By Norman B. LeClair
Are we doomed by the madness of our myths?
According to scripture it was God who first devised and then employed the horrific practice of genocide. We’re told that with the exception of all the fishes in the sea, all the animals on the ark plus one old couple and their immediate family, God was totally committed to exterminating every living thing on the face of the earth, especially each and every member of the race known as human. Every man, woman and child, every newborn, every baby and infant, every fetus, embryo, blastula, zygote and gamete was on his “hit list.” His all-consuming passion for total annihilation knew no bounds.
Over the centuries, not surprisingly, the religiously intoxicated and their messianic leaders have never passed up an opportunity to emulate the behavior of their bloodthirsty God by repeatedly instigating and giving free reign to the pitiless insanity known as genocide. By exploiting the xenophobic and deep-seated tribal fears of the “true believers,” the vulgar herd can be manipulated and transformed into a frenzied and murderous killing machine eager to maim, mutilate and massacre for the glory of the one and only “True God.”
Because all gods start out as tribal, the tribal mindset, the “us against them” mentality, has always been part and parcel of the religious experience. In whatever guise or variant, organized religion has been the patron saint, the defender, promoter and champion of the tribal mentality. Ever since the imaginary world of spirits and spooks first started playing their diabolical mind games with the family of humankind, planet earth has gradually degenerated into one giant insane asylum. Predictably, on this terrestrial plain of angry gods and angry men, it is the god of the majority religion who habitually brutalizes and persecutes those of the minority religion. The customary weapon of choice, regardless of the euphemism used to mitigate the barbarity of the crime, is always that of genocide.
As an aside, isn’t it interesting that the god of the tyrannized and subjugated minority never comes to the aid of those who revere, sanctify and glorify his name? At their moment of true urgency, he turns his back on them. Their pleas for deliverance, their prayers, their cries of desperation all fall on the petrified ears of a hoary old tribal god that never was. A god conjured up by an insidious cabal of savage and ignorant holy men was made as savage and as ignorant as they were.
From the gas chambers and ovens of the death camps to the killing fields of the Balkans, the Caucasus, the Middle East, the Sudan, Kashmir, Africa, Indonesia, on every continent and in almost every country on the globe, nameless millions die at the hands of the religious fanatic. At such times of infamy God is like the proverbial police officers who are never around when you need them. Evidently God doesn’t do death camps, killing fields or any other place where the life of his disciples are in peril. Time after time at such horrendous and unspeakable periods of bloodletting, God is painfully conspicuous by his absence.
After all these thousands of years, after billions of our fellow humans have been slaughtered in the name of God, you would think humanity would have come to its senses by now. But no. Our species’ primal lust for the holy wars of extermination, for the unrelenting carnage of internecine and sectarian violence, plus that implacable rage to rid the world of the infidel, all come together to blind us to the realization that in the eyes of the other “true believer,” all of us are infidels. Are we doomed by the madness of our myths, as well as by the lethality of the lies we insist on telling ourselves and our progeny? We are without a doubt our own worst enemy, the most dangerous, the most deadly and by far the dumbest animal in the whole damn zoo.
Norman B. LeClair is a Life Member who lives in Florida. An artist, he is retired from the military.
