Recently there was a another seemingly random shooting in America, the person who perpetrated this crime left a diary and the following quote is a snippet from that diary,
Maybe soon, I will see God and Jesus. At least that is what I was told. Eternal life does NOT depend on works. If it did, we will all be in hell. Christ paid for EVERY sin, so how can I or you be judged BY GOD for a sin when the penalty was ALREADY paid. People judge but that does not matter. I was reading the Bible and The Integrity of God beginning yesterday, because soon I will see them.
Now clearly I am not arguing that all Christians are gun toting mad-men or indeed that doctrine like this automatically leads to violent crime. However I think it is fair to say that the concept of Christ being a scapegoat for all the sins of mankind is mainstream dogma, there is nothing fringe or extremist about it from a Christianity point of view. This still doesn't warrant the actions of course, but there is no doubt in my mind that there is a pathway here, if someone really, really believes this kind of thing then just about anything can be made to make sense, particularly when combined with corresponding stress or mental illness.
4 comments:
Good post, Steve, as usual. I've been trying to comment on your blog for a bit but I kept getting Google cookie errors -- I tried to leave you a note in Facebook too and couldn't so I've finally gone in and removed that *&&% Google desktop software & hope that sorts it out.
Thanks for having a blog of such a high standard -- we all learn so much from it.
E, Gremlins! must be sun spots :)
Thanks for you comment, talking about blogs, the traffic on yours must be pretty impressive currently, do you use anything to track it?
Steve, it's the more ordinary christian thing that is at least as odious - wanting their moral creeds enacted as law so that everyone has to obey or face sanctions, when usually they don't obey themselves (as in the huge percentage of abortions performed on roman catholics in the US).
Lisa you are right, they start with the assertion that faith is a valid way of "knowing" things and then build hypocrisy, self interest and profiteering on top of it, expecting everyone else to drop their trousers, bend over and just take it.
The thing that most sticks in my craw is the fact that they "claim" to have the moral high ground despite all of this.
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