But you do not get anyone’s love, without asking for it, albeit silently. And unless the suicide bombers ply their trade for love of Allah, then they are not martyrs; but they are what most people think they are – murderous thugs.
From the Creator’s perspective, the only people in danger of condemnation are those who do not consider that they have a vocation, because they are the only people who have no intention of throwing themselves into any activity with any enthusiasm. If you have no love of life, you can hardly expect to find much favour with the Creator, who took so much trouble to create your life. But as Bach explains in his Cantata “Mache dich, mein geist, bereit”, this condemnation simply means being overtaken by the sleep of eternal death: extinction. Putting it another way, if a man has no interest in living immortally in this world, he is unlikely to find immortality in the next, if the next world exists. But in the diminishing Christian world of here and now, it is at worst a misfortune if an atheist or agnostic consider themselves to be without a vocation; because life may then seem to lack a sense of direction or purpose. But a Christian who does not have a vocation might legitimately fear he was in greater peril, because he has the means ready to hand to find out what his vocation is. The standard Christian belief, right or wrong, is that God has some purpose for each one of us in his scheme of things; and if so, then it is one of the first duties of any Christian to find out, or at least to try to find out, what that vocation is. And the converse of course is that a Christian who has a vocation, who refuses to use it to advance the kingdom of heaven, and the Christian who prefers to follow convention rather than find out if he has a vocation, are both actually obstructions. And in a less merciful world they might legitimately fear they would have to be removed; very much as the dinosaurs had to be removed before Man could safely appear, and replace them.
But again the standard Christian belief, right or wrong, is that God does not condemn a man, or woman, who declines to do what he knows or believes is His will; He accomplishes His purposes in other ways. This is an antique and limited way of saying, that when someone puts number-one first, and fails to see himself or herself as enmeshed in the fabric of society, if not ultimately in the fabric of all creation, an heir of the past and a guardian of the future, the plan of creation in the universe will have to change if he or she fails or refuses to do his or her duty. Now if God changes his plan every time someone refuses or neglects to do his or her duty, this is exactly what you would expect by studying the nature of evolution. Indeed it is the same with us in our human affairs. The elder von Moltke remarked that no plan of operations can look with certainty beyond the first serious contact with the enemy; after that subordinate commanders must be allowed to act on their own initiative. Similarly, a planned cross-examination seldom survives the first significant answer; but detailed planning allows you to improvise, whereas without planning you would not be able to do so.