A thought experiment…

God is dead.

In orthodoxy, God is omnipotent and omniscient – all powerful and all knowing.

This would mean God “is all and in all”

Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all. Colossians 3:11 (Paul, AD 90)

…one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. (Paul, AD 62)

But if God is all there is, was and ever will be and knows everything how awfully boring and lonely would that be?

What is more, it is a living, eternal Hell.

So, what did God do…

God made a Decision – thou shalt be Other.

This was creation from nothingness.

And so, we were born.

In so doing, God deemed that absolute is Other not self.

Not logical other as opposed to same but he, she and other that is not he or she…

one who has face and faces.

Face is appearance, the presentation of the other.

You get to decide if the other is Other or only your own reflection, opinions, and attitudes.

In denial, you lose face as all faces die with you.

And so, God died…on a cross they say.

Moreover, God descended into Hell.

Therefore it says, “When he ascended on high he led a host of captives, and he gave gifts to men.” (In saying, “He ascended,” what does it mean but that he had also descended into the lower regions, the earth? He who descended is the one who also ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things.) Ephesians 4:9″ (Paul, AD 90)

Hell is absolute absence of the Other until perhaps…

one becomes as God, dead to self-absolutism and faced with the Other by virtue of Decision.

By this then, God deemed the lowly, weak, poor, sick, homeless, hopeless, suffering of the Other to be more paramount than the powerful, high, and mighty.

Absolute is no longer omnipotent and omniscient.

Absolute is the lowly, the stranger, the sojourner, the other.

Absolute essence is the other.

Those who fuel their vanities, elevate their conceptions of themselves; feign the omnipotent and omniscient condemn themselves to Hell.

They gorge themselves on their own illusions of grandeur.

They deny the plight of the other, the lowly, the suffering in their indolence.

Ultimately, they become omnipotent and omniscient in a living Hell of nothing other…

but only themselves.

Maybe in eternal Hell they find themselves, a god, who has only themselves with none other.

In that place who is to say they cannot make a Decision – that there is an Other, others.

God died to self for Other.

If God rises from the dead, it is only when we all rise together…

If you would know God, do what God does: die to yourself, live for others.

You Decide.

References

Paul. AD 90.
Bible. AD 90. Vol. Colossians 3:11, English Standard Version.

—. AD 62.
Bible. AD 62. Vol. Ephesians 4:6, English Standard Version.

—. AD 90.
Bible. AD 90. Vol. Epeshians 4:9, English Standard Version.