I think people have just lost their damn minds. A quick search of “murder-suicide” on MSNBC turned up an overabundance of stories on the subject – at least six of which within the last month have included the murder of children. People are killing their entire families (and in one case, even the family pets!) at an alarming rate these days.
The supposed motives given for these massacres are varied, but at least two of the news stories I found mention the possibility that the murderers were under financial pressure of some sort. How killing your wife and children solves that problem, I don’t know. Better for them to die than have to pinch pennies, perhaps?
It’s one thing to be so depressed over financial losses that you can’t take it anymore, so you commit suicide. But to take out your entire family? I can’t begin to understand the reasoning for that.
The strangest case to me is the one where the mother and son were at a shooting range, where she shot him and then herself. She obviously had severe mental illness, gauging from the suicide note and video she left. She thought she was the Antichrist, and had wanted to kill herself for a long time, but she couldn’t bear to leave her son behind. She said, “I had to send my son to heaven, and myself to hell,” so there would be 1,000 years of peace on earth. Uh, yeah – right. Don’t even get me started on the things people do in the name of religion….
Wow – it’s amazing what twisted stories a mentally ill person can tell themselves, and the consequences those stories might have on others. The scary thing is that there are many people we come into contact with in our everyday lives who we would never suspect of having dark thoughts like that. So many times, their friends and co-workers describe people who go on a killing spree as “just a regular guy” who never did anything to cause concern. It almost makes you look at everyone with suspicion, which is not a good way to live your own life.
And then there’s the guy who just the other day ran his car into a flooded ditch in Houston, killing five children (three of them his own). He failed a field sobriety test, and told officers he lost control of the car while trying to dial his cell phone.
You just can’t fix stupid – and it’s a shame someone else has to pay for it.
It’s even worse than you probably think! I came across a website that lists them on a daily basis. Very morbid and sad. http://massmurders.blogspot.com
Just a glance at the headlines on that blog is enough to depress anyone! I don’t think I could handle checking it out on a regular basis. Ignorance may just be bliss, after all. Thanks for the comment and link!
It’s not about religion. It’s about our personal relationship with God. America was built by its founding fathers who subscribed to God’s divine providence to sustain the nation. Hence the idea of divine providence and trust in God was even mentioned in America’s constitution and legal tender. But that was before. Because of the American’s preoccupation with freedoms and rights, they veered away from Biblical precepts and accepted norms that are fundamentally unbiblical- like legal abortion, same sex marriage, prohibition of prayers inside the school premises, and other so called liberated principles. What happens was that America lost its pristine principle of love of God and countrymen. All became so engrossed with the pursuit of happiness and material prosperity which became the obsession of everyone to the exclusion of godliness and clean living. Now we see America down on its knees and so many Americans on killing sprees and suicides all because they lost track of who they really are. God is shaking the world to its very foundations to see who is faithful to Him and who are of this world. “God chose the foolish things of this world to shame the wise, He chose the weak things of this world to shame the strong.” Thanks for the post. God bless.
Thanks for your comment! My mention of religion was in the context of some of the really strange things some “religions” teach in the name of God, or use God as a cover story to further their own individual (and very human and “of this world”) agendas. And some people fall for their teachings hook, line and sinker – or perhaps like the woman in the shooting range, their own internal demons (read that “mental illness” in her case) twist the teachings of more mainstream religions into the result that case ended up with.
I’m all in favor of people having a personal relationship with God, whatever name they choose to call him. If more people lived by God-like principles, I’m sure we’d have much less violence in the world. Unfortunately, the baser urgings of human nature often get in the way of acting on those principles. I guess we can all just do our part to brighten up our own little corner of the world and treat others around us with kindness and respect, and hope enough other people do it, too, so that it makes a difference!