Fredrick Nietzsche a prominent German philosopher is quoted as saying "The tree that would grow to heaven must send its roots to hell." The meaning of this quote is that for someone to reach the euphoric highs and glory of heaven they must first experience the stark contrast of the lows and depression of hell. This theme is played out in the epic poem Dante's Inferno where the protagonist Dante is brought through hell as a living soul, the journey through hell leads Dante to paradise on the other side. This theme of a journey through hell being required to reach glory is repeated in other mythologies, the Greeks had a story similar to Dante's in which Hercules consciously makes a pilgrimage in the underworld. Hercules must face Hades dreaded three headed dog Cerberus, after successfully defeating it he brings it back from the underworld and receives the adulation of his people.
The symbolism of Dante’s Inferno, the legend of Hercules and Nietzsche’s quote is that in order to reach paradise one must first go through hell. The peculiar thing about these myths is that the protagonist’s journey through hell is conscious, as living souls instead of being thrust there in the afterlife. A lot of people involuntarily go through a personal rendition of hell, either through exposure or being a victim of violence, addiction, poverty, etc. The problem is that a lot of people repress these traumatic memories and unfortunately end up trying to drown their trauma in vices like alcohol. This is one of the major goals of therapy, it’s an attempt to have the person go back and consciously analyze the trauma then ratify it into their being by making peace with it. It’s in effect a personal Dante’s Inferno, of course therapy is not the only means of taking this journey and is just one manifestation of it nonetheless the conscious expedition through hell is required.
Former Navy seal and full-time savage David Goggins often had to go the darkest parts of his mind to make it through the grueling challenges of SEAL training. David was the victim of abuse at the hands of his father and a witness to his fathers wrath against his mother and brother. Goggin’s often describes his checkered past as “fuel” providing energy for him to get through whatever maybe standing in his way. Goggin’s has consciously revisited his personal hell and augmented it into himself successfully, not only that but he regularly makes the journey by bringing himself to his mental and physical breaking points. He is the embodiment of Dante’s and Hercules’s journey.
This duality is the paradox of life, the necessity of a “hell” for a “heaven” to contrast against, the light not being able to exist without the dark. It’s the balance illustrated in the Taoist Yin and Yang symbol the light fish cannot exist without the dark and vice versa. If you expand this out onto a spectrum the utmost dark can only exist relative to an utmost light.
This is the paradox of God and in turn of yourself. God is often portrayed as an all loving and perfect being and although this maybe true, this is a caricature. God is the ultimate compassion and love but at the same time he is also the ultimate wrath and destruction.
“The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom: and the knowledge of the holy is understanding.” Proverbs 9:10
This is reinforced when God tells the Israelite’s that they should fear him before crossing the Jordan into the promised land.
"You shall fear the LORD your God; you shall serve Him, and to Him you shall hold fast, and take oaths in His name." Deuteronomy 10:20
He tells the Israelites to FEAR him, not love him, not praise him not to play a game of tennis and have tea with him but to FEAR him. Needless to say, one can only fear something if that something is capable of wrath and in the Old Testament the wrath of God is displayed many times. From the flood to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah to the plagues of Egypt including the murder of every first born. God has shown the Israelites that he is worthy of their trembling.
Jordan Peterson sums up the need for wrath in his quote “You should be a monster. An absolute monster. And then you should learn how to control it.” The embodiment of this is the soldier or warrior. They're examples of people who have learnt the ways of destruction and unlocked their potential for wrath while at the same time gained control of it and not only that have used that power to push forth an admirable or honorable goal. The warrior archetype is the earthly example of somebody who has successfully completed Dante's journey. They are the paradox of love and wrath existing in one. As the Japanese proverb states:
"It is better to be a warrior in a garden than a gardener in a war."
The paradox of love and wrath existing in the same vessel is played out further in the Old Testament. The same God who gives the Israelites at Mount Sinai the commandment of "Thou shall not kill" later tells them in Deuteronomy:
"When the LORD your God brings you into the land which you go to possess, and has cast out many nations before you, the Hittites and the Girgashites and the Amorites and the Canaanites and the Perrizzites and the Hivites and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than you, and when the LORD your God delivers them over to you, you shall conquer them and utterly destroy them. You shall make no covenant with them nor show mercy to them." Deuteronomy 7:1-2
He essentially orders the genocide of the current inhabitants of the land of Canaan again after having already giving the commandment of "Thou shall not kill". At first this seems completely contradictory until you realize that Yahweh is all things. This is the necessity of a monotheistic religion; that if there is only ONE God than that God must be all. Attempting to encapsulate all these characteristics into a single vessel is difficult but I believe is truer to the human spirit. Other religions like Hinduism have gotten around this paradox by assigning different attributes to different deities. Hindu’s have Shiva their God of destruction and Brahma their God of creation among many others. Christianity does do this to some degree as well with the ultimate evil personified in Lucifer and the ultimate good in Christ. The interesting thing about Christianity though is that both Lucifer and Christ are the sons of God and therefore part of God. This duality is repeated in the first sons of man, Cain and Abel. Then the Christian belief of being created in God's image is laminated on top of that:
"So God created man in His own image, in the image of God created He him; male and female created He them" Genesis 1:27
All this means that if God is capable of ultimate wrath and ultimate love than so are you. You are Lucifer and Christ, you are Cain and Abel. You are the same creature who took innocent Jewish women and children into the forest made them lie flat on their stomachs, lined the end of your rifle up with the back of their head by placing the bayonet into the area where the head and neck meet and shot; With their grey matter and skull shrapnel staining your uniform you went to the edge of woods and grabbed the next victim. At the same time, you're also the same creature who seen those same innocent Jews and hid them in your attic and smuggled them to safety at the risk of your own life. You are the destroyer and the redeemer.
Author Alexandr Solzhenitsyn understood this very well, he spent 17 years in the corrupt Russian gulag system as a prisoner but acknowledged that simply by picking a different college to enroll in he could have easily ended up on the other side of the bars as an interrogator torturing innocents into false confessions. He knew his own potential for evil and the capacity that every human has for it:
"If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?"
This is the problem with ideologies versus religions, religions pay homage to the innate darkness of the human soul. In Robert A. Johnsons book "Owning your own shadow: Understanding the dark side of the psyche" he explains "the word Religion itself stems from the Latin roots re meaning again and ligare, meaning to bind, bond or bridge. Religion means than to bind together again." This is the binding together of the two opposites in the human soul. Again light cannot exist without the contrast of the dark and vice versa. An ideology attempts to display as the name suggests only the ideal or the light with no acknowledgment of the dark, this is usually manifested in some utopian vision. However, when the attempt to act out the vision is made the unacknowledged darkness boils over and comes out. The communist state of the Soviet Union is a great example. Solzhenitsyn a citizen of the Soviet Union realized this about ideology.
"Ideology—that is what gives evildoing its long-sought justification and gives the evildoer the necessary steadfastness and determination. That is the social theory which helps to make his acts seem good instead of bad in his own and others’ eyes, so that he won’t hear reproaches and curses but will receive praise and honors."
This concept of dark and light, evil and good, wrath and compassion existing in the vessel that is the human being is a universal truth. Even a pragmatic person cannot deny the human capacity for evil or compassion. We would all benefit from walking in the steps of Dante and consciously taking a journey into our own personal hells, reaching into the dark parts of our minds. Instead of projecting our disgust onto the "evil doers" out there. Hopefully just like Dante we emerge from the other side in paradise.