You’ve gotten rid of God. You say He was past his expiration date, anyway. You can’t believe it took so long but this generation finally got it right. You put God into the dustbin of history. You say, “We don’t need that anymore.” Okay. Fine. We’re modern now. We’re smart. We have reason. We have data. We have The Science! We have… something.

But you have a hole. A hole in the heart. A hole in the soul. The God-shaped hole. And it needs to be filled. It will be filled. You can’t leave it empty.

So you fill it. You fill it with a cause. A crusade. Politics. The Cause. You have the right beliefs. They have the wrong beliefs. You are good. They are evil. You use daily news as kindling for your righteous anger. You raise it into a white hot fervor. A kind of… religious fervor.

You see the guy on tv. The one on the news. He says the right things. He’s angry too. You see that woman comedian, the one with the righteous fire in her eyes. She speaks your truth. She sneers and raises her eyebrows at someone who still speaks of the old things, like objective truth and God and rules.

Ah, there! You have an enemy. The other side. The heretic. The one who must be converted. Or destroyed. The Nazi, the racist, the Islamaphobe, the homophobe who must be taught the way.

So you gather. You gather in the square or on the campus. You gather with the faithful. And you scream. You scream your dogma. You scream your creed. You fight the good fight. You fight for salvation. The salvation of the world, or at least your little piece of it. It is your religion now.

But that strange man seems undeterred by your conviction. He does not back down even as you scream in his face. He smiles. You speak of “your truth” and he speaks of the “one truth.” You don’t understand him.

And that’s the moment when a decision is made. That’s the moment on which souls are saved or lost. You suspect that strange man knows something. He seems…happy. He seems comfortable. He doesn’t worry about other people’s opinions of him. Either that man intrigues you and you seek to learn what he knows.

Or you ignore him. You refuse to listen by continuing to scream.

But there is a third option. You, for the sake of others not being confused by this smiling confident man, decide that he must be destroyed. And you believe it is good. Because he doesn’t say the right things. He doesn’t believe what everyone around you believes. He must be silenced because he does not bow to your god. And death to the blasphemer.

You got rid of God. And you made a new one. A hundred new ones. And you serve them. And you call it progress. But it’s not progress. It’s a return to savagery. It’s a return to tyranny, violence, and evil. Yes, evil.

Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness.