IF GOD IS LOVE, WHO WAS IT THAT INVENTED HELL?

A major hallmark of our times: everyone quotes the Bible and each one finds in it that which can prove their rightness, even the most shaky and unprovable one... If one really believes in the tenet "God Is Love", why should he bother about the rest? Why make one's life dependable on the tenets of the religion that annihilated with self-abandonment thousands of innocent victims, say through the hands of the Holy Inquisition, and has always been the most effective drag on any progress? And the majority of representatives of which are distinguished with such intolerance toward any "otherness" that "love of the neighbor" becomes a downright farce? Well, they haven't even been able of coming to terms with each other, the number of sects has exceeded two hundred, and members of any one of those are very hostile to the members of other groups - while endlessly quoting somebody else's thoughts (second-hand again) sought out among thumbed pages. One's own opinion, like any other manifestation of an outstanding personality, is clearly not a virtue in the eyes of devout old ladies and church patriarchs. On the whole, barrack-style unification, inner and outer, religious and mundane, has always been the most favored tool of both the state and church machinery. Ominous threats that come from a parsons' lips concerning "nether regions" with "gritting of teeth" and "fiery Gehena" to those who have dropped away from the herd, does not evoke notions of "long patience" and love in the mind. Quite the reverse, the Father is perceived as a insidious, revengeful and gloating overseer.

Having clenched my teeth, I’m repeating to myself the platitude: God is Love, and contemplate until my mind goes numb: if three drops of testosteron have infiltrated my flow of estrogens which makes me take a much greater delight in a female stature than a male one, and regard a kiss of two women as the most delectable sight in the world, does it mean I am a kind of undeserving of this love? I, naive one, seem to also being talking about Love…

Advocates of morals (especially that kind of this that has always been blooming in the society of ours – a double standard) would rather see as a couple a man and a woman who do not love each other (false caring is wonderfully expressed by the Russian proverb: «One gets used and grows to love») who cheat on each other whenever an opportunity presents itself – than truly loving people of the same gender.

Without trying to fathom the heart’s innermost feelings, they’ll put a base and low liason of hetero partners who do without truly tender sentiments, above the sterling and pure love of two men or two women. Soul’s aspirations again become hostages of clay dogmas and gloomy demagogy. (Though it is no secret to anyone that there’s enough promiscuity in same-sex relations too). What can be a greater apotheosis of sanctimonious piety and vulgarization of the concept of love itself when everything is reduced to the animal level (and this inflation is tougher than financial one). You cannot hope to elicit the explanation of this paradox, as intolerance never gets along with intelligence. Why strain one’s brains if there is the «book of books» complete with ready answers, plus swarms of home-spun superstitions? Anyone who dares to disagree with those, stand a real good chance to make it to the underworld, where devils will help him grasp the sacred meaning of biblical truths – the primal of which is God Is Love…

As to sinfulness, the list of things that make you a «devil’s servant» is so big that practically no one can hope to attain sainthood – if you do not perform a sin per se, you are stamped with the «original sin» from the moment of conception, so there is no way you can get away with it – and so in any case you’ll have to repent till your last breath, accompanying this sacrament with donations to church bearing an unctuous expression on your face. And what about the concept that a sin gets passed on through many generations – that is if your great grandfather was a serial killer, his sins are to be redeemed not only by you, but by your great grandchildren as well. So fair. I talked to a lot of believers and could see that most of them are motivated not by the life-giving love, but by the pernicious weight of trivial fear. But what luster is there in the eyes of two loving women!.. (I keep straying into the favorite topic)

Here’s an observation of a more respected and authoritative person than myself, the brilliant Russian actor Zinovy Gerdt: « God is an object of fashion now. Churches are crammed. But take a closer look at the faces of those who are praying. Those are out-and-out egoists, obsessed only with their own salvation. And there’s so much malice on their face – as well as secret malignant joy in regard to those behind the temple gate: I’ll be saved and you, skunk, will burn in hell! I think it is against Christ’s teaching, for one has to save others, not oneself». I also have many things to combat within myself, and if I tell I’m above all these prejudices and fits of faint-heartedness, do not believe me.

The Christ’s teaching attracts me till now (for spirituality and church are not synonyms) but along with other, more ancient traditions born in the Orient. If we regard such Eastern philosophies (having their corresponding religious parallels with due ritualism) there’s one common feature that unites them all – the idea that everything happening in the universe is the evolution of Tao, or Buddha’s Consciousness, or Brahman (or Totality, if Advaita’s terminology is to be used) Itself – or that of God – using the words familiar to us (shamans speak of the Universe Web of One Power), and we, as human beings, have no effect on this evolution, as we are not capable of doing this (can a bolt on the wheel control a car?). This idea is hard to accept as the identification with the body is too strong, but if we look at our lives from aside, we’ll see that the most momentous events in it happened as if «by chance», by itself, without our special planning or participation. All that is at the present moment, is part of the functioning of the One Totality, and everything is taking place simultaneously. However, due to the limited nature of human mind, we see everything unfolding before our eyes piece by piece. It can be easily understood with the help of the allegory if we imagine a picture 100 km high and 1000 km long. We shall be eyeing it in parts, passing from one fragment to another – though in reality it always exists in its entirety. This picture is the existence of the universe and the whole of life in it. We have trouble accepting the idea that we are just instruments in the hands of the Totality/Tao/God, and that each of us is born with certain characteristics (encoded in our gene set) which are exactly the way they are supposed to be so that a certain chain of events, connected with a given person, fits in the general picture of evolutionary development. Who chooses parents, time and place of birth for us, our face features and body form? Who breathes for us while we’re sleeping (and in the daytime as well), beats our hearts, digests what we’ve devoured and puts into a grave, taking no heed of our protests and without taking onto account our (supposed) free will? And, finally, programs us to this or that sexual orientation?

All this abstruse ranting is meant to emphasize the idea that if I am as «wrong» as I am, there is a need for that. For the Universal Harmony we are needed the way we have been created by That out of Itself and for Its own pleasure. On the absolute level everything happens without our participation, and great saints will always be born along with great inquisitors for maintaining the eternal and supreme Balance, symbolized in the Chinese philosophy be the well-known sign [. On the relative level (that is on the level of taking ourselves for separate entities with free will) we have nothing to do but to live as our hearts suggest – and we cannot live otherwise (with a noose on the neck and with the wings clipped, what kind of living is it?). Jesus said «God’s kingdom is within you», so is it not better to scrutinize the sacred nooks of one’s own soul rather than align one’s life with the words of a guy in the priest’s robe?

Would you believe, the comrade Carl Marx said the following in the foreword to his «Capital»: «Follow your own path regardless of what other people say» (in this place take me for a communist please). And since we’ve gotten into the maze of dialectics, here are the words of this teaching’s forefather, G. Hegel: «Happy is he who has arranged his existence in such a way that it is in full accord with peculiarities of his character…» Yet the adepts of marxism-leninism chose to thrust on all the duped ones the one common path: first one lived according to the Rules of the Young Pioneers, then – according to the charter of the communist Komsomol and the Party, then, when all of this crashed down into the trash hole of history, the holy place was taken over by the biblical tenets. The whip cannot possibly be dispensed with! Standard-bearers of two-faced righteousness are numberless. Of course there are a lot of those who sincerely worship the Divine but such pure-hearted ones do not parade their piousness.

Love is sexless as it comes from the soul, which is also devoid of gender belonging. And it does not conform to any orders and logic. And I will never be able to understand how the intimacy between the two persons of the same gender differ from that between a man and a women who are not into conceiving a child. The industry of contraceptive methods has reached such an unprecedented level that to glorify heterosexuality as a means of procreation is utter hypocrisy. And if we take a look at the problem of abortions, regarded by church itself as homicide(!), then heteros who pride themselves on their supposed godliness, would have to scratch not just their heads. Practically every traditional pair known to me is guilty of such a crime. In 1997 in Russia alone 3.5 million abortions were performed. (I cannot get rid of the suspicion that if it was men who were subjected to this operation, the number would be 1000 tomes lower). And what about tens of thousands of «children of life» who turned out to be an annoying burden brought into the world in the result of an ovule meeting a spermatozoon? Why not allow same-sex loving couples to adopt these children and thus to up the volume of happiness per capita? No, happiness is harmful – all saints are supposed to be martyrs.

We read in lots of places in the Bible: «Love each other», in many variants… Of course one may argue that meant here is love that is spiritual, heaven-high, transcendental, but I personally have never met such saints, and I was not introduced to Mother Teresa. And I suppose this all was written not for the angels in the sky. As the most prominent sexologist of Russia, Igor Kon, put it: «Love is a special feeling, dirt does not stick to it. And sex, if inspired by love, cannot debase it – the most daring sexual fantasies are pure if consecrated by a noble feeling. There is no height higher than love. And if sex can do without love, love devoid of sex is fruitless and insipid».

It really is better to be tolerant toward each other, for this opposition does not make anyone better. Human nature is such that one cannot know one’s own sins. And the Bible, again, contains, the call: «Be perfect as your Father that is in Heaven», as well as the call to abstain from passing judgment: «Do not judge».

If I ever succeed in achieving the following, there will be nothing else that I’ll desire from my mortal body and sinful soul: «Love your enemies, bless those who damn you, do good to those who hate you and pray for those who hurt and prosecute you…»