In California recently, an evangelical Christian woman was charged with a rather disturbing crime: not feeding her two daughters (ages nine and seven) for nearly a month. Why did she do this? She claims she was directed to do it by "the Holy Spirit." These directions came by telephone.
Here's how mysterious that Holy Spirit dude is, though. She didn't actually talk to the H.S. on the phone. She interpreted the meaning from the way the phone was ringing! Wooooo! Now that's impressive!
She entered a "not guilty" plea, of course, and has been ordered to undergo an evaluation of her mental well-being. But the thing that disturbs me almost as much as what this woman did is this: a police sergeant who was interviewed about this said that even though this was obviously a religiously motivated situation, there wasn't any evidence that the woman was influenced by any "cult-type organization."
When will people start to realize that you don't have to belong to an actual cult to behave like this? To my mind, anyone who takes religion this seriously is turning their faith into a cult. "God told me to do this," etc... That's cultspeak, thank you very much.
Certainly, you don't need religion to perform atrocities. But it certainly seems that it helps.
