you as much as you care about them?
Oh, I don’t mean you might treat them
differently in big, obvious ways. It wouldn’t be particularly Christian to snub,
ignore or dismiss people; we wouldn’t do that. What I might be
tempted to do would be a little subtler, and I’d probably rationalize it in the
interests of time-stewardship: faced with an invitation to dinner with Person A
or Person B, I’d probably opt to spend more time with the ones
I judged closest to the kingdom or most in agreement with my own values.
To finite human beings, that would seem a
reasonable way to proceed. After all, there are only so many hours in a day and
only so many days in a lifetime. Why not use the moments you have to greatest
effect?