The Associated Press once ran a story about Fidel Castro’s visit to Venezuela. The Cuban president used the occasion to sign a big oil contract with Venezuela, then toured the country with President Hugo Chavez, and took in an exhibition baseball game between Cuba and Venezuela.

Chavez, who was then in his mid-forties, actually played in the game that Castro watched. He manned first base and went 0-for-3 at the plate. After the game, President Chavez insisted on pitching to Castro, who was then seventy-four, but had been a good baseball player in his day.

Chavez’ first pitch did not even reach the plate. Castro swung and missed on the second pitch. On the third he tried to bunt, and got called for a strike. Then Chavez threw two more balls, so the two leaders were locked in a full count.

Chavez stared his mentor down, took his windup, and launched his best pitch. It sailed right over the heart of the plate, but Castro’s bat remained on his shoulder. The umpire shouted, “Strike three!” But Castro simply said, “It was a ball,” and took first base. Chavez didn’t say a word. The opposing team stood mum. The ump looked away.

Later Castro joked, “Today just wasn’t Chavez’ day.”

There is reason to worry that some of our leaders are growing more Castro-like all the time, thinking they can do whatever they want, overruling others, and ignoring moral judgments. But while Castro could overrule a Venezuelan umpire, even he could not overrule God. The Scriptures everywhere teach that humans will face an ultimate judgment, and no one will overrule that Judge.

On any list of biblical high points – creation, Fall, the call of Abraham, monarchy, the birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus – the Day of Judgment must be included. The Hebrew and Greek nouns for judgment appear well over five hundred times in the Bible. The verb form appears almost two hundred additional times. Judgment is one of the Bible’s most prominent themes, and it comes with the repetition of the promise (or warning) that a final, conclusive judgment is coming.

There are not just dozens but hundreds of biblical texts on the subject. So, why is it that judgment, which is such a major part of the biblical revelation, is almost entirely ignored by the contemporary church?  Judgment is, in our time, the Church’s forgotten doctrine.

Perhaps we are silent on the subject because we have been taught to think of Judgment as a threatening, negative thing. We know that we have done things that deserve to be condemned, so we fear it. But there is another side to judgment.

In the Bible, the Day of Judgment is sometimes applauded by people. They speak of it with longing: “Let the heavens rejoice, let the earth be glad; let the sea resound, and all that is in it; let the fields be jubilant, and everything in them. Then all the trees of the forest will sing for joy; they will sing before the Lord, for he comes, he comes to judge the earth. He will judge the world in righteousness and the peoples in his truth.”

Here the writer yearns for God to judge the earth. Similarly, the Apostle Paul refers to the day of judgment as a part of the gospel, that is, the good news. But how can judgment be good news?

It is good news because it promises to give every person the thing for which they are best suited. At the judgment, people get what they are made for, or what they have made themselves for. You can be sure that even the man who finds himself in hell will be perfectly suited for it.

Judgment is good news because it is the means by which everything that has gone wrong will be set right. Creation itself, St. Paul says, echoing the psalms, longs for the day. It is good news because judgment spells the end of evil, pettiness, hatred, and bigotry.

Judgment, while it certainly means the diminution of some, means the elevation of humanity. Judgment is history’s watershed moment, its turning point, when humanity finally grows up and becomes what God intended it to be all along.