Dads stories

11^th January 2000.

It’s been a while since we discussed our dear God. All day long I have this program I watched at 4am this morning when I couldn’t sleep, running around in my head. It is starting to get hot and I had forgotten to put on the small fan.

The topic “EVIL” in capitals, with blue flames all around. Normally I don’t watch such junk. But this topic is one of my philosophical hobby horses, so I was open to surprise.

But the surprise, as expected, didn’t eventuate. The people that were the subjects of this program, apart from general witches, the Ku Klux Klan, Voodoo and such were Jack the Ripper (the English Hamann), Hitler (of course) and a catholic priest as antidote.

The priest meant: “someone who does not acknowledge the existence of satan is totally in error. He has no idea what goes on there”.

I assume that the said catholic priest has already chased out his share of devils. But at least he didn’t accuse the no believers in satan to be possessed by him. It is a bit like mental illness in this regard. When someone says that they are not sick, but totally normal, that is taken as a sign that they are in fact mad (proven fact). So, when I say that I don’t believe in satan, then I am possessed by him. It is a sure sign. It is satan who speaks through me and in this way hides his presence.

And don’t think that this is nonsense from the Middle Ages. All my daughters were from time to time involved in various religious denominations. And this fact was definitely brought home  to me. But that is already a while ago.

I find it interesting that this idea in each Christian denomination (or maybe almost each) is  fundamental -  almost  a foundation. God is almost an afterthought, after all He does nobody any harm, whilst he is sitting there on his heavenly throne and allows himself to be known as a good person. But with satan, one has something that can be touched, one can take him on to test ones courage. Him one knows after all through and through. He is like a roaring lion, seeking to devour. If you take satan out of the churches, then the church will go broke. Exactly the same can be said for TV. Take out all the horror out of movies, and nobody will watch this rubbish any more.

Good and bad. What is BAD, with blue flames or without? I feel we have not yet finished our discussions on this topic.

Also not on the topic of mothers and on the topic of suicides.

Don’t loose any sleep over it, please. All the best. Peter

Comment by the translator (Inge): I have not taken dad’s emails entirely chronologically. Sometimes I combine a couple of emails into one topic because they follow on from each other. In early 2000 there were many emails which dealt mainly with the editing of Dad’s books and stories. So it is sometimes difficult to figure out which comments belong to Dad’s fiction and which are dealing with life issues. He constantly talks about people, and a lot of them are characters in his stories, so I have been skipping them. However sometimes they have other things embedded so when I go back over them I find little snippets. It is an interesting experience translating someone else’s comments, sometimes I have to bite my tongue not to make a comment of my own J so I guess I don’t need to mention here that I am trying to stay as close as possible to dad’s own feelings and ideas without letting my translation be influenced by my beliefs J