"We would have never expected him to do this. He was a regular churchgoer!" - Sound familiar?
So, like many of you, I read a lot of news. And, inevitably, I'll come across an article where someone has done something horrid, and there's always someone who says something along the lines of, "But, they went to church and everything! We would have NEVER thought that they would do something like THIS."
And, I'm always like - okaaaaay. So, if the person was a godless heathen (i.e. an atheist - i.e ME), you people would be less shocked?
Take the person in this article I read a few days ago...
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-melissa-huckaby12-2009apr12,0,131253,full.story
This person, a Sunday school teacher, murdered one of her daughter's friends and stuffed her in a suitcase.
And, right on cue, some moron says, "It doesn't fit in with her or the family at all. The family is basically Baptist, totally churchgoing folks."
Uh huh, because if one goes to church, one can't possibly be a child-killing psycho.
GAH!!
Comments
we never get passed the expectation that "bad" people will look "bad", and always act so surprised when they don't.
I have been wondering a lot lately, just how much longer is the USA going to tolerate the high gun violence - other countries that don't have guns have much much less violence. We can send our kids to school without fearing that they will be shot...
Fundamentalist denominations teach members to rely on blind faith and to mistrust their powers of reason, as they believe it is faulty and subject to manipulation by Satan. I've seen training material that uses a train to illustrate their meaning. It shows faith as the engine, pulling reason and emotion behind it.
With such a mindset, I can see how a religious person who is mentally unstable could do something like this if they believed it a matter of faith.
training material - i imagine that's scary reading
After all those saintly priests could NEVER possibly have abused any children - why would they, they are men of the cloth. The Vatican would never protect men who were guilty of such crimes - would it?
Also it isn't like god would ever tell one of his flock to kill someone. God would always stop them just as they were about to chop their kid's head off, he would say, "Nah its all right I was just testing you! You can put the axe down now"
I can't tell you the number of times God has tested me like that, it is always such a relief when he tells me to put the axe down. I just hope he always tells me to stop with a loud booming voice, as it would be terrible if I didn't hear him tell me to stop. Not sure what I would then do with my beheaded child, possibly I would stuff him in a suitcase and hope God protects me.