What Is Our Duty, In Faith?

I see the news tidbits about the True Believers, the  non-believers in science, who wind up in a hospital bed, or a  drawer in a morgue,  after they have caught Trump's Virus.

And I want to say "caveat emptor," and every time I have to step back and remind myself that it's not just them. Yeah, "they got what they paid for" but it's not just them.

It's their kids, it's the Lyft driver, it's the grocery store clerk, or someone's grandparents they passed on the street.

And another casualty is a further chipping away at my resolve as a Christian.  At my resolve to forgive them. Not for what they have done, but forgive them for the damage to themselves, spiritually.

If I call myself a Christian I have to forgive them.

It's part of the job description of being a Christian.

That doesn't mean those who commit evil escape consequences in the physical world, but the retribution is for justice, not vengeance.  But I still am compelled to pray that they accept the Grace offered by the diety.

Several years ago I read of a Muslim woman who volunteered to perform the ritual cleansing, before his burial, for a Muslim man who had died. He had not been a man who followed the tenets of his faith. Among his faults was that he was greedy, and spurned the poor, was a drunkard and a drug user.

There was no family to wash his body, and to wrap his body in the ritual shrouds. None in the community wanted to do this, as they considered that he was no longer a Muslim, and by his own actions he had abandoned his faith.  But this one woman volunteered.

She was told he was not worth her time, that he would never be worthy of entrance to Paradise. That prayers for him would be wasted.

Her answer was that you do not know.  He may have, in his last moment of life, repented, returned to his faith, and asked for, and be granted,  forgiveness by G/d.

Why should his salvation not be allowed for?

Why should not prayers be uttered for his behalf? As prayers are uttered on behalf of all who have gone from this Earth before us?

I would like to feel that that woman and I have something in common