Empathy and hate
I don’t know what’s more disturbing: that I can relate to a poorly-written villain from Marvel’s second mainstream universe after Reed Richards (Mr. Fantastic) thwarts her plans, or that I’m seriously entertaining the thought in the first place.
I don’t think God doesn’t hate. What I’ve learned about God, growing up, is that he has some kind of love-hate thing going on. God loves (more often “has mercy on”) the believers, but severely dislikes the disbelievers. He puts curtains over their hearts and turns them into stone so that they may never see the correct way, and they will burn in hell forever the fuel of which is men and stones. Stuff like that, perfect empathy? I think that’s possible for a human being — one who grafts on another half brain to her own to think faster and tries to destroy the Fantastic Four and X-Men because she has unresolved psychotic issues, yes — but not for the God I learned about growing up. If God was truly perfectly empathetic the concept of hell wouldn’t exist.
Shan said,
August 14, 2006 @ 4:05 pm
I somewhat disagree. In Islam, at least, it’s the hypocrites who have a place in hell sealed first. This implies they know what is right and wrong, but choose to do wrong anyway. Does God feel empathy towards the person who does wrong, but has the capacity and understanding to do right? I don’t know, but I think God holds these people accountable and it’s not necessarily due to a lack of empathy. Sometimes the ‘why’ behind a person’s actions is simply self-serving. In such cases, God punishes severely.
fahad said,
August 14, 2006 @ 7:05 pm
Ruminations about the nature of the divine based on excerpts from a comic book…Give me a break!
fahad said,
August 14, 2006 @ 8:02 pm
By the way, the angry arab link in your blog is no good – it leads to an error message.