The Psycho God Test

Lets do a quick thought experiment.

You're sitting at home, enjoying dinner with your family when suddenly a SWAT team bursts though the doors and windows.  They grab your mother and beat her do a bloody pulp with their nightsticks right there in front of her family.  Then they drag her outside  and kick her until she loses consciousness after which one of the officers takes out his gun and shoots her in the back of the head.  Traumatized and horrified by what just happened, you ask "WHY?! Why did you do this?"  The officer closest to you tells you, "Because we found out she had been gossiping".

What is your response?  Do you say:

A - "Oh, right that does make sense.  We warned her that gossip was really bad.  I'm sad of course but she brought this on herself"

OR

B - "ARE YOU INSANE?! HOW DOES THE FACT THAT SHE GOSSIPED MAKE THIS OK?? WHAT KIND OF PSYCHOTIC LUNATIC WOULD THINK THIS IS THE APPROPRIATE PUNISHMENT FOR GOSSIP?!"

So which did you choose?  Did you pick B?  I hope you picked B, that was the only remotely sane option.  In fact I hope everyone would pick B.  Problem is, not everyone does.  A lot of people have to choose A because they believe that option A is the right, kind and loving option.  Despite any and all internal struggles this might provoke, they will have to pretend that is the right option, the good option.  They will have to do that because they are Christians and this is what they believe about their God.

Source

That is a panel from a Chick tract aimed at children to teach them about heaven, hell and salvation.  See all the things that disqualify one for heaven?  Dirty thoughts, hate, gossip, lies, revenge and cruelty.  None of those are particularly nice but do you consider any of those unforgivable?  Do you consider those to be grounds for eternal torture?  I know I'm using a Chick tract here but this isn't some crazy fringe notion.  While not every Christian denomination believes this, a great many do.  Since earliest childhood this has been the message I've gotten in church - all sins are equally bad therefore doing even the most minor thing wrong makes you a sinner unworthy of God and deserving only of eternal torture in Hell.  Stealing a paperclip and killing someone is equally sinful.  There are no white lies, only lies. Dirty thoughts make you as guilty before God as dirty deeds would.  For a great example of this kind of reasoning, check out The Way of the Master's famous "Are you a good person?" evangelical tool.

So yeah, this is really what millions of Christians believe.  Funny thing, this is not what millions of Christians actually practice.  I'd like to think that most of them would read my little thought experiment and agree that yes, this is an insane way to react to something as insignificant as gossip.  This is because they go through their lives able to forgive small offenses.  Hell, they might even consider some offenses too small to actually count as offenses!  Isn't it odd how people can be more merciful, more kind, more loving and more forgiving than the perfectly merciful, kind, loving and forgiving God they pray to?  Somehow millions of people manage to be more moral than the alleged source of their morality.

If you wouldn't kill someone for saying a bad word, or for that matter thinking it, doesn't that make you better than a God who would?  Eternal torture for inconsequential, temporal wrongdoing seems like something only an insane psychopath would do because it is something only an insane psychopath would do.  Deep down, you know it's true.

God loves you but His angels could take you or leave you!

You really can't trust angels.  OK maybe that's a little harsh.  Maybe you can totally trust an angel with a loan or something.  What you can't trust them with is their JOB.  A full three quarters of them are just going to blow it completely!  Or at least, that's the impression I got from this new Chick tract called: Four Angels?

If you thought Jack Chick's views on Christianity made no sense then I'm about to prove you right! I've been in some weird churches in my life but this here is some Grade A crazy!  Buckle up!  Here we go!

Meet the Sawyer family.  Well, most of them.  Pappa Sawyer is basically an extra with no lines in this story.  Frank, Bobby, Charlie and Henry are going spend the rest of this tract living the Parable of the sower.  Spoiler Alert - this is really only going to work out well for one of the Sawyers...

Now meet the titular four angels (they don't get names).  One of them is there on a mission from God!  The other three, not sure.  Maybe they thought they were going on a beer run or something and got tricked into coming to the Revival meeting just like the Sawyers!  As the rest of the tract will show, they're clearly not here because they're heavily invested in the whole "angel" thing.

Henry's angel is the one with a mission so he's the one taking the whole "guardian angel" thing seriously.  His job is to keep Henry safe so he takes on that snake like a damn honeybadger!  In case you were interested, Hebrews 1:14 reads "Are not all angels ministering spirits sent to serve those who will inherit salvation?"  As this tract will go on to demonstrate, the answer (at least according to Jack Chick) is a resounding "Eh, not so much".

Real True Christians know that the best thing for a small child is to tell them they are terrible and that they deserve to be tortured for endless eons.  Fear is the path to the Dark Side and also to Jesus it seems!

See?  Little Henry doesn't convert because he loves Jesus or because he finds the Gospel compelling or because he desires God in any way.  Little Henry converts because he is crap-your-pants terrified of going to Hell.  As we go on you'll see that this is not a bug, it's a feature.  Of course, as the highlighted text points out, you're out of luck here if you don't get the "believe in your heart" thing just right.  As a child this kept me constantly doubting my own salvation and led to many a "re-dedication".  As the Slacktivist recently pointed out, I wasn't alone in this, it's how Evangelicals do business.  Can you see the complete lack of enthusiasm in the other 3 angels?  Clearly they were told there would be cake!  Instead they're saddled with a job they have no enthusiasm for.

Poor Frank!  Because his guardian angel couldn't be bothered to call shotgun, he ends up getting chatted up by a devil while the angel rides in the back making his best judgy face.  Frank ends up hellbound because his guardian angel couldn't make five minutes worth of effort to help him out while being mentally assaulted by a demon.  Here's the thing though, none of this makes any sense.  Frank leaves the faith because a devil convinces him he looks stupid and his girl would leave him.  Frank then continues to live a life of outward piety and Christianity.  So what exactly changed?  Frank doesn't want people to think he's a Christian and yet anyone looking on who wasn't a mind reader would mistake Frank for a committed Christian who loves the Lord.  Also it couldn't have been that offensive to his girlfriend because she seems to be his wife now and sitting next to him and their kids in church.  This is the kind of nonsensical content that makes me believe that Jack Chick lives in a dark basement somewhere and that he's never actually met people.  This is not how people react when they reject the Gospel.  This is not how anyone acts.  Anyway, clearly Frank here is supposed to illustrate the idea that doing the right thing doesn't matter, only believing the right thing on the inside matters.

The same thing happens with Bobby.  He is forced to abandon his Christian faith in order to make it at work.  He then goes on to practice his Christian faith outwardly exactly as before.  So what changed?  Is his boss a mind reader?  Can the CEO of his company measure the faith in your heart come promotion time?  I guess he can, otherwise this entire story would make zero amount of sense.  Well, that's 2 angels back in heaven, breathing sighs of relief at the snack table.  They didn't put in a whole lot of effort but then again, they clearly weren't planning to.  Now we move on to brother Charlie.  Charlie gets to be the one thing Jack Chick hates more than Satanists and Homosexuals - a preacher who tells people that God is love.  There's an entire tract just about that called Reverend Wonderful (which I'm pretty sure is based on Billy Graham, but I can't prove it...)

So how did the good Reverend manage to drive off his personal angel? He looked at porn, which it turns out is angel kryptonite.  Turns out a Playboy is the equivalent of an exorcism for angels.  It's weird, angels are immortal spiritual beings who have been watching over humanity for their entire history.  That's thousands of years of seeing people get naked, even if you're a Young Earth Creationist.  But some boobs in a magazine just makes an angel go "I've seen enough" and run home? Sure...  Anyway, now you know - choking the chicken chokes the word!

Anyway so Charlie is a typical sleazy Televangelist, exactly like all the other Evangelical sleazebags.  Well... Not exactly...  Quick, off the top of your head name me five Mega church pastors!  Easy right?  It doesn't matter what you believe, these ministries are so obnoxiously big you know about them whether you want to or not.  OK, now name me one Christian Mega Ministry attended by people of all faiths.  I'll wait.  Can't do it, can you?  That's not a real thing that exists in our world.  They may be sleazy, they may be greedy, they may be telling you whatever you want to hear, but at no point in history has any Christian Megachurch ever been frequented by Muslims, Hindus and Jews.  Jack Chick doesn't understand the basics of the English Language.  To him the world is made up of Real Christians and Everyone Else and therefore Everyone Else must basically be all on the same team.

Now we return to little Henry.  No longer little but still somehow sporting a band-aid on his face.  Henry is the success story and no wonder since he's the one who got the guardian angel who actually cares about his job.  Like a teacher that refuses to give up on a tough class, this angel has been working hard through the years, watching Henry's back and not giving up at the first sign of trouble like his 3 friends.  As a result, Henry is a committed Christian who has more compassion for the lost than 75% of God's own angels.  His guardian angel didn't quit on him and likewise he doesn't quit on the needy, even if the going is tough.  Henry is a good egg.

Or maybe not.  Here Henry decides to interpret Scripture as literally as possible in order to be as big a dick as possible to his famous brother.  Now I share Henry's deep and passionate dislike of sleazy Televangelists but isn't there an off chance that he would have been able to get through to his brother if he didn't just start acting like a huge fizzy douche right out the gate?

 Like I said, it's not that I disagree with Henry here on principle - exploitative megachurch pastors are the scum of the earth - but wow, he is not as great at picking damning Scriptures as he thinks he is.  Here is the entire verse of Jeremiah 48:10 "Cursed be he that doeth the work of the Lord deceitfully, and cursed be he that keepeth back his sword from blood." Yeah, that verse isn't about telling preachers not telling folks they're going to hell, it's about God ordering the bloody destruction of Moab.  Just sayin'...  As for the quote from James, well that one is just sad.  In a modern English translation, that one reads "But if you show favoritism, you sin and are convicted by the law as lawbreakers."  It has nothing to do with having respect for people, it's about favoritism.  That's what happens when you read a translation from the 1600 as if it's exactly the same thing as modern English - you end up looking like a bit of a twat. 

Brother Charlie has been telling that God loves them instead of scaring them towards salvation with threats of hellfire.  Since this is a Chick tract, this probably won't end well for Charlie...

Suckers!  They gambled on God being progressive, kind and loving and it cost them dearly.  They should have listened to that fire & brimstone preacher in the tent - God will happily have you tortured for uncountable billions of years for not really truly believing in the Gospel! (In a Chick tract, He will...)  The porn was just the sin cherry on the sin sundae!

I don't want to start any blasphemous rumours but if this tract is right, 75% of converts will end up in hell because three quarters of the angels just can't be bothered to help out.  Be honest, those other 3 angels were kind of dicks amirite?  Mull that over while brother Butler plays us out!

That should have been your first clue

I know I'm over a decade late to the party but I recently discovered the delightful British series Jonathan Creek.  On the bright side, being late to the party means I get to watch the whole series on youtube for free!  For those unfamiliar with the show, it's about a man who devises illusions for a stage magician for a living who uses his skills and insights to solve crimes that appear to have been impossible.  If you're into skepticism and/or the very charming Alan Davies I strongly recommend watching it.  It frequently demonstrates how the truth behind an astonishing mystery can be incredibly mundane so if you want to believe that magic tricks are really magic, this may not be your kind of show...

So while watching one of the episodes, an off hand comment by one of the characters made me realize that there is an incredibly banal truth behind the very popular supernatural belief in reincarnation.  In the season 2 episode "Danse Macabre" the victim of a baffling murder is said to have been working on her autobiography - or rather her autobiographies - an account of her many lives throughout the ages. They included: "high priestess of the Aztec Empire... a courtesan to King Charles I, a Russian Countess and a Zulu at Rorke's Drift."

I've been fascinated by the supernatural since childhood and read anything I could find on the subject* and this seemed exactly like everything anyone claiming to remember their "past lives" has ever said.  It's the weirdest thing when you think about it, how these previous incarnations are always incredibly significant.  People were either very important historical figures or they were somehow connected to important historical figures and events.  How strange, seeing as the vast majority of people throughout history were neither important nor involved with anything important.  For most of history people were born, worked hard, lived lives devoid of comfort or importance and then died.  Yet funnily enough, you never seem to hear anyone with a past life being any of those people!  No one remembers a past life where they toiled hard, lived off turnips and died young because the most cutting edge medical procedure of the time was getting bled to death.  Nope, it's always kings and queens and courtesans it seems!  What are the odds?

Uncomfortable truth time, how important are you?  I know we all get told from childhood that we are special little snowflakes and that our lives have much importance and meaning, but does it? Really?  I'm not trying to insult you and I'm not insinuating that your life is meaningless.  Obviously if you are reading this blog you are an amazing and intelligent person with a sensitive soul and a great sense of humour! Your closest friends and family would no doubt agree that you are totally awesome.  However, in the grand scheme of things, how important do you think you are?  Will people be reading about you in a 100 years?  How about your friends and associates? Will they be famous centuries from now?  Will your work be discussed in Universities one day?

Several important events happened within my lifetime: Elvis died, ABBA broke up, John Lennon was assassinated, George Lucas created and subsequently destroyed several million happy childhood memories, the Berlin Wall came down, the Soviet Union collapsed, Apartheid ended and Lady Gaga was born.  I didn't play any part in any of those events.  It's a fair bet that you didn't either.  Not everyone gets to do something significant with our lives.  That doesn't mean we don't wish it wasn't so.

There is a reason that almost all works of fantasy involve someone plucked from obscurity and turned into someone of great importance.  I think all nobodies wish they were somebodies.  Who doesn't dream of being discovered and appreciated and admired and remembered?  I suspect this kind of dream, this deep wish for specialness, lives inside us all.  Therefore the fact that all past life experiences are so special and significant is the only clue you need to figure out that past lives are bullshit. There are no past lives, just current wish fulfillment. 

No matter how much you dream of being special, the cold reality of your life can't be shut out forever.  Reincarnation is however a great way of overcoming reality.  Maybe you're not so amazing NOW but what if you were incredibly special in a past life (or ten)?  Surely that could mean that you might end up being incredibly important in some other life in the future!

I'm something of a dreamer myself so I completely understand the allure.  But that doesn't make it true.  You can't make yourself special by wishing it so.  Burying yourself in fantasy is comfortable but it's also a little dangerous.  After all, if you're reading this you're probably not dead so your story isn't over yet.  History is not done with you, maybe you turn out to be more significant than you could even dream.  Who knows how your story is going to play out in the end?  You're not a Pharaoh or a High Priest or a brave knight.  You are you.  Why not make the best of it?

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*It led to many tearful repentance sessions and the occasional book burning since by even reading about the occult I was opening myself to Satan's influence.  If you didn't grow up Pentecostal or Charismatic that wouldn't mean anything to you but trust me, it was a big deal!

What is Wrong with Rights?

Today is Human Rights Day which is great because it's a public holiday.  There is however the fact that the words "human rights" still conjure up a vague sense of unease within me is keeping me from enjoying it as much as I should.  This is not OK.  I was raised to have a negative view of human rights and this needs to stop right now so today I'm going to try to dig this thing up by the root!

I think part of the problem was that I was never really clear on why human rights were supposed to be bad.  For as long as I can remember people in church only mentioned human rights in a derisive manner.  Much like "humanism" or "compromise" it was a term that everyone apparently just understood was a bad thing, no explanation necessary.  So that was all I knew.  Human rights were bad.  Actually all rights were bad - Human rights, Children's rights, Animal rights - all of them.  Good Christians were supposed to be against having rights.  Having rights were bad, you were supposed to "give up your rights".  Again, no idea why, it's just something good Christians were supposed to believe.  Lest you think I was just in some weird cult, this happens all over.  Not only do certain American Christians oppose Children's rights, they even actively oppose giving rights to the disabled.  This isn't just something my weird little pentecostal church taught, this is something Christians all over the world believe.  But why?

Well for the first time in my life I looked up the actual Universal Declaration of Human Rights and I have to say, it was no help at all!  Everything on there seemed like a great idea!  I see nothing in it that could be scary in any way, except perhaps if you were a running an oppressive dictatorship.

So I've been scouring my memory banks and came up with two possible reasons I was supposed to consider human rights a bad thing:

Rights lead to entitlement!  I distinctly remember one sermon in the student church I attended making the case that we should abandon human rights and instead adopt human responsibility.  See having rights make you entitled and lazy and prevents you from taking the responsibility to help yourself.  This makes total sense right up until you actually read up on what human rights actually entail at which point it stops making any sense at all.  This is just one more nasty offspring from the union of Christianity with political conservatism.  There is this deep seated aversion to people getting good things they didn't earn themselves which is pretty ironic considering the basic tenets of Christian Theology...  Any mention of human rights also tended to get rather vitriolic when it was regarding the rights of a criminal.  This of course isn't confined to church, this happens everywhere.  Everyone seems to get really upset at the idea that a suspected criminal could have rights under the law, and I certainly understand that impulse.  However this too shows both complete ignorance of what human rights actually entail and a staggering lack of empathy.  You don't think criminals should have rights?  What if you were accused of a crime?  Should you get to have rights?  Yes?  Well then, maybe having basic human rights isn't the worst thing in the world!

Rights are a conspiracy!  If you want to understand Evangelical Christians you need to understand End Times paranoia.  Really if you only have the time to learn ONE THING about Christians, learn this because it colours the world of Christendom more than any other doctrine.  What Christians believe about the end of the world determines how they relate to the other groups, international relations, climate change and everything related to the future.  This is why many Christians - especially in America - distrust the UN.  They believe that the UN is just a forerunner for the One World Government the Antichrist will install during the End Times to oppress all Real True Christians (who weren't Raptured)*.  Therefore, everything connected to the UN must be viewed with suspicion.  No matter how benign it might seem, ultimately it has to be a nefarious trap to destroy the Christian way of life.  Since the UN is the one pushing for rights, rights have to be bad.  I know it doesn't make sense but then again, neither do their ideas about the End Times.

So then as best I can gather I was supposed to distrust human rights because it may make people suffer less and because it could all be fantastical plot by a nonexistent evil entity.  Well, I guess that settles that.

Human Rights are to be promoted and protected.  Human Rights are not to be feared.  These things should be self evident and I'm ashamed that for a while they weren't.  Happy Human Rights Day!

***

See also:  Things that are and are not cake.  I should add human rights (or just rights in general) to things that are not cake.  You can have the full spectrum of human rights and it will take nothing away from me.  I can have all the same rights too.  There is enough to go around, rights are not cake!  Enjoy!

The Brownie Recipe Glurge - now with added moral consistency

I did not write the following story, I'm just amending the ending to make it morally consistent.  You wouldn't want to forward this glurge and look like a hypocrite now would you?  You can read the original, unaltered version here. 

If you ended up here because you were looking for an actual brownie recipe, why not try Nigella's Snowflake Brownies?  I've made them a bunch of times and they haven't failed me once!  These are so good you will be weeping tears of joy after every bite!  By all means feel free to leave out the white chocolate bits and add more dark chocolate instead.  Always remember, use the best quality ingredients for the best quality results!

OK, on to the morality tale with the questionable morals!

***

THE BROWNIE RECIPE

A father of some teenage children had the family rule that they could not attend PG-13 or R rated movies. His three teens wanted to see a particular popular movie that was playing at local theaters. It was rated PG-13.  The teens interviewed friends and even some members of their family's church to find out what was offensive in the movie. The teens made a list of pros and cons about the movie to use to convince their dad that they should be allowed to see it.

The cons were:
*It contained ONLY 3 swear words!
*The ONLY violence was a building exploding (and you see that on TV all the time they said),
*You actually did not 'see' the couple in the movie having sex, it was just implied sex, off camera.

The pros were:
*It was a popular movie, (a blockbuster).
*Everyone was seeing it.
*If the teens saw the movie then they would not feel left out when their friends discussed it.
*The movie contained a good story and plot.
*It had some great adventure and suspense in it.
*There were some fantastic special effects in this movie.
*The movie's stars were some of the most talented actors in Hollywood .
*It probably would be nominated for several awards.
*Many members of their Christian church, including the pastor, had even seen the movie
and said it wasn't really 'that bad'.

Therefore, since there were more pros than cons the teens asked their father to reconsider his position
on just this ONE movie and let them have permission to go see it.

The father looked at the list and thought for a few minutes. He said he could tell his children had spent some time and thought on this request. He asked if he could have a day to think about it before making his decision.

The teens were thrilled, thinking, 'Now we've got him! Our argument is too good! Dad can't turn us down!'
So, they happily agreed to let him have a day to think about their request.

The next evening the Father called his three teenagers, who were smiling smugly, into the living room.
There on the coffee table he had a plate of brownies. The teens were puzzled. The father told his children
he had thought about their request and had decided that if they would eat the brownies, then he would
let them go to the movie. But, he explained, just like the movie, the brownies had pros and cons.

The pros were :
*They were made with the finest chocolate and other good ingredients.
*They had the added special effect of yummy walnuts in them.
*The brownies were moist and fresh with wonderful chocolate frosting on top.
*He had made these fantastic brownies using an award-winning recipe.
*And best of all, the brownies had been made lovingly by the hand of their own father.

The brownies only had one con :
*He had included a little bit of a special ingredient: The brownies contained just a small amount of dog poop.
But he had mixed the dough well and they probably would not even be able to taste the dog poop and he had baked it at 350 degrees so hopefully any bacteria or germs from the dog poop had probably been destroyed.

Therefore, if any of his children could stand to eat the brownies which included just a 'little bit of crap' and not be affected by it, then he knew they would also be able to see the movie with 'just a little bit of smut' and not be affected. Of course, none of the teens would eat the brownies and the smug smiles had left their faces.

The next day the kids told their father that since they weren't allowed to see the movie they would be spending their weekend reading a book instead, unless he had objections to their choice of literature as well that is.  Since the father was very strict and wanted to shield his kids from all material that had age inappropriate content he asked them to tell him more about the book they planned on reading.  They then made the following list of pros and cons for their dad's consideration.

The cons were:
*It contained SOME bad language but not that much.
*It does however contain plenty of sex.  It starts off with some nudity and before long there is sex, rape, incest, sexual slavery, prostitution as well as some passing mention of homosexual sex and bestiality.
*It is pretty violent, start to finish.  There are beatings, stabbings, suicides and murders.  Genocide, patricide, infanticide are all regular occurrences and it also features many brutal depictions of animals being abused and killed in various sadistic ways. 

The pros were:
*It was an international best seller.
*Everyone they knew had been reading it and recommended it as a "must read".
*Many people in their church, including the pastor, had also recommended reading it.
*It contained many noble themes such as perseverance during adversity, humility, forgiveness and compassion for the less fortunate.
*It celebrated the victory of good over evil.
*This book contained some of the most memorable characters and themes of all.
*Since it's based on a true story, it's considered very inspirational.


"Well", said the dad, "I can see you put a lot of effort and research into this but it sounds to me like despite all the good you claim it contains, it there is just way too much inappropriate stuff in there for it to be wholesome reading.  However I'll leave it up to you" said the dad smiling smugly, "if you'd like to prove to me that you can handle so much crap mixed in with the good, I'll be happy to whip up a batch of my special brownies for you!"


"Sheesh! No thanks! That won't be necessary dad!", the kids said in unison.  "It's fine, we promise we won't read the Bible!!"

***

Have you ever seen the insanely strict standards by which Christian media review sites like Plugged-in Online judge movies and TV by?  The irony is that if they ever judged the Bible - which they claim as the source of their judgements in the first place - by their own standards, the review would be more damning than the one they gave the SAW franchise!  If the Bible was published today, Focus on the Family would be telling you to stay far away from it!

If you got problems...

You know, when you have one it's really easy to take it for granted.  Sometimes it's easy to forget just how many problems are solved simply by having one.  Thankfully someone stuck this reminder on a roadsign!

The Myth of Heroic Rape

Rape is an exceedingly terrible thing that can never ever be considered good, right?  I thought that would be the foregone conclusion of any sane, civilized person with even an ounce of empathy but I was wrong.  Some people seem to have come to the worrying conclusion that while rape is usually bad, it can sometimes be a good thing.

I was watching a Rosario Dawson movie called Descent the other day.  She plays a shy, bookish girl who goes on a date with a popular jock and then gets brutally raped by him.  *Spoiler alert if you plan on watching it but I wouldn't recommend it, it's not a good movie* In the end she seduces him, brings her to her apartment for a date, convinces him to get undressed and then ties him to the bed where she proceeds to rape him with an object.  Then her big black friend comes in and brutally rapes the jock some more.  I believe something similar happened in Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

However this idea that rape can be heroic and appropriate as long as you're raping a bad person isn't confined to the occasional girl power revenge flick.  It's everywhere.  You see it every time a sex offender gets sentenced to jail and suddenly everyone seems to be gleefully commenting on how he will soon be on the receiving end of several hundred rapes.  Hell I used to do that myself until the full implication of this dawned on me.

If rape is an abominable, soul destroying act that harms another human being to their very core then it cannot ever be a good thing.  Not ever.  Not even when it happens to a pedophile.  We are outraged when some tribal elder in some godforsaken part of the world uses rape as a way to punish a young girl - and rightfully so!  Rape is a crime, not a punishment.  It should never be OK to use as a form of punishment, it should always be an abomination to us.  Always.  Once you start decreeing that some people actually deserve to be raped then you're not even on a slippery slope anymore, you've already fallen down the hole.  

I have no proof of this but I don't think that you can defile someone in this way without defiling yourself as well.  When you rape someone you are doing violence to your own psyche as well.  Nothing about rape can ever be redemptive or heroic.  It's bad enough that in the last decade torture went from something unspeakably wrong to something completely acceptable as long as the "good guys" are doing it.  The same thing should absolutely not be allowed to happen with the crime of rape.

I understand this impulse though.  Whenever I hear of some horrible crime (and unfortunately that's happening a lot) there is that moment when I wish the cruelest of the ancient tortures to be visited upon the criminals so they can be made to suffer for their barbarity.  However I understand that this impulse is not about justice but about vengeance.  This is impulse is neither good nor right and I try not to foster it.  I don't always feel it but I have to believe that violence and cruelty can never be the way forward.  When we indulge in it, it stains us all.  No good can come of it.  So I try to choose not to indulge in such twisted fantasies.  This pervasive idea that violence and death can be good needs to end.  It will not come naturally to us so he have to keep making that choice again and again for as long as it takes.

Or am I just being massively naive now?