Hitler died and went to hell. That is the common perception on the place of the "evil" dictator in his afterlife. But that perception is wrong. Instead, Hitler is in heaven having tea with God, sipping his minty tea and having chocolate as the warm liquid tickles his strange little moustache. It angers people to think that someone as "evil" as HItler should have a place in Heaven. But mostly that is because they don't understand the nature of God and the meaning of that nature.
People who tell you that God is good. He is love, he is compassion, he is justice and all that only has gotten it half right. God, I loathe to say "his" greatness is far more than just that. We have to think of God as a person, perhaps superficially a white bearded male clothed in light on a heavenly throne up on some clouds, that is a childish version of a God who is infinitely greater and has more wisdom than this image that has become a parody in this age when evil, beauty everything has become so blurred, and we have, as a race, become skeptical of any concrete polars between all these absolutes.
The truest nature of God perhaps can only be found in the first pages of the bible, because at the core if we really want to find the heart of a genuinely believable God in our day and age, and not find any hypocrisy or even any deep contradiction which will pull many a truly devoted believer apart who truly wants to fathom the heart of God. That is perhaps, impossible, but nevertheless we are a race which will keep trying, because it makes everything more bearable, and keeps us sane to know that out there somewhere there is a GOD and existence is not devoided of meaning.
Hitler is not in hell for a simple reason. God is the truest artist, the greatest and the most noble. He is in the deepest sense a creator, not just of the universe, of everything, but the act of creation itself, the freedom of artistry. (I cannot help but fall into the trap of saying he, because I, myself have been entrapped in this system which makes GOd impossible to be articulated without a human form and a gender). God, we must be aware, created all things, he is a story-teller, not in the sense that he dictates our lives and the events unfolding on earth, but he is a storyteller, a story weaver. He gives space for stories to unfold. Even if we do not want to admit the fact that God indeed created evil, he had allowed it to take place, to form itself.
I have asked myself this question so many times, if God is infinitely wise and all knowing, why did he allow evil to exist? Why did he let Adam and Eve betray him and hence the ensuing misery for all of human race and the ultimate sacrifice in his son. All this is so too very dramatic and at times too convenient. But if we are to take the Bible literally, we miss the greatest lesson-- in that stories is the heart of God. The Bible is God in its truest sense as stories. God as words, only half captures its beauty. God is the creator of stories. He induces stories to take place. God is the absence of the absolute, he is an absence, because he is a space, a freedom in which he lets our stories unfold. If God is only all goodness, and light, and we only know of one sided conrete-ness, then God is a tyrant.
But God is an artist, a creator without hypocrisy. An old movie on Jesus is titled "the greatest story ever told" perhaps speaks the most truth. That God allowed great evil in the world, that he allowed the holocaust, is the hardest contradiction we can ever swallow. If God is good, then how could he let this happen? "Evil" in this case is not the problem; it is God's goodness which is problematic.
WE have hence created a double sided twin for God, a satan to take the blame. But instead of making GOd more powerful, the creation of Satan diminishes God's power. God is not whole, he is a split, he has a twin, a dark half which is in some sense a nemesis and even an equal. Satan is a human creation, because we cannot understand God. God in the truest sense of compassion and love, is freedom and creation. And God is whole, beyond our limited understanding. I cannot conceive that God is split, that not everything in this existence is his creation. Because if I do, then there is at the heart a contradiction which I cannot live with. And I cannot live with the belief in such a God, who is only half formed, a surface, a contradictory half truth, a creator of intolerance to his creations, and who is a tyrant pretending to be an artist. If Hitler does not have a place with God, then neither does any one of us.
People who tell you that God is good. He is love, he is compassion, he is justice and all that only has gotten it half right. God, I loathe to say "his" greatness is far more than just that. We have to think of God as a person, perhaps superficially a white bearded male clothed in light on a heavenly throne up on some clouds, that is a childish version of a God who is infinitely greater and has more wisdom than this image that has become a parody in this age when evil, beauty everything has become so blurred, and we have, as a race, become skeptical of any concrete polars between all these absolutes.
The truest nature of God perhaps can only be found in the first pages of the bible, because at the core if we really want to find the heart of a genuinely believable God in our day and age, and not find any hypocrisy or even any deep contradiction which will pull many a truly devoted believer apart who truly wants to fathom the heart of God. That is perhaps, impossible, but nevertheless we are a race which will keep trying, because it makes everything more bearable, and keeps us sane to know that out there somewhere there is a GOD and existence is not devoided of meaning.
Hitler is not in hell for a simple reason. God is the truest artist, the greatest and the most noble. He is in the deepest sense a creator, not just of the universe, of everything, but the act of creation itself, the freedom of artistry. (I cannot help but fall into the trap of saying he, because I, myself have been entrapped in this system which makes GOd impossible to be articulated without a human form and a gender). God, we must be aware, created all things, he is a story-teller, not in the sense that he dictates our lives and the events unfolding on earth, but he is a storyteller, a story weaver. He gives space for stories to unfold. Even if we do not want to admit the fact that God indeed created evil, he had allowed it to take place, to form itself.
I have asked myself this question so many times, if God is infinitely wise and all knowing, why did he allow evil to exist? Why did he let Adam and Eve betray him and hence the ensuing misery for all of human race and the ultimate sacrifice in his son. All this is so too very dramatic and at times too convenient. But if we are to take the Bible literally, we miss the greatest lesson-- in that stories is the heart of God. The Bible is God in its truest sense as stories. God as words, only half captures its beauty. God is the creator of stories. He induces stories to take place. God is the absence of the absolute, he is an absence, because he is a space, a freedom in which he lets our stories unfold. If God is only all goodness, and light, and we only know of one sided conrete-ness, then God is a tyrant.
But God is an artist, a creator without hypocrisy. An old movie on Jesus is titled "the greatest story ever told" perhaps speaks the most truth. That God allowed great evil in the world, that he allowed the holocaust, is the hardest contradiction we can ever swallow. If God is good, then how could he let this happen? "Evil" in this case is not the problem; it is God's goodness which is problematic.
WE have hence created a double sided twin for God, a satan to take the blame. But instead of making GOd more powerful, the creation of Satan diminishes God's power. God is not whole, he is a split, he has a twin, a dark half which is in some sense a nemesis and even an equal. Satan is a human creation, because we cannot understand God. God in the truest sense of compassion and love, is freedom and creation. And God is whole, beyond our limited understanding. I cannot conceive that God is split, that not everything in this existence is his creation. Because if I do, then there is at the heart a contradiction which I cannot live with. And I cannot live with the belief in such a God, who is only half formed, a surface, a contradictory half truth, a creator of intolerance to his creations, and who is a tyrant pretending to be an artist. If Hitler does not have a place with God, then neither does any one of us.
posted by Nippy at 9:51 PM
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