God Angrily Clarifies ‘Don’t Kill’ Rule
“Somehow, people keep coming up with the idea that I want them to kill their neighbor. Well, I don’t. And to be honest, I’m really getting sick and tired of it. Get it straight. Not only do I not want anybody to kill anyone, but I specifically commanded you not to, in really simple terms that anybody ought to be able to understand.”
From the Onion
And Cult of Mammon, the Prosperous. In terms of priorities for Xtianists, the messages of Jesus rank third at best.
‘Affirmative defenses’ means that the burden of proof is on the accused. And these particular ones reduce the charge from murder in the first degree to murder in the second degree - not a much better situation to be in.
And still, good luck with the jury on some of these.
Many of these Christian Gun Justification websites do pay lip service to that little Commandment of “Thou shalt not murder,” — which they always conveniently translate as “murder,” rather than “kill.”
Well, “murder” is probably a more accurate translation of the Hebrew original; there are a lot of places in the ‘Old Testament’ where the King James translation has not stood up well as we have learned more*.
Not that this is any sort of defence, of course, since he is being charged with murder, not manslaughter or self-defence (although I imagine that some sort of plea bargain may take it down to one of them.)
*the KJV is an amazing piece of work for the time, and much of it retains a literary power. But it’s still only a translation.
If you look at the charges, none of them are what we would normally associate as “Murder in the First Degree”, premeditated homicide. He was charged with what is normally Murder 2 or Murder 3 in most states. “Depraved mind killing” and “intentional but not planned murder”. None of those defenses will apply.
Really what it will come down to is if they can select a jury that also believes all that already…
It’s part of that, I’d say. Non-whites aren’t “real” Americans (or, if we dig down, people), they’re just in the country to be properly subservient, as God intended.
To be clear, I’m talking about a particular strain of evangelicals - conservative white evangelicals - who were fundamentally right-wing, white-supremacist churches from their founding. You know, these guys:
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/05/religious-right-real-origins-107133
I had some familiarity with some of these churches through evangelical family members and hadn’t thought of them this way, but I’m realizing they were always fascists at heart - it just wasn’t until now that they felt sufficiently threatened to let it show. Not that most of them are being obvious about it now - they’re not necessarily parroting far-right talking points or advocating for an ethnostate; it’s more subtle, but just as anti-democratic and racist.
Huh, I thought fear was the mind killer.
It seems to me that once you have a soteriology that says there is no way to go from being unsaved to being saved, you’ve already grouped people firmly into us and them and them are the creatures that deservedly go to hell. The fact these people believe that God makes it obvious to them that you are unsaved by being Black, or that you have sympathy for Black people, is a natural consequence.
wont get any arguments from me on that.
it’s the same reason that in those stories from portland, that the police did literally nothing to stop right wing trump supporters as they shot mace and paintball guns out of the back of trucks, yet declare a riot and forcibly disperse blm protestors on a regular basis.
I’m so excited! We’re going to get a whole load of raw material for gifs and memes on December 18!
That’s pooh, not dune.
Pooh-Dune mashup
Oh. That’s supposed to be a stillsuit in the second panel?
Yes, and the last panel is the God-Emperor Leto
Clarification: “Christians” = Evangelical Christians, obviously.
I’m agreeing with you.
I am sure all of that money will go to the kid’s legal defense fund.
Totally.
So, please explain the Priest barracks of Dachau, or the priests killed in Italy by the nazifscist troops.
