On God: An Uncommon Conversation

by Norman Mailer

  I find this offensive. Apply it to a parent and a child. We test the child—and in some situations we do test a child—but do we do it to see if the child deserves our love? Literature is rife with portraits of fathers and mothers of that detestable ilk.

  Consider the second part: It is educational for the parents. It makes us better people. We do that with children—we do test them to improve them. We say, “Now that you’ve been through this, you’re a better person for it.” We do that all the time to our children.

  On the other hand, there is also large vanity in the assumption that God knows all about evil. Why not try to live with the notion that God is trying to discover what evil is about? What if evil is, at present, more bottomless than good? Isn’t that a corollary of the notion that God is not All-Powerful? What, after all, is God’s relation to Evil? Is He trying to discover more about it? May it be that God doesn’t comprehend Evil that well, any more than parents are always quick to understand when children are sliding toward evil. Are parents always the first to know?

  It was Dostoyevsky who said suffering is the sole origin of consciousness, that only through suffering could we improve our comprehension of the world around us a little more. Do you reject that?

  I can agree that suffering is, yes, a mighty educator, but it is also an immensely expensive one. Some learn a great deal from it; all too many are reduced if not destroyed. Suffering can maim more spirit than it creates. Some learn best by suffering through small stages that enable one to shift one’s uglier habits.

  A form of suffering.

  A modest form. If I want something, and I can’t have it, I may be suffering like a child. Whereas Dostoyevsky was referring to suffering at a level so intense that one had to wonder whether one could go on. Was existence worthwhile? Suffering of that order can become too intense. Some people turn to suicide. And it can be true that a number do pass through such storms of the soul and return not emotionally crippled—indeed, have much to offer. But most have lost too much.

  Let me offer another theodicy, the “now and then.” Evil and pain exist in this world, but only as a prelude to the afterlife. There, no pain will exist. So God offers a balance: much suffering, pain, and evil in this world, but in the other there will be none. The scales balance.

  That is comparable to a man thinking, “I’m poor, but there will come a day when I am wealthy.” Of course, the poor man has nothing to offer concerning the way and the means by which he will become wealthy. He has nothing but his hankering. By the same token, any notion that we will live in peace and beauty afterward may be naught but our need for future promises. Are we looking for salesmanship? “You won’t know what true happiness is until you buy this wonderful car. You’ll thank me for having sold it to you.”

  In the theodicies you’ve presented so far, there is always the assumption that God is in control of our fates from beginning to end. By my lights, theological misdirection rears up right at the commencement of the thesis. Anyone who looks even casually at the variety of incredible animals who have come down through evolution (and/or Intelligent Design) has to assume that God may have said to Himself at a certain point, “This little animal, this macaw, is going to be the best of its species.” Then, it turned out that it wasn’t. So God moved on and made a better bird or made a better hedgehog or a better pig. Then, man came into it and began in his turn to alter the animals—and often, improve them (as we see every year on TV at the American Kennel Club). Yet at the moment you accept a darker notion of existence—that is, live with the assumption that there are hazards and perils added by the Devil, then God’s effort becomes a contest where no one, human or divine, necessarily knows which side may win. Many might be ready to commit themselves to God in such a contest. But for contrast, look at how our sense of challenge is reduced if this is all happening to illuminate God’s greater glory. All we have to do is remain patient and pass through our suffering—because a happy ending is guaranteed. No! I much prefer the assumption of the Greeks that tragedy lies next to happiness, and both compose the staples of our existence. We can live with the hope that it may all turn out well, but such hope will be empty unless we are also prepared to live with a tragic outcome. We need to have the bravery to proceed, but in no way are we entitled to proclaim that a wonderful heaven is waiting for all of us, and we need only keep our minds clean and, most preferably, theologically inert.

  The fourth theodicy is one of Maya. Illusion. This is how some deal with the question of Evil. They say: What humans consider to be evil or suffering is either an illusion or it’s unimportant. Events that are thought to be evil, such as death by natural disaster, are really not so. It could all be part of God’s scheme. Eastern thought—Taoism, Buddhism, Hinduism—takes this stance. They do not engage the problem of evil. You are mistaken, they would claim, if you think it is really there.

  This argument could survive into the twentieth century. Then, the Holocaust shattered it. Shattered it force majeure. The particular facts were so odious that they dictated the need for a different approach.

  Contemplate also gulags and the atom bomb. Excessive human suffering was intensified by at least one order of magnitude. In consequence, the notion that evil is illusion grows offensive. Of course, Maya assumes that all of the “outside world”—good, evil, and neutral—is illusion, wonderful, lovely outer events are as illusory as suffering. It’s all Maya. But to repeat, I find that odious. I suggest that we at our maximum are more than the equal of any holy cow in any Hindu pasture. Indeed, the notion that all life is illusion is comforting to the ethos of the upper classes of India. They can salve their bad conscience at the sight of the hideous poverty around them. It’s all illusion, they can tell themselves happily and most conveniently.

  If you believe in karma, as I do—believe not only in rebirth but in subtle divine judgment (hopefully it is subtle) concerning the manner in which you will be reborn—another part of me remains sardonic and expects that God may have His or Her occasional problem operating the mechanics of reincarnation. If populations die at a steady rate with only a statistical spike here and there—a local earthquake, a terrible storm, a flood—God can receive and judge incoming souls. Forgive so crude a presentation of celestial mechanics, but it must serve for the moment. When reincarnation is flooded with a huge number of deaths that have no meaning—because they are abrupt, even near instantaneous, without warning, and provide no opportunity to die with grace and so leave the victims bereft of awareness at the moment of their death—obliged to die marooned altogether from any sense of why they now must die—then they enter reincarnation with less preparation within. The most sensitive mortal anticipations may have been lopped off. It is worth repeating. I would argue that a sudden, unexpected death is much worse than death that comes to one after a modicum of thought and fear and resolve and expectation. I believe there is a difference, and it may be profound.

  So I think the Holocaust ravaged many human entrances into death. Reincarnation was flooded with near-to-nameless dead.

  Was it so different from trench warfare in the First World War, where they were killing 150,000 people in a week? Surely, that equals the rate of people being exterminated in the Holocaust. By the time the First World War was over, something like thirty million people were gone.

  I believe it’s analogous but not identical. The deaths were, after all, taking place on both sides.

  So every time this has happened, like at the Battle of Stalingrad, all of those—

  When you go into a battle like Stalingrad, you are, at least, aware that you may die. What was diabolical about the Nazi camps is that they were most careful not to prepare people for death. It is worth repeating: They did not state, “We are going to gas you today.” On the contrary, they told the concentration-camp inmates that since they were lice ridden and filthy, they would receive showers, courtesy of the camp. So be so good as to undress. Those prisoners who were most obsessed with cleanliness trooped happily into the gas chambers. A
minute later, they were dying with fire in their lungs and screaming, “You lied, you cheated me.” I am arguing that for a thousand people to die in a large room while experiencing one hideous instant of betrayal is to feel that God has betrayed them.

  In contrast, the soldiers in Stalingrad knew there was a large chance they were going to perish. That, I would submit, offered less grievous problems to the powers of reincarnation than the gassings of the Holocaust. I repeat: It is so important to have a sense of why you are dying. I go so far as to believe that that can prepare you for your next existence.

  Are you saying God was not able to accommodate many who were ready for reincarnation?

  What is basic in the universe? Certainly the laws concerning the conservation of energy—we know that you cannot do everything at once for everyone. All existence seems to be built on that set of proportions. So to assume that God is in complete command of reincarnation is equal to assuming that He or She never suffers even a passing despair before huge, unforeseen disasters and their concomitant depletions of divine energy. Indeed, why must we assume that God anticipates every event? Or is in command of every energy for every occasion? He or She created our world, but that doesn’t mean every oncoming situation was delineated in advance. Hardly so. History, because of the ongoing actions of God and the Devil, is not always open to prediction, not even to them. Before the future of history even divinities take pause. Neither side commands all the contemplations.

  What happened, then, to those victims of the gas chambers?

  I would offer this speculation. I would say most of those who desired reincarnation did receive it, but in unsatisfactory fashion. This would derive from the argument I proposed earlier that the closest we come to Heaven or Hell is to encounter some angelic witty presence who decides how you are going to be reincarnated and where. When God’s wit is present, that is as close as you will get to Heaven or Hell, either the knowledge that you will have a better life or a poorer one at the start of your next life. But when the Creator is not functioning at His or Her best but is too beleaguered, too extenuated, too despairing, too exhausted, then the choices made for reincarnation can be deemed gross—there’s not enough of God to go around. It is a way of saying the Holocaust deadened God’s wit. Too much was happening at once. God, I will repeat once more, is not inexhaustible.

  I hear what you say, but why is it more difficult for God to assign a new birth to someone who died in the Holocaust than someone who died in the trenches? I don’t see the difference.

  Okay, let’s put it this way—you have been a teacher. You certainly won’t dispute the suggestion that you can walk into certain classrooms and see that certain students are ready to learn, whereas others look lethargic. Some are eager to be in class, and others are there because it is compulsory. So I am saying that when you die with great bitterness in your heart, you are harder to reach. How does this not apply to reincarnation? I am now improvising outrageously, but allow me. Let us say that the Monitoring Angel comes by, takes one quick look, and has a sense of how the recently expired soul before him can prove strong here, weak there, and might well deserve to go to this rebirth or that. In normal situations, he can make quick decisions. But if the dead person’s soul is in disarray, then it can be analogous to you deciding how to give necessary counsel to a student who has come into your room in fearful drugged-up condition. You don’t necessarily know whether they should be assigned to a given class. I think this can carry over to what I’m talking about.

  Next one. The big picture, the fifth theodicy. God’s divine plan is good. What we see as evil is not really evil. Rather, it is part of a divine design that actually is good. Our limitations prevent us from seeing the larger picture. Certainly you’ll grant that God envisions more than we do.

  Certainly.

  So things we think are a terrible tragedy turn out a year later to be positive experiences.

  Yes, the army: the worst experience of my life, and the most valuable. That’s one thing. But to build a theological system on this theodicy may be excessively hopeful. It does not explain evil at all. It does not justify the Holocaust. The first person who can show me how the Holocaust was good for God’s purposes will alter my thinking drastically.

  The great example is Judas. Judas was a traitor, a betrayer, yet he was absolutely necessary to God’s plan—

  How do you know what God’s plan was? You’re taking the received wisdom of theologians who have been living with these enigmas for two thousand years and coming up with the answers that serve their respective needs. But what they conclude may have nothing to do with cosmic or earthly reality. In The Gospel According to the Son, I concluded that two things happened because of the crucifixion. God lost to the Devil and, worse, he had expected to win. He thought Jesus was going to change humankind profoundly and immediately. He did not foresee the end. God, having so much to oversee all at once, is not necessarily focused on what each one of His particular Creations is capable of. While I’m willing to assume that Jesus was His bold stroke, I would add that in chess when a really bold move is made and the player is not sure how it is going to turn out, you record it with an exclamation point plus a question mark. I would say God’s expectation for Jesus was both an exclamation point and a question mark. Then, like many another bold move, it did not turn out as expected. The Devil won—Jesus was tortured. At this point, God in His brilliance came up with an answer to the Devil. He gave us to believe that His son actually died for our sins. What a human chord was struck! But to suggest that this was all planned in advance—crucifixion and resurrection—dubious. God may well have been responding to a crushing defeat with claims of half a victory. That makes more sense to me: God was rewriting the depths of what had happened after the events ensued—which is exactly what humans do all the time. We call it history. It is one of our fundamental activities. I suppose I even offer the assumption that not only is God like us in many ways but, indeed, He or She also has an ego to protect, that is, a necessary reservoir of confidence sufficient to keep striving.

  The next theodicy argues that evil is not the cause but the consequence of people failing to observe God’s will. Universal, reciprocated love would solve most of the problems that lead to the evils in the world.

  Well, let me go back to something I said earlier. God is searching for a deeper set of meanings in evil. Conceivably, God may feel that He does not understand evil all that satisfactorily. Evil has aspects that God’s understanding may not penetrate. My repetitive notion is that God, like us, seeks to learn. Maybe at the commencement, whatever form it really took, some vast deity, very far removed, said, “All right, new and most youthful deity, this will be your territory. Do what You can with it. If You can.”

  That’s a Gnostic idea.

  “And if You fail—well, it’s happened to other deities. All the same, You are an artist, the best artist we have available just now for Your assigned part of the cosmos.” Given this scenario, our young God soon discovers that He or She has a great deal to learn about evil—and is soon fascinated with it.

  Well, you have a view of evil as a powerful, dynamic force.

  Yes, at the least I see evil as looking to destroy the part of the universe that we know—our world.

  Emerson said there really is no evil, just the absence of good, but that there are degrees of good.

  Too easy. It enables us to go to sleep at night without pang or fear. But on the nights when one can’t sleep, sometimes you can feel there’s evil in the room, evil in your heart, evil in people around you—not all the time, but (rarely—thank God!) on those occasions when one’s felt such a presence, you certainly cannot say that it is not really evil, merely a lesser degree of good. Maybe Emerson never felt an incubus on his chest. He was, after all, such a fine spirit.

  Another argument: Evil is the consequence of God permitting humans to have free will. Human cruelty is the price of freedom. God gave us this freedom, and He cannot interfere. Without the possibility to
choose to do good or evil, humanity would be robots.

  That’s the best, single, strongest argument. But theologians wriggle out of it. They put God back in control by the end of the philosophical day.

  Well, yes, at the end of time, God does take over again. This is a testing time.

  Here is exactly where existentialism needs to rear up. Yes, God had to give us free will in order to find out about us. He could learn so much more about us provided we were given free will. But, of necessity, the door had to be left open to the Devil. This was a move done, perhaps—on a cosmic level—in fear and trembling. Yes, great fear because the final answer had to be left open. It was not free will unless the Devil had something like an equal opportunity to influence humans.

  I would add that by now it is a tripartite war. If it is only a contest between God and the Devil, and we are no more than the field on which it all takes place—some species of Astroturf—then we still do not have free will. We have to be equal as players to God and the Devil. That has to open a new kind of fear for us. It could all go down to disaster. The usual supposition, however, is that God will finally be victorious, and, yes, we, His soldiers, will all go to Heaven, a view held for centuries—no longer, however, I would say. Now it is as if any one of these three forces can triumph. Many will now even conceive of a universe without God and the Devil. I don’t pretend to know how to speculate on this. Let’s say it is not inconceivable that man may become more powerful in relation to God and the Devil. If They have exhausted each other, we may even arrive at a point where it does become man and woman’s world, our humans’ world.