Making Gods of Men

It’s fascinating to me that every society that has ever declared war on God and religion has ultimately erected its own temples in which to house its own sacred pantheon. The Soviets tore down the churches and mocked their sacred rites as corrupt monuments to futility, but day after day in Moscow citizens who had been told “There is no God” were ushered in silent awe past the body of a man named Lenin, whom the state had preserved and displayed as reverently as any Catholic relic you might find in a cathedral or an abbey. They railed against religious indoctrination in classrooms and state-run media, and if you didn’t get the point you'd be sent to a re-education facility where one of the party priests would drill the catechism into your head with drugs, electro-shock, or blunt instruments.

Try as he might, man cannot escape the sacred. He will always hold some person, place, thing, or creed to be inviolable, untouchable. He will always be initiating converts into his rites, always be railing against the unbelievers, always be seeking to purge the heretics from the congregation. He mocks the cross and erects in its place the swastika, the hammer-and-sickle, the fist of power, or the image of some icon and demands that all bow down and worship.

Never be so foolish as to believe that anyone who wishes to dethrone God isn't eyeing that seat for himself. Look closely and you’ll find that his temple is the ground he occupies, his idol is a mirror, and his scriptures are the sound of his own voice.

* Image: The preserved body of Lenin, which is still on display in Moscow.
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