HOW TO KILL A GOD

a practical guide

Step 1: Kill the Body

The easiest step. Modern weapons are advised: (sub)machine guns, flamethrowers, bazookas and rocket launchers provide much-needed firepower that will make steps two and three much less challenging. Nukes are also incredibly useful if you can get your hands on them. That said, any implement will do if wielded with enough righteous fury. Godly flesh is weak; you can rip it with your nails, tear it with your teeth, bruise it with your fists and kill it however you chose. The recommended stopping point is a pulp.

Step 2: Kill the Spirit

The flesh is weak because the spirit isn't. Similar to fungi, a God may sprout a body, but that is not where it lives. A God is not a man on his throne; it is the throne. It is the chapel in which is it sits, the stained glass windows telling its story, the statues honoring its saints, the ringing of the bell calling for mass. It is the mass, the priest leading the chorus, the singing of psalms. It is the prayer at the dinner table, the cross on the wall, the rosary beads, the clasped hands and the clear voice of genuine belief. You do not kill a God by murdering its body, any more than you kill a fungus by picking its mushroom. You kill a God by destroying the chapel, decapitating its statues, breaking its walls, shattering its glass. You kill a God by making sure the bell will never ring again. You kill a God by flattening the houses, burning the crosses and the beads, crushing the hands and making sure the voices will never speak again.

This is a general guide; please adapt to your God's religion as necessary.

Step 3: Kill the Memory

The last, most difficult step. With the spirit in its mass graves, its charred heaps of wood and its once-wall gravel, your next concern will be rebirth. Gods are born from memories. They are daisy chains of mismatched limbs, skinned faces stitched to lips so they may smile again. Every God was born from another, carries the last of its heart in its chest. Though burned in a different temple, the incense will smell the same. If you want to do this right — and you do — you need to kill the memory. Kill the jumbled descriptions of ceremonies passed on to loved ones; kill the hazy remembrance of a procession; kill the annoyed recollection of beliefs that'd once been advertised on someone's doorstep. For this step, weapons of mass destruction are strongly recommended, though don't forget to comb for survivors. And at the very end, there will still be one person who remembers. Kill them too. Don't worry; there won't be much left of you that has yet to die.

Remember: a God's grave fits you and millions more.