So She Shot Him

A family story that gets trotted out from time to time (mostly at the drunken reunion moments by the pool so looked forward to by everyone all year) tells of my great-great grandmother shooting one of my great uncles (relax, it was only a small gun) because he dared to question her judgment on something relatively minor. Now, she wasn't an academically educated lady (and they all prefer that term, believe me), but she read all the time and could quote the Bible (and poetry) nonstop in the service of leading her family along the path of righteousness. So she knew the morality quotient of her act, and yet that didn't stop her. There's something about that story that resonates with me from somewhere deep, and although I don't condone anyone shooting anyone (ever - yes, I'm a pacifist but I would defend dear ones if forced), it was actually something done with some type of love for the victim - to stop him from straying from the prescribed path - at least the path thought of as leading to a good life of right-living in the South. (Hey, don't blame me - I was reared by these people and remember every word (although I ran away to a very different future as fast as my tiny feet would take me)). Our mentor darkblack has an exquisite take on the latest round of Christian "love" shots.

Never expect anything but antisocial mayhem from humanoids who freely and eagerly break one of the fundamental tenets of their own faith, and then justify it by invoking the 'will of their creator' (the one who supposedly wrote those tenets), a will that they presume to have intimate details of...Do you see the disconnect? Apparently, they are unwilling or mentally incapable of doing so. This sort of cognitively dissonant zealotry, however expressed and irrespective of sources and icons, is a clear and present danger to the advancement of civilization. Far from being honest religious obedience, such acts are delusional, sociopathic behavior, and all who subscribe to and condone them are naught but criminals and terrorists who, in spite of their redemptive fantasies, will find Heaven's doors closed to their shades forevermore and their meager souls forsaken to the fiery lakes within their imaginations, as the infirm vessels that they have become . . . and perhaps always were.

No one says it better. Suzan ______________