The wandering,
the road, seems endless. Maybe because that’s exactly what it is.
Endless and,
sometimes, meaningless.
But… in the
light of the magnifying glass it’s not the road or the wandering itself that is
meaningless, it’s the way it’s supposed – as it seems – to be carried out.
Swedish author Mikael
Niemi was on to something important when he, in his novel Populärmusik från
Vittula (eng. Popular music from Vittula), described the life of a Laestadian as an endless uphill walk. A life
where pain itself is the essence, is what gives the wanderer his rank or
status. Deprivation and asceticism are the building blocks with which the faithful
one builds his ladder to Heaven.
The medieval
flagellants who whipped themselves with barbed iron chains were but the
ultimate consequence of the yoke that for centuries, yes millennia has been put
upon the shoulders of the faithful one – not by god, but by those who have
claimed to interpret the word of god. Fear the Lord! Walk the hard and narrow
road, because the broad one leads to Hell!
And many are the
poor souls, sheltered in bodies, that have followed the dictates from the
priests, the mullahs, the scribes.
And the struggle
for survival has often been so hard, so tiresome that it has devoured all
energy from the faithful one. He hasn’t had the strength to sit down and
reflect upon the absurdness of what’s demanded of him, to ask the decisive
questions, to add two and two together and make the analysis.
Because he who
is capable of lifting his gaze, of removing – if only for a short while – the
yoke from his shoulders and straighten out into his full length, and listen to
his brother from another place on the earth, will quickly realize that there is
something wrong here.
Because he who
observes his brother from another place on the earth, can very clearly see how
his brother is wandering an equally hard and narrow road, but the observer can
see that the road his brother is walking, goes straight down to Hell.
And if the
observer had been able to put himself inside his brother’s body and soul, and
from there watch himself on his narrow road, he would to his dismay find that also
that road, his own, leads to Hell.
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| Where the Hell am I Going? by Andy Lord |
Because in their
urge to fetter the people, to gain complete control over them and assure itself
of their tithe, the church – no matter if it claims to follow Jesus or Mohammed
– has identified as its most important principle that thou shalt have no other
gods before me.
Heresy has been raised
to become the ultimate sin, the only unforgiveable sin, the sin that with
absolute certainty will send the sinner to the eternal fire.
And here we have
the paradox. For the one staggering on along the narrow road of the Christian
priest will inevitably end up in the Muslims’ Hell. And the one who painstakingly
advance on the equally narrow road of the Muslim mullah will with the same
absolute certainty find himself in the Christians’ Hell.
Which leads us to the natural follow-up question: If all roads lead to
Hell – one hell or the other – why not choose to walk the broad road instead,
and have some fun on the way?
