I'm not complaining, i'm questioning, and you have not answered my question. Why is this thread in a religion forum?
Does the word "god" when put into a sentence, automatically transform the subject into religion?
Are all paradigms the same? Religious? Political? Social?
Obviously not. You'll notice that there is a major vein within this thread struggling to pick apart the pieces of religous faith and mental illness that is, unfortunately, harder to pick out with the Special Olympics going on at the same time.
When we pause to consider that religions touch people in a way that no other paradigm can--all else can become subordinate to the necessities of the soul--it is fair to wonder if the effects of a religious paradigm can inflame existing problems within a person to a different degree than other ideas.
If something so simple as "heavy metal" or "rap" can be examined for its role in people's conduct, why not their faith? Would those kids in the infamous 1980s lawsuits have killed themselves if they were listening to Stryper instead of Judas Priest? Bananarama instead of Ozzy Osbourne? It's a fair question to a certain degree; what nobody could understand at the time was that the music didn't excuse the crappy parenting. (e.g. - "You're both drunk, you fight all the time, you have no money, you're physically violent ... what's making your kid miserable? It must be the music.")
In the discussions of Apocrypha and heresy in Christianity, one will come across the odd point of the Pauline evangelization. Most think about it in terms such as we find in Jenyar's response to my invocation of Paul, but we see that some people do realize:
Here is a man vital to the faith whose experience started with a hallucination (vision). Paul gets a certain credibility on faith not awarded elsewhere.
I see all sorts of symbolism in the world. But none of it's doctrinally bound. And I'm inclined by experience to bet against visions and divine revelation. So if I look at my world, no I'm most likely not going to think God is at any point telling me to kill my children. But if I'm already unstable enough, and ensconced in a religious paradigm that venerates visions and revelation, and operating from a position of "Original Sin" which leaves me forever deficient of the standard I've adopted . . . .
If her obsession was "stamp collecting," would Madonna Ciccione have spoken to her from a St. Kitts & Nevis postage stamp?
It's hard to say. There are people in the world for whom yes, Madonna would tell them to kill their children. But is this woman one of them, or was her condition exacerbated by her faith?
It's happened in America before, inasmuch as there's some point in history that an entire town came apart after they painted themselves into a corner at the intersection of faith and conscience. I'll dig up the reference later.
And what of the faith of those around her? Everybody seems to acknowledge there's something amiss with this woman, but it will be revealing, in the long run, to find out what was and wasn't done on her behalf that might have stopped this from happening.
There are some people I've known who would say "Hallelujah" about someone getting revelations and never see the ugly punchline coming.
And in identifying the separation that exists between religion and the acts of the religious, we can only increase understanding.
What exactly do they have to deal with, and who is hiding??
You seem worried about a number of bigots. How ever will they resolve their issues if they never face them?
You wrote:
All you have done, is reinforce negative ideas in negative people.
O! ye of little faith. Is the solution, then, to leave the negative folks with their negative ideas?
If I could wave a fire wand and shout, "Abracadabra!" and make it happen in a puff of logic and compassion, I would. But I can't, and these things take time. Lifetimes, in some cases. And all along the way, there will be someone to say that you're only reinforcing negativity.
That might be the best you can do. But ....
Writing the attack off to Ba'al, as the one website did, doesn't help
anyone. It might make a few self-righteous idiots feel better about themselves, but it doesn't actually help anyone in any real sense. Christians, who know their faith, will have certain insights to any possible relationships between faith and deed.
So hey ... let's make a new question out of it, just to satisfy you:
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What is the responsibility of a religious community to the mental health of its congregations, and therefore the overall health of its communities and neighbors?
As this case goes along, we'll find out more and more about what "warning signs" may have existed. That will guide the discussion to a certain degree. But this story isn't finished playing out yet, and it's not yet time to point fingers and say, "This or that Christian blew it."
The connection is that a religious paradigm may have exacerbated mental illness. Is the method and degree of exacerbation unique to this paradigm, or to religious paradigms in general?
The questions present themselves. It's all a matter of not letting the bigots set the terms.
