Now I know
Posted on | July 22, 2010 |
Seven years ago my best friend of thirty years was killed by religious fundamentalists. They threw him off a roof near the border with Iraq because unarmed news reporters are obviously satanic.
I now know what I would say to his murderers if I were to meet them.
I’d say: “Guess what? We’re all going to heaven, anyway, every one of us. The only difference is that when we get there some of us will be delighted and some of us will be really, really, scared. Which do you think you will be? You can still change your mind about that, you know. It’s not too late.”
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July 22nd, 2010 @ 8:02 pm
I’m sorry, Allan, I had no idea. I’m sure that even after seven years, the loss is still painful.
It is so sad that even today, people are still killing other people for simply being born somewhere else and holding different views.
I don’t personally believe in any afterlife or any gods, but I’ll say this to the type of person who would commit such atrocities: If there is a god, it has allowed people to be born with all manner of beliefs and cultures and if you are angry with other people for not thinking just like you, you may want to take it up with your supreme being. It seems pretty terrible to think a benevolent god would allow innocent children to be born just to damn them for not being culturally identical to you.
If there is no god and no afterlife and you’ve spend your entire life fearing and hating and hurting others, you’ve lived a far worse life than anything you could inflict on another person. You have wasted the most important gift you were ever given and you have failed to leave the world better than when you joined it. There may be no retribution but there are no rewards for a life like that.
July 22nd, 2010 @ 8:57 pm
Thank you for this, Marnie. I do miss my old friend, and of course he never will get any older. Your kind thoughts are deeply valued.
I totally agree with your points, too, I have to say, even though I do believe there is a divine energy of some sort which we tend to call god. Even if there weren’t, I think that it is what we do here and now that matters, since it’s pretty clear we are here to be loving and compassionate, not ‘right’ or ‘wrong’, or ‘holy’ or any other silly category of thought like that. It’s a point you make so elegantly.
To some extent we’re here to be loving, and help each other get through life the best we can - because the alternative is too horrible to contemplate. I suspect those murderers are already living in a self-imposed Hell, whether they know it or not. I’d like to invite them out of it.
As you say: ‘there are no rewards for a life like that’.