Happiness is nonetheless true happiness because it must come to an end, nor do thought and love lose their value because they are not everlasting.
Source: Whati I Believe, 1925
Brief Comment
For example, expressions such as "to swear eternal love" show how casually words like "eternal" or "forever" are used in everyday language. Yet what people have in mind when they use the word "eternal" is far from uniform. Its meaning differs between those who adhere to a religion and those who do not, and even among believers, the worldview assumed by adherents of monotheistic religions differs greatly from that of believers in polytheistic traditions.
In many monotheistic religions -- particularly Christianity and Islam -- the idea that "those who believe will be saved" tends to be emphasized. Good believers are said to go to heaven after death, while those who reject the faith and are deemed evil are consigned to hell. That said, Christianity itself is far from monolithic. In Catholicism, for example, there is the concept of purgatory, distinct from both heaven and hell, where souls undergo a process of purification before ultimately reaching heaven. Meanwhile, in the real world of politics, there are also figures who behave as if they see themselves as arbiters of such ultimate destinies (for example, President Trump) -- though this is mentioned here only as a metaphor.
Polytheistic religions, too, sometimes posit the existence of hell. However, the way it is portrayed often appears, at least from the outside, to be less severe than in monotheistic traditions. Still, this may be nothing more than an external impression. What is the reality?
Now, among devout believers who have no doubts whatsoever about the existence of God or the afterlife, there are many who are convinced that as long as they live virtuously in this world, they will be rewarded in the next. As a result, might there not be some who maintain a certain distance from the suffering and misfortune of this world -- what might be called "hell on earth"? Religious fundamentalism in Christianity or Islam may be cited as a typical example.
I do not wish to make sweeping claims, but there are occasions when it seems that the mass death of people of other faiths is met with relative indifference, whereas the killing of even a small number of one's own co-religionists provokes intense outrage. In such cases, the large-scale killing of "enemy" unbelievers or atheists in retaliation may not appear to trouble the conscience as much. Is this merely my own paranoid perception?
By contrast, many Japanese people are not adherents of any particular religion and do not seriously believe that heaven or hell actually exists. Ironically, those who do not believe in heaven or hell often seem more sensitive to the happiness and suffering of others, and more inclined to help them if they can -- even when those others belong to a different faith.
When Japanese people use expressions such as "forever" or "eternal," they usually mean something like "for as long as I live," or they employ conventional phrases such as "I will be watching over you from the other world" (without truly believing that such a thing is literally possible). This is a form of rhetoric. Using such expressions despite not believing in eternal life or the afterlife is not, in itself, a sign of insincerity.
How, then, do people with strong -- or even exclusive -- religious beliefs understand this way of thinking and this kind of sensibility that many Japanese people have?
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