Monday, August 17, 2009

Not Perfect, Just Forgiven. So?

Once again, someone directly involved with a Christian church has been indicted for a really heinous crime, but I doubt it will have any effect on the bias in the Xian community toward other Xians. A Sunday school teacher in CA has been indicted for kidnapping, raping and murdering an 8 year old girl and drugging a 7 year old and a 37 year old man in a separate incident.

This sort of thing occurs with enough frequency that it should give people pause before being more trusting of a person just because of a religious label, yet it never seems to work out that way. Some people will read a headline about priests or ministers molesting children in their care, or about a serial killer being an officer in his church, or about a religious leader conning people out of their life savings, then set the paper down and go vote for someone because that candidate is a Xian and therefore can be trusted.

When I was growing up, I always heard that someone, who added religious symbols or statements to their secular business, was prostituting their religion for personal gain, and was therefore neither a good Xian or a trustworthy businessperson. Nowadays it seems like every other business has a cross or a bit of scripture prominently displayed, knowing that plenty of folks will prefer that business because, "Oh! They're good Christians! We can trust them to be honest." The same thing goes for politicians, museum owners, book publishers, and apparently molesters, murderers and thieves.

Forrest Gump's mom always said, "Stupid is as stupid does," but I still am amazed that so many people can absolve themselves of responsibility for their own cognition. Yup, yup. Cross on sign, good, no cross on sign bad. Time to go back to thinking about dinosaurs on the ark.

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