Them and Us

So, the Church of Loons in Kansas is supposedly going to send some of its zombies to protest at the funeral of the nine-year-old girl who was killed during the Arizona assassination.

Such a notion is mind-boggling. It is cause for instant incredulity, followed by rage.

These are the same folks who routinely screw up funerals for soldiers who died in battle, for some lunatic notions that spring from a source far from any merciful God of which I can conceive. Were there a just and hands-on God? These folks would be smoking craters on the landscape.

My immediate reaction was, as I suspect it was for many attendees here, was to consider how I'd feel if this was my little girl.

And how many of them I could pound into the ground like tent pegs before the law stopped me. Because shooting would be too good for them, too.

These folks are vile, abominations, and if the Earth opened and swallowed up their church and all its members tomorrow, I'd lead the cheers. Burning in Hell is also too good for them.

However, it's this kind of thinking is exactly what the crazy kid in Arizona was into when he opened up on the crowd at the Safeway. Reaching for a gun to solve a problem. Blinded by his insanity. He could somehow justify it in his twisted brain. That becomes a slippery slope in a hurry, rationalizing violence.

It kind of scares me that I can rationalize beating these pretend-Christians into warm jelly and grinning while I do it.  No, really. If I were grieving over the loss of my child and you stepped in front of me like that? Oh, I wouldn't want to be you. Or anybody who got between me and you.

We have become too polarized in such things. We need to step back and take a collective deep breath.