I should start by saying that I don’t get freaked out by all Christians.  Only some of them.  The ones who evangelize to strangers like a rabid car salesman.  The ones who think gay people will destroy the world with their ridiculous notions of “love” and “equality” and other such nonsense.  The ones who said the country was doomed because the President was a Muslim, even though he isn’t.

Basically, the crazy, crazy, crazy ones.

When I saw this news story, I decided I had to make this the first current events topic I would write about on this blog.  It’s got it all!  The courts doing good things, a teenager standing up for her beliefs, and yes…the crazy crazy crazy ones I just mentioned.  For a full article on this subject you can CLICK HERE to visit the Washington Post article.  To sum up, a 16-year old girl named Jessica objected to a prayer that was hung on the wall of her school auditorium.  Some people in her situation might just let it be.  The prayer doesn’t come off the wall and wrestle you into believing in God.  But still it bothered her, and frankly it’s her right to be bothered by religious representation in her public school.  She brought legal action into the mix to have the prayer removed or covered, and a judge ruled that the law was on her side with this, so the prayer has now been covered by a tarp.

Simple, yes?  Christian students who like the prayer can write it in their notebooks and carry it with them all day instead of looking at it on the auditorium wall, advocates for keeping religion out of public school can be glad for this small victory, and Jessica, an Atheist, is no longer faced with the daily feeling of that wall hanging telling her she doesn’t belong there.  Unfortunately, this is the point where the crazy crazy crazies come in.

Jessica has been receiving death threats from her fellow students.  You read that correctly.  Her follow students, Christians who theoretically believe in things like “love thy neighbor” and “peace be with you” are threatening to kill a 16-year old girl for exercising her legal rights and wishing to be comfortable in her own school while doing so in a way that does not demonize Christians in any way.  If anyone else thinks that sounds a little like a Jihad, you’re not alone.  These children, the ones who think God is best served by having an Atheist slaughtered for making sense, are the ones that freak me out.  Why?  See for yourself;

That last one may just look like a guy laughing at Jessica’s misfortune, but after looking into his twitter account a little you’ll find him suggesting that Casey Anthony should adopt Jessica, and on Martin Luther King Jr. Day he posted that MLK’s dream was to be white, and wished everyone a Happy James Earl Ray Day.  So yes, not only is he religiously intolerant, he’s also a racist.  And a bad person.  A bad, bad person.

If you’re not freaked out too, I would have to ask why.  This girl has to be taken to school by a police escort for safety.  Anchor dropping, burning in hell, and an Atheist holocaust; sounds more like tough love than God’s love, if by tough you mean psychotic and homicidal.  Why does it end up this way?  Are these kids being taught to hate Atheists when they go to church?  Taught to hate ALL non-Christians?  Or are they all coming to this interpretation on their own after hearing the weekly sermons?  Do they even GO to church?  I attended church every week for many years in my late teens and early 20’s.  Not pressured or forced by family.  I went of my own accord because I needed something to relieve some depression I was going through at the time.  I don’t remember anyone preaching about killing Atheists.  Or killing anyone.  So let’s assume, and hope really hard, that churches are not instructing children to go threaten Atheists with death.  Where else are they getting the idea?  Home?  Maybe their parents are the ones who want the Atheists wiped out and are passing that desire on to their kids.  But what are the chances that this many kids are going to have parents in favor of a new round of Crusades?  Okay, we’ll cross that one off as well.  Sifting through the remaining possibilities and……hey, this one looks a little promising.  They don’t actually want her dead.  They just want the attention that comes to people who very publicly say they want someone dead.

Think about it; it’s a topic that is easy to jump on bandwagon style.  Plenty of people local and nationwide would get behind it because religious intolerance and Christian fanaticism is not exactly hard to find.  It makes them all look tough and devout and hardcore while not having to prove it because really, who is going to challenge them to prove their devotion by making an assassination attempt in school?  They don’t hate all non-Christians, because Jessica cannot be the only student in the school who doesn’t go to church.  There must be others, but the Death Tweeters don’t go after them because there is no media attention in it for them.  This is the part that people may not like reading, but it has to be said.  If any of these hateful students wanted Jessica dead, she’d probably already be dead.  I’ll use myself as an example here; If I was planning to kill someone for having beliefs different than mine, I would not be tweeting about it first.  “Nail her to a cross” is something you hear from a person who wants to sound dangerous but doesn’t have the necessary constitution to actually be dangerous.  They want to sling the hurtful barbs and scare Jessica, make some headlines, gain some scary reputation, without any of the pesky jail time that goes with following through on the things they’ve been saying.

My bottom-line opinion: I’m not freaked out by these kids anymore, because they are not the crazy crazy crazies.  I seriously worked this out while writing this post.  It ended up going in a direction different than I originally expected.  I’m still freaked out by the actual Christian fanatics, but these kids are certainly not them.  Well, maybe a few are.  But certainly not all of them.  Most of them are just attention whores who think death threats are cool.  But it’s okay, because I’m “sure” they have been saved by God’s grace.  Right?