The Devil is God turned upside down. As long as our understanding of God is on this level, i.e. that there are two Forces - one Good (= God) and the other Evil (= Devil), we are going to keep on fighting wars. Look at the words themselves even: Good = God and The Evil = Devil. So God is not One, but Two. This inevitably divides humanity into two camps, the good and the evil. And God compels us to fight the evil. The axis of evil. There you have it!
But God is beyond good and evil, beyond light and dark, beyond life and death even. Not as ‘emptiness’ or a ‘vacuum’, as the atheists claim, but as that which is and at the same time is not. Both 1 and 0 (remember, we live in the computer age!). This incomprehensible Mystery of the 1 and of the 0 - please don’t think we are implying that the Computer is God! - can only be experienced, never explained. Anyone claiming to know what God is, is dangerous. For he is going to judge you. Not your acts, but you as a person. And that we may never do. ‘Judge not, lest ye be judged’. and at the same time
God is understood in more than 6 billion ways
Each person has his own understanding of God. Literally. And they are all correct. Some believe God is a ‘vacuum’. This to our mind is tantamount to denying the existence of Existence itself. But if somebody should understand God as a ‘vacuum’ (the atheist), even that is not incorrect. Because by stressing the vacuum, the opposite (plenitude) is equally stressed. Non-Being implies Being. God both is and is not. That is the ineffable Mystery, the invisible Force, beyond existence as we know it.
What about moral laws then?
But, you may ask, if this is so, God has no morals. If God is beyond good and evil, why should we as people condemn evil? Well, the simple answer is, we should not condemn evil. We might as well condemn existence. The only thing we can do is define what we consider to be evil acts and make sure that anybody who commits any of these evil acts is prevented from doing so in the future. This has been done, of course, in penal codes and the ‘criminal justice’ system restrains offenders and prevents crime. If the evil act is of a minor category, we may grant the offender a second and even a third chance. But society’s patience should end somewhere, for it will be readily seen that too many evil acts will destroy society.
And secondly (although this should really come first, but we follow the course of history), each and every person has deep within him an understanding of God, beyond good and evil. And it turns out that this understanding, although infinitely different on the surface, does converge to a marked degree between people of all cultures, religions and races. This understanding is called conscience. It overlaps to such an astounding degree that nearly all people - of all religious persuasions (including atheists) - can agree on a text describing its content, thereby defining what we may call ‘good conduct’. This text is known as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The text needs improvement and universal obligations should be added (as well as a list of universal evil acts), but the existing text is the first manifestation of a World Conscience.
All mystics agree
All mystics agree on one thing: You cannot experience God (whatever that may be) if you have no peace and quiet. So we may conclude that whatever God is, you need peace and quiet to experience it. This should tell us something. It should tell us at least that it cannot be coincidence that the first manifestation of a World Conscience insists on Peace and quiet order.
Consider John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address for some inspiration on human rights and liberty. “Let every nation know .... that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty’. Another very significant remark in this address: ‘If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich’. And some very sound advice to President George Bush: ‘Civility is not a sign of weakness. And sincerity is always subject to proof. Let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate’. Finally on nuclear arms: ‘Let both sides ... formulate serious and precise proposals for the inspection and control of arms and bring the absolute power to destroy other nations under the absolute control of all nations’.
We think that JFK would have handled the so-called ‘Iran nuclear crisis’ in a totally different way than George Bush is trying to do. Let us never fear to negotiate.