Henry Kissinger, it has been said, has a body count behind him comparable to the worst mass murderers in History, from Adolf Hitler to Mao to Stalin, Pol Pot, Genghis Khan, Leopold II. Take your pick. He’s up there.
References and jokes about him “meeting his master” (Satan) are legion on Internet right now.
Did Henry Kissinger go to Hell?
Earlier, I wrote this in an email to a group of friends:
I don't believe so. Now this gets into the real meat of this email: What's the Afterlife? I don't believe in Eternal Hell. I don't believe that even Hitler and Kissinger deserve an "eternal torment," as bad of motherfuckers as they are. Many of us want revenge on our enemies, and we want people to burn in Hell (Well, I don't.) Even 30 million or 50 million or 100 million dead bodies have their run-out of punishment, their time when you get done paying for your murder of them. Should you have to spend 50 million years in Hell for each body that you killed?
But...in the established Western religious traditions, you don't spend 50 million years in Hell for killing 50 million people. No. You spend an ETERNITY. That's not a Googol Years, folks. (1 “Googol” is ten to the 100th power, that is, 1 with a hundred zeros.) Nor is it 10 to the 1000 years.
In the Established Western Religious Tradition (and some others), that's Infinity years. You know, that symbol that looks like an “8” but rotated ninety degrees to the horizontal. How can you comprehend Infinity?
And...of course, you also spend an eternity in Hell for, simply…,
masturbating.
Just like Hitler, even if you were the nicest person on earth. Even if you are Mother Theresa, but masturbate once in your life, you spend an Eternity in torment...Because you were not covered by the Blood of Jesus, you see. All sin is treated equally in the Bible, and sin is sin and will get you to Hell nonetheless the same...Because it's not about what you do or don't do (not by works)...it's about being a member of the VIP Club.
So you could kill 100 million people like Hitler might have wanted to do but just because you accepted Christ right at the end, you get to go to Heaven. While a nice guy who never singed a hair on anybody's head but masturbated or cussed or drank or fucked another man gets to go to Hell, if he doesn't "accept Christ." Which is not as easy as it sounds, because "Disciple = Christian = Saved" and you have to go through the studies, count the cost, repent, give up everything, and be baptized, and bear fruit (that is, have the Holy Spirit help you succeed in bringing other disciples to Church.) ‘Cause if you don't, "the tree that does not bear fruit will be cut off of the vine." So it does not depend on your works, but by others' decisions to buy your sale and close the deal and accept your terms of joining your church. If you do not close the deal —make the sale— you don't get into Heaven. Your heart grows hard and you eventually end up leaving the Church. And as my former pastor once yelled loudly in the auditorium to the college ministry I was in:"If you fall away, you go to Hell. That's all there's too it!" in that ra-ra sporty kind of pep rally way.
But..How can a finite crime justify an eternal punishment?
Nah...I don't believe in that. So, no, I don't want Henry Kissinger to go to Hell. I wouldn't wish that on even my worst enemy.
But then what about Reincarnation? I lean towards belief in that, and there's some strong anecdotal evidence pointing in that direction (past life memories by kids and knowledge of certain facts and languages that young kids would not have access to). But...Will Henry Kissinger have to pay Karma in a future life for what he did? Will Hitler have to pay Karma for what he did? Spending thousands of lifetimes of suffering, thousands of deaths in childbirth, birth abnormalities, birth defects, living a life of suffering enslavement and torture and oppression?
That then begs the question: Are oppressed people, like Jews in concentration camps in Germany, Blacks on plantations in America, Iraqis starving after their water infrastructure was destroyed, Africans dying of preventable diseases such as cholera and water borne parasites, and malaria as a result of poverty and lack of infrastructure...Are they all former Hitlers and Stalin’s and Genghis Khans and Pol Pots? Or former wife beaters, rapists, or abusers? Are they all paying Karma for sins in past lives? Do they, in fact, deserve their fate?
You see, such a view of reincarnation engenders an attitude that can easily lend itself to accepting oppression of others and being silent about it.
How about Reincarnation Without Karma? How about, no matter what you did or did not do...You just come into another body and it is a total reset, total starting over, regardless, without consequences, without Karma?
I think this latest is the fairest and best system. I know it sounds counterintuitive because we as Humans often want to see wrongdoers suffer for their crimes. But think about it a little harder and deeper for a minute.
What does this last scenario engender? It engenders an attitude of: The Universe outside of us not going to guarantee Justice; Justice is on US to make. It's on us to make it a better world. The ball is in our court.
The fact of the matter is EVERYBODY is paying for the Karma of Adolf Hitler, not just Hitler. For Hitler set into motion a train of circumstances and causality that led to the present world. Would there be an Israeli-Palestinian conflict without Hitler? The Law of Cause and Effect and Karma rather sets up the stage, or the platform, onto which the actors step. That stage and the platform is the Past. We are suffering the Karma, collectively, of Woodrow Wilson's Treaty of Versailles and League of Nations, for there wouldn't have been a World War II nor a Vietnam War nor the present Southwest Asia conflicts without that.
Karma doesn't just affect an individual; it affects the whole world. So, this last view of the Afterlife engenders the kind of attitude of: "What kind of world do you want to inherit in future lifetimes?" If the world tomorrow is an oligarchy where 99% of the people are slaves and serfs, and only 1% are masters, then there is a 99 out of 100 chance that in your next lifetime you will be a slave/serf. Doesn't matter how good of a person you are.
So we better get it right, think about what kind of world that we want to reincarnate into, and work for that.
Of course, there’s also the Atheist/Materialist “when you die you’re dead and that’s it” view where you just go into the soil to be with the worms and Consciousness ceases. It’s a very popular view these days, professed by the majority in the intellectual class, which I feel is not really an honest assessment of their true emotions. I think many profess that view openly because it makes them sound smart. But it’s not really what they think in their heart of hearts. Because…Wow…Such a dim view. As I progress in my age, and see loved ones in the Boomer category die around me (I’m a Gen X), I have to say: “What a bummer!” I’d like to think I’m going to see these people again.
But, looking further and deeper, the Atheist/Materialist worldview of the Afterlife is in many ways similar to the Christian Rapture view in terms of how it encourages you to think about what you do in relation to the future:
“I’m going to be dead so I won’t have to suffer it, but our children will,” is what one often hears.
“I’m going to be raptured up with Christ and this world is not our home anyway.” So why bother building and working for a future world that we’re not going to be in? Much less why bother putting eggs into a basket of a world that may not even be here in the future, according to the dominant Western paradigm of One Lifeism?
Shouldn’t we have to bear the consequences of our actions? Shouldn’t we have to sleep in the bed we made? And also be rewarded for the good that we do? This is where the sticky rewards/punishment aspect of Heaven/Hell, but without the Eternity, can be useful. For not only are we all suffering the Karma of Adolf Hitler and Kissinger but are also reaping the rewards of Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass. For, America would not have been as good of a nation and the superpower that it is without Civil Rights opening up the way for greater opportunities for people to express their talents and for the kind of freedom that allowed scientific innovation to progress. And, since there is strong evidence that Harriet Tubman had clairvoyant and supernatural abilities, that lends evidence for something more than the material. Not only that, but that the Universe is directed, causal, with purpose. That evidence also points to the idea that Harriet Tubman was “chosen by God” every bit as much as Moses was when it came to carrying out a specific task: leading her people to freedom. Harriet Tubman was the American Moses while MLK was the American Jesus.
So the Universe IS non-random, directive, conscious…there IS a God, after all. But then why the earlier statement I made: “The Universe is not going to guarantee Justice; Justice is on US to make?”
But…We ARE a part of that Universe, and a part of its expression. There is a phrase: poetic justice. So Justice does exist outside and independently, in what C.S. Lewis calls the Tao. This is where free will comes in. It’s just that I need to expose how the dominant paradigms of the Afterlife engender an attitude that justifies oppression. And the one that does that the least, I am going to argue, is the one that I put forward: Reincarnation Without Individual Karma. The Universe, God, or whatever, isn’t keeping a scorecard of how many times you masturbate, cuss, smoke, or who you put your dick into. It’s more about how we think about the kind of world that we want to make and inherit. Perhaps that is the grand lesson that God/Universe is teaching us.