If one ever completely screws up his or her life and wants "redemption", there are two courses of action. The first is a name change, with the hope that no one notices the sordid past. Don't laugh, the technique worked for Value Jet. The airline crashed into an alligator infested swamp, changed its name to AirTran and presto -- it was like the disaster never happened.
If this fails, just embrace option two: become a born-again Christian fundamentalist. Who cares how many people you have screwed? The flaky flock will love you! How about the innocent victims you've whacked? No problem -- they'll still want you back!
Time and again, fundamentalists buy the fantasy that the world's worst reprobates can fundamentally change. It never seems to occur to these credulous Christians that perhaps they are being had by the unusually bad.
Of course, I'm not saying that people are incapable of transforming their lives. Each day, individuals make choices to better themselves. However, the eagerness and ease with which some Christians blindly accept total, comprehensive reinvention is disconcerting. They often seem so anxious to show that Jesus has special powers that they'd probably confuse a miracle with Miracle Whip if it fit their agenda.
The latest lunacy involves the alleged conversion of David Berkowitz, who is better known as the "Son of Sam." In 1977, Berkowitz was arrested for using a .44 caliber pistol to kill six people and wound seven more in New York City. The psychopath apparently took orders from a demonic black Labrador retriever owned by a neighbor.
Even with a disturbing past worthy of a Stephen King novel, The New York Times reports this week that gullible evangelicals have lined up to declare the Son of Sam a new man. Just as Focus on the Family embraced convicted Watergate felon Chuck Colson after he found God, they are playing a leading role in rehabilitating the image of Berkowitz.
According to the Times article, the Son of Sam's extreme makeover started in 2003 after Focus on the Family interviewed him on its radio show. The sympathetic segment centered on his difficult childhood, the shooting spree and his conversion to Christianity. This interview was aired in 2,000 U.S. outlets and in more than 50 countries. In other words, the man who took so many lives now has a new lease on life, thanks to these wide-eyed saps. He's even a mini-celeb in some evangelical circles, and regularly corresponds with big-haired Christian television host RoxAnne Tauriello.
Fortunately, not everyone is buying the fairytale of transformation:
It's a total charade to promote himself," Joseph Coffer, the police sergeant who took Berkowitz's confession, told The New York Times. "I have had people who I sent to prison or put in the witness protection program find religion because it suits them by providing access to the outside world."
Bingo.
Sure, reading the Bible might help some people give up booze or treat their neighbor a bit more kindly. But one has to be a total sucker to believe that religion can fix a man who ruthlessly murders people at the behest of a satanic canine. Psychological problems of this magnitude run much deeper -- and unless Jesus Christ is a Harvard-trained psychiatrist, he isn't going to magically fix the Son of Sam.
Thanks to the slick, if not sick, public relations efforts by Sam's fundamentalist fans, the murderer now has his own little kingdom. His followers have set up a fancy website featuring an array of DVDs and CDs and a book of his prison journals, Son of Hope. Who knew the whole "saved slasher" genre would be so popular?
But, seriously, it is not coincidental that the same naive crowd that believes that people can "pray away the gay" also believes that the Son of Sam isn't really the Son of Scam. I've lost count of the number of times I've witnessed evangelical rallies where the crowd appears to believe that the stereotypical homosexuals on stage have actually gone straight.
It does not matter how ridiculous these "ex-gays" look. Or, how utterly non-credible these fantastical stories may be, because the people at these over-heated, over-the top revivals buy the loony lines nearly every time. When questioned about their views, they usually offer canned answers, such as, "God could turn a Chevy into the space shuttle if he wanted, so why can't he cure a homosexual?"
Perhaps he can do all these neat little tricks, but only fundamentalists swear that such superstitious magic actually happens on a regular basis. In their fascinating world, God is "healing" gay people by the thousands and Jesus is busy transforming David Berkowitz into a model citizen.
I do understand that such notions are driven by faith. But there is a point where blind faith becomes banal foolishness.
Follow Wayne Besen on Twitter: www.twitter.com/Truthwinout
David Berkowitz - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
David Berkowitz - The Son of Sam Killer David Berkowitz
NY's Most Famous Serial Killer: David Berkowitz, AKA The Son of ...
Image Makeover From Admirers of 'Son of Sam' - NYTimes.com
As for the "scam", well, I'm not familiar enough with the facts to say what each and every person is doing... I will say that no one in their right (Christian) mind sees a convicted felon finding faith as good spritual news and that felon serving out his/her time in jail as two completely different issues. No right minded Christian thinks, or should think, "Well, this person is now a believer, let us let him out of jail, or promote him to the outside world." If they do, they should have their head examined. Personally, I would use the convict's own feelings in the matter as the sign of whether their acceptance of faith was legitimate: If don't freely acknowledge they deserve every bit of the punishment they've been given, or attempt to engage in proclaiming their conversion to those outside the prison walls, I would treat their miraculous conversion as dubious at best.
How so ?
If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them. -- Lev.20:13
Imagine he killed one of your family members and you have to listen to this nonsense.
Were it not for radical Islam...Born Agains would be the worst people on Earth.
On center balls, like earth, the ghost, including mind, migrates through each cell of every entity type thereon via reincarnation. The cell embeds the knowledge required to be comprehended into the them while reincarnation produces barriers preventing knowledge obtained in one cell from being remembered in another until incarnating for entering the first layer. It's done because on earth's plane of duality has every life interacting with others causing karma. Each ghost will experience ever act and emotion they caused others a memory would not allow them to experience.
If the karma is completed a change MAY take place, but, under organized religious conditions it's unlikely. However, if the previous Son of Sam gout out under religious pretense it's this one's destiny also. Ecclesiastes 1:9 suggest everything happens time and time again meaning, another Son of Sam lived at this time in the previous material civilization which is the destiny of this one.
Matthew 7:14 Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.
Also:
John 3:3b I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.
John 3:5b I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.
The last two verses above are not a holy suggestion. I'm not familiar with Mr. Berkowitz's' spiritual life but if it is true then he is a lot closer to God than Mr. Besn and most everyone who blog and comment here on HP. And if his conversion is true, then he is my brother in Christ.
Mark 2:17 When Jesus heard it, he saith unto them, They that are whole have no need of the physician, but they that are sick: I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.
I'm not so sure that faith is what's at work in the cases you're writing about. I believe there's a willful ignorance, which is often (usually? always?) accompanied by arrogance. That kind of willful ignorance has to be serving some purpose for the person(s) engaging in it, and that purpose would most likely be protection. (This is my retired psychologist self speaking here.) What that kind of arrogant, willful ignorance would protect them from is some truth about themselves. They want to believe that God has changed them so that they are now absolutely okay, and if they're going to believe it for themselves, they need to believe it for others, too. I don't think it's faith that's driving them, but fear--fear of finding out they aren't all changed and okay as they wanted to believe.
Interesting that you closed with the phrase, "banal foolishness." Reminds me of Hannah Arendt's banality of evil. I think the two aren't so far apart, if at all.
That's got to be the silliest thing I've every heard. Jesus can be the Creator of the universe but He still needs a Harvard degree to cure someone's mental illness. That is perfect proof of the ignorance and arrogance of the non believer. Not saying that I believe that Berkowitz is a true Christian but to say that it can't happen, that Jesus can't do it is the same kind of ignorance as the belief that we and all of existence is an accident.
Best of all, a lot of them came into the classroom carrying a copy of the Holy Bible when they entered. There was a lot of who returned when it became cold or they were hungry. This was years before a lot of organized gangs and guns. Most interesting are those who acquired religion after every crime and arrest. One young black man had murdered his gay lover. He came in with the Bible quoting all kinds of scripture. One young gentleman who had a penchant for raping his young cousins alway carried his Bible everywhere. I told my friends that they should be booked, then showered, the issued clothes with a Bible. Extremely interesting. I bet some are on death row in Raiford by now.
So much for religion!
In my mind, Christianity is not, "I say I believe so I'm a Christian" kind of identification. James properly noted that "the demons believe and tremble."
Those who are Christians should act toward others as Christ would have them. Love their enemies (yes, even Obama and "Obamacare"!), doing good to those who can't pay you back, loving the unloved.
In Christ's world, it is not the "believing" only, but the doing that demonstrates that belief. "But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand." Matthew 7:26.
Anyone who thinks believing only does the trick is scamming himself or herself.
So some of my worst mistakes came *after* my conversion to Christianity and were in part, result of psychatric issues I needed to hunker down and take care of, and I've never killed anybody...
Still, my faith has helped me deal with it all and better myself, but it's been a slow walk with lots of self-examination, no fame, and while many people think I'm a slime-dwelling knuckle-dragger for believing in a God at all, I abandoned Fundamentalism years ago.
I go by "By their fruits you shall know them." If a prison-convert is sincere, leave him/her be without the widespread public access and seew hat kind of person they've become. I definitely believe that the love of God can change even murderers, but they've still gotta seek out psychaitry and to watch themselves and by no means should be released just because they had a conversion experience.
It's not like the "born again atheists" who proclaim "becomming awake to reason/reality!" and that it made them better get the same press/fame/sympathy.
Real change does happen for people, however....Anyone can "feel changed"- but are they really? Time must witness.
That doesn't get fixed because someone started reading the Torah. Or Qu'ran. Or the Book of Mormon. Or Dianetics. Or the Bible.
I had the wry imagining that they said, 'Hey, you're our kind of guy,' :)
But another person whose behavior is actually far better will be condemned by these same Christians because this person doesn't agree with these Christians legalistic understanding of what constitutes Christian morality.
Thus, form is favored over substance.