My God loves me more than your God does

I believe I've said this before, but perhaps the hardest thing for me about becoming Catholic was the idea of Saints. It's not that I think these people weren't great, I just have never been comfortable with the idea of praying to them. I have never really been able to fully reconcile the idea of praying to somebody who I think will relay the message on to God because their voice is better, but as I believe I've also stated before, praying to saints is more of an act of working as a community than anything else.
What I do find to be also problematic is what Peter says in Acts 10:34, that "God is no respecter of persons." If the Saints were to have more sway over God than we do, then God automatically plays favorites. Here we have to ask ourselves if this is really the case.
The Romans and Greeks believe their gods to be favortists. Aeneas had the favor of his mother Aphrodite. Odysseus angered Hera and Callisto, but had the favor of Athena. Apollo was often invoked before war in both epic and tragedy, and Zeus was often found meddling in the affairs of mortals as well.
But we are not Pagans. We do not believe in gods, or a God who plays favorites. We believe in a God who does not respect people. This does not mean that God doesn't care about His children. What this does mean, however, is that God doesn't give precedence to anybody simply because of piety, status, wealth, achievement or even righteousness.
We believe our God to be a fair God. We believe, as Barth says, that Christ's death saved not only the Jews, but also the Gentiles. We believe that no people are damned simply for being who they are. From the Catholic perspective, we don't even believe that any specific people will be going to Hell (with the notable exception of Dante's Inferno, in which he lists people who are in Hell).
In fact, we as Christians explicitly state that Deus Caritas Est (God is love). What this means from a Christian perspective is that our God embodies love. If there is anything that is love, it is of God. If there is anything that is hateful, it is most certainly not. As St. Paul states, "And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing" (1 Corinth. 13:13). It is very much against the nature of Christianity (in its purest form) and the way we view our God to even endulge malicious feelings for other people.
So as part of this, Vatican II recognized that all people who lived righteous lives, regardless of their faith, were likely going to be saved. After all, if God truly doesn't afford privelege based on creed, then why should Christians be saved while all others are damned, especially those living in remote areas of the world where Christianity is not a viable option? To me, this is what it truly means to say that God is love. God loves the Buddhist who worries that he may be walking on his ancestors as much as He loves the Christian who decorates evergreen trees in the winter time as part of some heathenistic tradition Christianity adopted hundreds of years ago. God loves the Muslim who prays to Him five times a day as much as God loves the Hindu who prays to many different gods, and countless avatars. God loves the Jew who will not eat pork out of respect as much as God loves the Mormon who won't drink coffee out of respect, or the atheist who parties all night with no respect.
Our perspective is radically shifted when we start to believe that we worship love. How can we afford to cast judgment on other people? How can we condemn other people's religious choices when God loves us no more than He loves them? How can we praise and glorify war if war is not a love-born response?
Furthermore, this should also put into perspective what lots befall us in our lives. Some believe that living righteously yields blessings while wickedness only renders sorrow. However, joy falls to the good and bad, as do the sorrows. Many people blame God when something bad happens. How can we blame God when we know that when bad things happen to us, it isn't a sign of disrepect for us, but possibly a chance for us to truly be in solidarity with others, or better yet, a chance for some great thing to come about from it? Furthermore, how can we gloat and boast of our fortunes when God could have easily and can still easily take them away?
We are at the mercy of an unbiased God. However, this should be a comfort to us. We believe that God is merciful. If God will reign down His mercy on us, as we believe, then He will also be merciful to the wicked or unjust. We are God's children, and with the parental metaphor comes the parental love that God exhibits for each of us. We may not have VIP seating in heaven, but if we're all at the same place, what is wrong with sitting with a Hindu, or a Taoist, or an agnostic? If we truly believe that Paradise is a utopia, then why would it lack diversity when the world that God created (which was good) is so full of different kinds of people?
So now we must ask, "Why Christianity?" I am reminded of the motto of the Congregation of the Holy Cross, "Ave crux, spes unica" (Hail, the cross, our only hope). As Christians, we have the unique theology of a universal redemption. We believe that our God took on the sins of all mankind in order to save all mankind. Thus, in my opinion, it makes more sense to posit faith in a belief system that theortically, and becoming ever more practically, openly embraces other faiths. If we can learn to look on all the people of the world as brothers and sisters, as Thomas Merton did, then perhaps we can all live in peace and harmony. With Christianity, we are able to look on others in love and acceptance. If we truly understand what love means, this means we pray for those who believe not as we do, not that they convert, but that we will all be together after this life in a happier state of existence.

Post mortem (Eschatology part 1)

I will first admit that I do not have any hidden knowledge about the "hereafter." Like a good Christian, I believe that there is a glorious afterlife in store for us as part of God's Grace. However, whether this will literally be in the clouds or rather some other, noncorporeal setting, I don't know.
What intrigues me, though, is that there have been so many different accounts of the afterlife. Dante presents a three leveled system that many Catholics hold to today. Many Christians today imagine "heaven" as a place in the clouds. Buddhists and Hindus believe in reincarnation--for the Buddhists until one reaches Nirvana. Muslims and Jews hold to a similar afterlife experience as Christians do, one in which we dwell with God. Mormons believe that eventually they may become like God (a topic for another day).
But we have not held on, for time imemorial, to the idea of a glorious and perfect dwelling with God. In the Old Testament, the afterlife is referred to as Sheol. Eventually, as seen in Luke 16:19-28, the idea that we could dwell with exalted relatives started to emerge. Similarly, in the ancient Greek and Roman system, the Elysian Fields came far after the idea of Hades.
There's where we run into the peculiar thing. For some reason, accounts of suffering and torture are more prominent in our ideas of the afterlife than of glory. The Egyptian Book of the Dead proscribes all sorts of punishments that can befall one's soul if one is not absolutely careful on the way to the underworld. Dante's Inferno is far more popular than Il Purgatorio or Il Paradiso. Even in Norse myth, the realm of Hel is solely devoted to punishing souls while the valiant only get a hall in the vast kingdom of Asgard.
From these facts I gather two observations. The first is that mankind has almost always believed in A) a soul and B) its eternality. Even in the most ancient Epic of Gilgamesh, an afterlife is described (though many scholars believe it to be an addendum to the original text). After we have finished our existence here, we go on to still exist. It is as if, like Pascal says, we are afraid of being hurled into non-existence. Man cannot bear the thought that at some future date he will not exist. Hence, we live our lives as if we will live forever. We amass fortunes that we can never spend. We put events off indefinitely. We trash our bodies as if they're indestructible. Man cannot bear to even dwell on the thought that there isn't something after this without falling into utter despair.
This is what confuses me about atheism. How can atheists really hope for becoming a nonentity? The greatest one can hope for, at that point, is to attain the kind of fame that men like Homer, Cicero, Socrates and Vergil have attained--fame that spans the eons. However, in a world with a population ove six billion, this is more of a pipe dream than any kind of reality. Really, our sole source of hope lies in having something to look forward to once this is done.
The second thing that I observe is that mankind assumes more often than not that he (or at least his enemies) will inherit an eternal punishment. Hell, Hades, Sheol, Hel, Outer Darkness or a lesser reincarnation--all of these stand as unfavorable destinies, some of which are unavoidable (most likely because we are corrupt and sinful) and others of which are inherited because of our infidelity. We get what we earn. For some reason, man cannot either escape the idea of being eternally punished, just as he cannot escape the idea of nonentity.
The implications of this problem are easy enough to solve. Catholicism (viz Vatican II), Buddhism, Hinduism, Mormonism (to a certain extent) and most ecumenically-minded people all agree that good works will grant you happiness in the hereafter. So, the logical conclusion would be to take on a two-fold effort: first, to conduct good works; and second, to follow Pascal's wager and have faith in a god.