It's not Christian, or non-Christian, ake. It has to do with how the lesson of responsibility in life is rendered. Some folks imply that your only real responsibility will be to get the hell off this mortal coil, join Papa-In-Sky, be upgraded to a non-material golden Being, and make music ad infinitum. This is a very shortened version, but you can see how it woul be easy to rationalize harmful acts against lesser beings or races or species if all you were going to do was escape to the hereafter. The downtrodden slaves of the South made up lots of songs about escaping to the hereafter, for their reasons, as well. But they can be condoned on the basis that they were in an insufferable amount of oppression. Using the same rationale as an expiation of your own harmful acts against others is not so easily understood.

On the other hand some folks teach that you will find yourself riding the wheel of Life until you learn it so well you can transcend or graduate. If you thought that, naturally, you'd be more considerate about sowing pain or environmental mayhem, because you'd know you would be living with the after-effects of your own actions one way or another,.

These two models of the life-cycle of the soul engender very different models of what ethical thought should be.

Capisce?


A