“I am almost finished making you, except for inserting one last gene,” says God to man.
“Yes, Lord, can’t wait to get on my way,” replies the man.
“Now, since I like you, I will give you a choice in this very important last component. Do you want the gene that automatically conducts your life—the Reflex Gene; one that would make most of your decisions for you—the Instinct Gene, or the gene that would empower you to make just about all your decisions yourself—the Liberty Gene?” asks God.
“Lord, since you are, out of your infinite kindness, giving me a choice in this vital matter, can I have the gene that would give me absolute control over my affairs? If not, I would settle for the Liberty Gene,” says the man.
“I can see you are already scheming. No, you can’t have anything absolute. All absolutes are restricted to me. All my creations, including you, are only relative,” says the Lord.
“Sure, Lord. I understand that everything about you is absolute, infinite, and perfect. But no harm in asking, is there, Lord?” says the man.
“An impudent wise jackass, aren’t you? I see that I am about to make the first mistake of my life by creating you,” the Lord says, shaking his pointer at him.
“Forgive me, Lord. I didn’t mean it the way you are taking it,” apologizes man.
“I also see that you are using your deceptive faculty on me. No dice, little fellow. Remember that I see everything that goes on in your head as well as in your heart. Don’t play games with me, ever,” says the Lord.
“Yes, Lord. For some reason, I felt that since you have given it to me, I might as well use it. Otherwise, why have it? But you are right. You are always right, and there are no exceptions. With you, I need to be absolutely forthright and honest,” the man says meekly.
“I see that you are using another one of your faculties. You are buttering me up,” says God with an amused voice.
“But Lord, why must I pray to you and thank you for everything? I can’t tell the difference. What is praying and what is buttering up?” pleads man.
“I knew all along that I would have endless trouble with you, and it is starting right now. But that’s the main reason I am creating you, anyway. It is no fun just having everything run on pre-determined programs. I need some excitement, unpredictability, and challenges to liven my life,” says the Lord.
“Lord, getting back to the offer, it thrills me to be able to make most of my own decisions. I think if some excitement, unpredictability, and challenges are good for my Lord, then they are definitely good for me too. I can’t thank you enough for offering me the Liberty Gene,” says the man.
“Right, everything that is good for me may be good for you, but not for you. Don’t you ever forget that. I am God and the only God. I am making you in my image, but I am not making you my own double. There is a big difference. You understand?” admonishes God.
“I certainly do, Lord. Thank you, Lord,” says the man.
“The Liberty Gene is a most precious possession. Many will aim to rob you of it and, by so doing, add to their own power while transforming you into a mere robot. You need be vigilant and guard it with your very life. Beware of three kinds of people: charlatans, demagogues, and politicians. And more often than not, someone who is all three of these characters wrapped into one will rise,” God says.
“Lord, that’s a great heads up. I deeply appreciate the warning. But, please tell me how I can tell a false claimant from a true one,” the man pleads.
“By their fruit shall ye know them,” God replies.
“Lord, you know that I am not smart enough to understand this metaphor. Would you spell it out for me in your infinite kindness?” says the man.
“If I spell it out for you fully, it would violate the Liberty Gene’s prerogatives. The best I can do is to give you a few pointers: Anyone who claims special privileges and status for himself, makes outlandish promises and threats, pits one person against another, and causes bloodshed among people fit the bill. The most dangerous of these malevolent is anyone falsely claiming to be my emissary,” says God.
“Lord, thank you. That’s helpful,” says the man
“Also, remember that the bargain you make with me will hold not only for you but all your descendants who will inhabit Earth. Before making your final selection, I must warn you that making a deal with me is called a ‘covenant.’ And covenants with me are irrevocable,” continues God.
“Thanks, Lord. You are so good to me. I don’t know how I can repay you for all this kindness. Obviously, I can’t since you have it all. But, I’ll worship you and pray to you in adoration if that’s pleasing to you, Lord,” Says the man.
“Praying is fine. But knowing you, you’ll use praying to butter me up and ask me for things. Nothing doing. Once you’re on your own, you’re on your own. Don’t you forget it,” says the Lord.
“Yes, Lord. All my future descendants and I will be forever grateful to your kindness and generosity for allowing us to be somewhat masters of our own destiny rather than be like some of our close relatives who are still arboreal and very hairy to boot,” says the man.
Fast Forward
It wasn’t the forbidden apple he ate that doomed man. It was his dumb decision to choose the gene with the most significant latitude since he failed to ask the Lord for a top-of-the-shelf gene for wisdom to guide him in making choices. Numerous harebrained decisions and outright malevolent ones knit a web of misery for man over time. The litany of the suffering that befell man is voluminous indeed.
In tight spots, time and again, people conveniently would ignore their covenant with God. They would turn to him as if he was their fix-it-all—their Good Man Friday. They also would forget that he could see in their heads and hearts when they submitted to him lengthy wish lists in the guise of praying to him. Before long, prayers became little more than buttering God and asking him for things and favors.
Time and again, the Lord remained faithful to his part of the covenant and ignored the people’s insistence on violating the original compact in their favor so that they could make all the stupid decisions that they wanted and let God clean up the mess in their individual and collective lives.
The Lord couldn’t be played. He wouldn’t budge. But, people continued their schemes to make the Lord violate or at least amend the covenant. Flattery, they figured, could possibly work. So, they invented prayers, a subtle subterfuge for a shopping list for the Lord. Before the advent of the Internet and E-mail, people used Gmail—sending missives to the Lord’s mailbox utilizing the Ethernet.
And this state of affairs made it ripe for the rise of the same people God warned man about, the charlatans, the demagogues, and the politicians. These frauds popped up worldwide and were presented as answers to peoples’ Gmail and solutions to their problems. And we all know how these miscreants, in the forms of individuals, groups or even governments, compounded humanity’s problems rather than solving them.
People wouldn’t give up and mend their ways. Instead, they resorted to cunning and everything they could to cajole the Lord to do things for them. They built numberless cathedrals, mosques, and temples with lavish ornaments to lure the Lord in and hear their supplications up close. Again, nothing worked.
Desperate situations spawn desperate measures. And God, not coming to the aid of the people, forced many to turn to other sources with dire results. Just a few recent cases of this tragic misstep should warn us to heed the Lord’s original advice and not be victimized in the future by fraud.
[ *** ]
From the primitive land of the Arabian Peninsula over 14 centuries ago rose Muhammad, an illiterate hired hand of a rich widow Khadija, claiming that he was the bearer of a perfect life prescription from God—the Quran. He claimed humanity could do no better than following its precepts and following Muhammad’s life example to guarantee bliss and salvation. In exchange for this, people must embrace Islam—surrender—by surrendering their Liberty to Muhammad.
Question: Why would the All-Wise Lord choose an illiterate desert-dweller of all the people in the world to be his messenger? Why choose a man who couldn’t read or write, who, over 20 years, claimed to be receiving periodic revelations from God and had to rely on others who could write to jot down his recollections? These recollections were recorded as the word-for-word literal utterances and commandments of God. Furthermore, a dozen versions of the book of Allah, the Quran, turned up, and a fallible Caliph selected one of them and had the rest burned. Burning books has ever since been a companion to Islam’s mission.
But again, those are the ways of the Lord, and no one is given the right to question them. Being the impudent person that I am, I will run the risk of asking a follow-up question.
Question: Would the same Lord who gave man the Liberty Gene unilaterally violate his covenant by sending an emissary to take away peoples’ precious gift at the point of the sword?
In no time at all, the savages of Arabia, allured by the win-win promise of Muhammad—you kill, you get the booty from your victims in this world—you get killed, and your abode will be the unimaginably glorious sensuous paradise of Allah—sword-in-hand, sallied forth to lands near and far.
[ *** ]
From the “civilized” land of Germany rose a syphilitic lout who called on the German people to surrender their Liberty to him in exchange for a surefire solution to all their economic and social ills. He successfully portrayed the Jews as the main cause of the nation’s suffering. Before long, the masses of gullible, easy-solution seekers formed long lines in towns and villages of the land, tripping over each other in eagerness to surrender their Liberty to the savior Fuhrer.
The German people blindly subscribed to the Nazi’s promises of economic revival, restoration of German pride, and establishment of supremacy for the Aryan race. In a blink, hordes of rabid Brown Shirts fanned the land’s length and breadth, hunting the Jews. The fire of anti-Jew mania quickly expanded to devour Gypsies, non-Christians in general, the physically or mentally handicapped, homosexuals, and more.
The genocidal Hitler found it expedient to overlook some of the “despicable” Semitic people—the Arabs—by affording the Grand Mufti of Palestine, Haj Amin al-Husseini, a fellow Jew-hater, a most effusive welcome to Germany.
There is hardly a need to document the horrors of the Nazi episode here, where a charlatan managed to hoodwink a nation, rob the people of their liberty and cause so much death and destruction.
[ *** ]
It is unthinkable that an ancient nation—Iran—with a distinguished history, allowed a high-order demagogue, Ayatollah Khomeini, to rally the people against the Shah with promises of rule for the people and justice for all. The long-suffering Iranians of all strata readily surrendered their liberty to the turbaned bigot and his gang of murdering sycophants.
In Iran, wishful-thinking people saw the “holy man of Allah” as an answer to prayer. The fanatic Muslims perceived him as the one who would revive the flagging fortunes of the faith of Muhammad and pave the way for the much-anticipated advent of the Saheb-ul-Zaman (the Lord of the Age.) The secularists hoped for freedom from the yoke of the Shah’s dictatorship. Religious and ethnic minorities dreamed of a time when unscrupulous power brokers would no longer victimize them.
Gullibility was not limited to the Iranians who swelled the ranks of the fraud. On the other side of the world, the President of the United States of America—the Lusting in the Heart Carter—saw Khomeini as a saint and a savior. Carter provided crucial support to the man whose most extraordinary claim to the rank of the Grand Ayatollah was his lengthy dissertation on sexual intercourse with animals.
No sooner had this fraud of Allah ascended to power than the Iranians of all strata began to pay the price – tens of thousands with their lives – for the folly of letting the three-in-one Ayatollah make decisions for them, the three-in-one that God warned man about.
The Iranian people have been paying for the tragedy that has befallen them for over forty-five years. And that’s not where it ends. Khomeinism is the fire that is spreading beyond the borders of Iran. Khomeinism is a recent violent version of Islam’s Shiism. Islam means surrender. Surrender to the will and dictates of Allah as revealed by Mohammad.
A true Muslim does not and cannot believe in liberty. Everything is up to Allah, so says Mohammad. Everything a Muslim does is contingent upon the will and decree of Allah. For this reason, the phrase ensha-Allah (Allah willing) always accompanies any promise or commitment that a believer makes; by embracing Muhammad as Allah’s unerring and eternal emissary, Muslim surrenders their liberty to decide for themselves.
The Muslims’ surrender of liberty is not merely a personal choice. The Muslims, having abandoned their most precious rights, are out to make all non-Muslims do so by hook or crook. It is said that misery loves company. And the type of misery that Islam has visited on the Muslims and the Islamic lands is a rapidly spreading plague that must be resisted by all who cherish their God-given Liberty.
A personal note
As for me, I am with the people who guard their Liberty even in the face of death. I am with the people of Masada who committed mass suicide rather than submit their necks to the yoke of Roman slavery. I am with kaveh Ahangar, Paul Revere,
Babak Khorramdin, Maziar, Sattar Khan, and thousands of other honorable men and women defended liberty in the face of death. I echo Patrick Henry’s cry: Give me liberty or give me death. Life without liberty is living death.
©2023. Amil Imani. All rights reserved.
