18 March 2004 Thursday

that God believes in suffering

Memnoch the Devil excerpts (there have been so many more i have wanted to take and share from this book):
where God, in human form (Jesus) speaks with the Devil, Memnoch, on Earth:
in response to God’s acceptance/sanctification of suffering and bloody sacrifice on altars to God, Memnoch says:

”’Yes, but that’s because you never interfered to stop it, you let it happen, you let this humankind evolve and they looked back in horror on their animal ancestors, they beheld their mortality, and they seek to propitiate a god who has abandoned them to all this. Lord, they look for meaning, but they find none in this. none.’

‘Lord, they chose these rituals which involve suffering because they cannot avoid suffering in the Natural World. The natural world is what must be overcome! Why must anyone suffer what humans suffer? Lord, their souls come to Sheol [—the land of souls.. not of Earth and not of Heaven,] distorted, twisted by pain, black as cinders from the heat of loss and misery and violence which they have witnessed. Suffering is evil in this world. Suffering is decay and death. It’s terrible. Lord, You can’t believe that to suffer like this would do any good to anyone. This suffering, this unspeakable capacity to bleed and to know pain and to know annihilation, is what has to be overcome in this world if anyone is to reach God!’’

He considered this a long time and then He shook His head sadly. ‘Memnoch, you are the one who has failed to understand. When is human closest to God than when they suffer for the love of another, when they die so that another might live, when they plunge towards certain death for the protection of those they leave behind or those truths about Life which Creation has taught them?’

‘But the world doesn’t need all that, Lord! No, no, no. It doesn’t need the blood, the suffering, the war. That wasn’t what taught Humans to love! Animals already did all that bloody, horrible catastrophe to one another. What taught Humans was the warmth and affection of another, the love for a child, the love in a mate’s arms, the capacity to understand another’s suffering and watnt to protect that other, to rise above savagery into the formation of family and clan and tribe that would mean peace and security for all!’ (p. 336)” ‘

and many more.