Redemption

Human evil in action.

Is there a point at which a human life cannot be redeemed? Where the evils committed by that human essentially make them dead in the eyes of the Creator?

I don't think so.

That means that even Josef Mengele, the Angel of Death at Auschwitz, can be redeemed, that Hitler and Stalin can be forgiven. Not by humans, I don't think. Our capacity to forgive is finite and the crimes of these people seem infinite to me. I cannot forgive, I cannot redeem them. Nor would I wish to. But I have to believe that it is within the capacity of the Goddess to heal even the irretrievably broken such as Charles Manson.

The Goddess can fix even them.

With that said, I suspect that the real obstacle to redemption is the fact that most truly evil people choose to justify and rationalize their evil rather than recognize, acknowledge and own their actions and the consequences stemming from them. It is my belief that one must accept responsibility for one's actions before one can be redeemed. In fact, this was my personal experience, that I could not have a relationship with my Creator until I accepted that I was an alcoholic and that my selfishness had harmed myself and everyone around me.

Back when I was a teenager (like thirteen or so) I had a copy of Penthouse magazine. After about a year I noticed there were stories in between the pictorals and read them. One was an account by the Mossad agent who had captured Adolf Eichmann in Argentina and brought him to Isreal to face trial for his role in the Holocaust. Eichmann was the architect of the Holocaust, he was the man who poured over building plans for the death camps and wanted the gas chambers made larger, the man who could stop a train carrying ammunition to German soldiers fighting the Russians so that a train of Jews might arrive at Treblinka in a more timely manner.

I remember the author describing Eichmann as a polite, friendly man with a sense of humor. Apparently Eichmann even told him that he had nothing personal against Jews at all. He was just doing his job. Yet we have memos from Eichmann complaining that the camps were not meeting their quotas (i.e. they were not exterminating men, women and children quickly enough). When Eichmann's superior, SS head Heinrich Himmler wanted to stop the gassing, Eichmann kept it going. He was a model of efficiency and purpose.

He was also the penultimate example of human evil.

I believe that even he can be redeemed, but not unless he acknowledges the evil of his actions. Men like this have a difficult time doing that. They have invested a tremendous emotional effort into justification and rationalization. In their minds they have drawn logical and definate reasons why they are exempt from the horror of their actions: I was just doing my job, if I didn't someone else would, I only did it to the (Jews, Gypsies, Witches, Christians, Muslims, fill in your favorite group here) and they are not really human, etc., etc.

If it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heavan, then it must be infinately easier for a rich man to enter the Kingdom than for these truly evil to acknowledge their evil and thus begin to return to humanity.

Alberto (Abu) Gonzales is Adolf Eichmann's twin. The primary difference is simply that Gonzales does not have a state willing to degenerate into assembly line industrialized murder. If the United States was at that point, Gonzales would willingly draw up the policies and procecures needed to make it happen.

But even he can be forgiven. He just has to accept the wrongs he is responsible for. From what I can tell, on that basis, Gonzales will never see the Kingdom of Heaven that his Lord spoke of.