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At the end of time on a huge green slope by the blue ocean, over which the equally blue sky stretched, uncounted human crowds gathered. There were people present of all races, nations, languages, cultures, walks of life and epochs. There were martyrs for all faiths, victims of political murders, those exposed to radiation in Hiroshima and those burned alive in Dresden. There were the victims and their oppressors, some of them very well known… There were also those who normally and quietly ended their days. They all had now to be judged. A long and gloomy silence reigned…
However, from time to time, it was punctuated by loud discussions. “Does God have the right to judge us? And what does he know about suffering? “– questions were asked.
There were people ready to argue loudly with God, screaming at him, despise him almost like a pariah and to beat the table with their fists (if only there was a table…).
“He does not have to make difficult choices or seek truth in order to get closer to… himself!” a young theology-student exclaimed with a hint of arrogance in his voice.
“And why would he judge me?! Let him get lost with his ‘judgements’!!!” a young Chinese woman was indignant. “I was not even twenty, when during the war he cut off my head!”. She pointed her finger at one frightened and shamed Japanese. “May I know where that “Lord of All Creation” then deigned to be??!!”
“See!” muttered an atheist with a red-and-gold badge in his lapel. “I guess I was right not to have believed in that vampire then, for I would have been unnecessarily and constantly upset by his helplessness and indifference full of obvious boorishness”.
“He sits up in Heaven, where there are no tears, suffering, hunger, cancer, AIDS… What an idea has he of what a man must often go through…?” an old Indian asked with a grimace on his face.
“Well, let us not exaggerate, ladies and gentlemen!” interrupted a well known Catholic activist. “After all it is He who created this world and knows it better than all of us together…”
“…That’s even worse for him, because it means he only played with us like with dolls!!!”
And so it went for some time. In the end representatives were delegated, who had to bargain with God on behalf of humanity. They decided that in order to gain any right to judge anyone, God must first be born as a pariah (preferably out of wedlock), must be betrayed, scarred, spat on, considered to be an idiot, drugged by “benign” doctors in a mental clinic, and preferably himself be judged. Yes, and convicted in a legal farce and put to death naked. And necessarily let him die in agony…
And again they lapsed into a long silence. It seemed for certain that such a sentence indeed once passed…
“Yes, but to the one called “the Son of God”, not to “God the Father” said an elderly Freemason, tapping his forehead.
„Well… much less would probably suffice… Let him be only threatened with death, let him be bashed a few times by “unknown assailants” and let him go behind bars for a few years for just saying what he thinks!” added an old revisionist with a wry mouth who did not believe in “gas chambers” or in “six million Jews”.
“You blaspheme terribly. Great punishment will befall you!”. A priest in a cassock got upset and a few people echoed his words: “Shame! Even here, in the face of the Most High you have the audacity to argue?!”
At that point Felix Dahn, so far remaining silent, a lawyer, historian and writer born in Munich and deceased in Breslau, the author of “A Struggle for Rome”, interfered:
“Once I had a heated row with the Bavarian King Ludwig II, literally arguing with him all night. And how! We were arguing about politics and moral issues. At one point I told him straight that he was “blinded by hatred”. I said that to a king! In the morning… he warmly thanked me for my sincerity. He stressed that nobody had long been so honest with him. He was accustomed to the fact that in conversations with him people only praised and toadied to him…
Our own resentments are only part of one, never-ending conversation with the infinite, the eternal, part of a conversation which enables us – through confrontation with others – to know ourselves and thus perform a kind of ‘self-examination’ before the final confession.
Anyway, if the King of Bavaria could show his magnanimity, then what to expect from the King of Heaven who knows us probably a bit better than that romantic loner from the Neuschwanstein Castle?”
Once again there was a long silence. But this time it was not so depressing…