Now Here is a Thought...

Today as I was having my usual Tim Horton's Iced Capp and breakfast sandwich I was continuing to read Slavoj Zizek's Violence. I came across an utterly remarkable paragraph which I re-read about 4 times before highlighting it.

He had just quoted the warning of Dostoevsky from The Brothers Karamazov about godless moral nihilism: "If God doesn't exist, then everything is permitted." We hear this a lot, about how God in his various permutations is all that keeps us all from turning into savage animals, yadda-yadda.

Zizek says: "He couldn't have been more wrong: the lesson of today's terrorism is that if there is a God, then everything, even blowing up hundreds of innocent bystanders, is permitted to those who claim to act directly on behalf of God, as instruments of his will, since clearly a direct link to God justifies our violation of any 'merely human' constraints and considerations." (Zizek: Violence; pg 136)

Before any Christians begin their finger pointing toward Islam, I would remind them that their beloved St. Augustine wrote " Love God and do what you will." There is a term for that. It is called 'ethical suspension'; in short, that if one loves God then one can do as one pleases. There is an assumption that in doing what pleases God will always be ethical, which is, of course bullshit. Just ask the victims of the Albigensian crusade, Jew massacres, inquisitions etc. "There is no guarantee, external to your belief in what God really wants you to do. In the absence of any ethical standards external to your belief in and love for God, the danger is always lurking that you will use your love of God as the legitimisation of the most horrible deeds." (Zizek, Ibid: pg 137)

I am still digesting the truth in these statements.

I am going for a Maalox smoothie.

Tim