If you want to start a big fight in any social setting, mention religion. Whatever your opinion, someone else will beg to differ and usually quite vociferously. With that in mind, I present these nutty religious stories.
The Associated Press reported in August that Los Angeles Reverend Craig X. Rubin was convicted of possessing marijuana for sale. We have heard every excuse before, including these gems: "It wasn't my dope, I was holding it for a friend," and the ever-popular "I don't know how that got there, man," the favored excuse of Hollywood teen disaster Lindsay Lohan. But Reverend Rubin had a new one, claiming that the members of his temple burned the weed during services as a religious sacrament. I at least give him credit for originality.
But is getting high the way to spirituality? R.S. Pearson wrote "The Experience of Hallucinations in Religious Practice," a book that describes how people try to enter a dream state to get a little closer to their chosen supreme being. But as the author states, "The problem is that there are psychological studies that show the longer you hallucinate, the more your IQ can decrease." Perhaps that phenomenon explains our next story.
There is a verse in the Bible, Mark 16:18, that says "They shall take up serpents … and it shall not hurt them." This became the founding principle for a number of Churches throughout the South that routinely bring rattlesnakes to the pulpit to test this theory, often with the expected consequences. CBS news reported in November 2006 that Linda Long of London, Ky., died as the result of a rattler's poisonous bite that occurred during a service at East London Holiness Church. This practice is a misdemeanor in that state ,punishable by a $50 to $100 fine. Generally, I am not in favor of any laws that restrict religious practices, but I believe there is already a law on the books against helping people die.
Fasting, the practice of refraining from food, has been observed for centuries in many religions. If this helps one gain religious insight, there are certain runway models who must be very spiritual! But fasting started when primitive people believed that demons could enter the body while one is eating. Some religions practice fasting as a means of purification, but it can be taken too far. Ask the families of the late Karen Carpenter or the late Margaux Hemmingway.
One church, that is actually more of a cult, uses something called an "E-Meter," which is a device that is hooked up to a congregation member to test the strength of that person's beliefs. According to Listverse.com, "A 1971 ruling of the United States District Court, District of Columbia, stated that the E-meter has no proven usefulness in the diagnosis, treatment or prevention of any disease, nor is it medically or scientifically capable of improving any bodily function."
The last story is a bit more grim. WRCB(TV), Chattanooga reported that in Indiana, a pastor in training at Cherry Hill Christian Church, wrapped a 14-year-old boy in sheets and allegedly beat and smothered him for 11 hours in the name of exorcising his "demons of autism."
When young Torrance Cantrell began throwing up, the minister, Eddie Uyesugi, told the justifiably anxious mother that this was "the evil spirits leaving his body." A similar event happened the same week in Milwaukee, according to CBS News. In that one, the eight-year-old victim died.
We seem to have a trend here: the return of illogical practices that date back to the beginning of humanity. I'm not singling out any particular religion here; exorcism appears in the teachings of several.
When are people going to give up on this mumbo-jumbo about spirits possessing the body? And even if there were evil spirits in the body, what gives one man the authority to remove them from another human being?
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