Theological Guide to Survival

Part One - dead fish eyes

The key to scoping out these bastards, whether they're Jesuit priests or Iranian mullahs or Wahhabi sadists or Christian brothers or the pope is to look into their eyes, and never forget they're humans - they're not humans like you and me, mind you. They're humans who have never held down day jobs, and they're humans who claim they have private conversations with god. Blasphemy, a word they loosely bandy about when it suits their interests - is defined is the act of slandering god. What better example than claiming you're the only one who talks to him.

It's also crucial to forget what they claim to be through their funny hats, and their pulpits and their jihads and the cassocks and the pimpy rings they like to sport. Look at what they do. This last week, the henchmen of the Guardian Council of Iran shot dead a beautiful 26 year old girl for the crime of getting out of her car. Then, they banned the family from having a funeral ceremony for her. Indeed, the death was blamed on the victim. Last week six members of the national football team wore green armbands to denounce a fraudulent election, and for this crime were banned for life from playing football. We'll see whether the Iranians love Allah or football more in the coming weeks. It's what they do that counts.

While trying to stick their hands down our pants, the Christian brothers liked to tell us that we were the worst individuals who had ever crossed their path. Without realizing it, they did us a big favour. We all learned that authority was not to be trusted, and that it was doubly treacherous when it claimed to be preaching a divined message.

But, remember, the key is to look in their eyes - if you have to, hang on to some garlic and spit on the ground, but look into their eyes. The one thing these religious miscreants of every stripe have in common is that they have purged love right out of their souls. Analogy - if you take a psychopathic serial killer - say Karla Holmolka - and don't look at her curly hair or little girly smile, you can see the dead fish eyes. Same thing with the religious freaks - remove the crucifix or the prayer beads or the mullah turban or the koran - and you're staring straight into the eyes of a human who will murder you for disagreeing with him.

So in a sense they're like us - they're human beings and no better - but in another sense, they have nothing in common with us. Because anyone who kills a beautiful woman for an idea, or molests a young boy for comfort has extirpated love right out of his soul. And, if there's no love, there can be no freedom.

There are times - rare now - when my mind turns back to the men in skirts who purported to teach me about life the real hard way, and console myself with the thought of their age, and their decrepit bodies being lowered into the ground in the not so distant future, and even the worms wondering whether it's worth the risk.