I was reading this article about a man in New Jersey who found a bag full of letters meant for God that had been kept by a New Jersey minister who had passed away.

The last bit of that article infuriated me.  The man who found these letters; which contain very private, personal, revealing information (and he knows because he’s read them all!); is going to put them up on eBay to sell.

Yes, that’s the world we live in today people.  Anything to make a buck.  For sale: the deepest darkest secrets people entrusted with their priest to bless, and for only themselves and God to know the contents.  Right next to the Xbox 360, TMX Elmo, and Robosapien on eBay!

My only hope is that he comes to his senses and rightfully destroys those letters.  Or the Karma Police get him real good.

One of my least favorite Star Tribune columnists, Katherine Kersten, now has a new blog titled “Think Again“.

At first glance you certainly wouldn’t label Kersten a “right-wing wack-job”.  But if you read enough you’ll start to see the double standard she brings to her column.

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As most of you have either heard, read, or seen by now, a man in rural Pennsylvania stormed an Amish schoolhouse, took all the girls prisoner, killed 5 of them, seriously injured the rest, before killing himself.

A quote in an article yesterday by one of the victim’s father was:

“We think it was God’s plan and we’re going to have to pick up the pieces and keep going,” he said. “A funeral to us is a much more important thing than the day of birth because we believe in the hereafter. The children are better off than their survivors.”

It’s that last sentence that got to me.  What is it like to have a belief system that would have you positively convinced that the dead, children bound and murdered in cold blood, are better off than the survivors?  I’m certain this man didn’t mean it in the way that the trauma (physical and mental) of that day would leave scars that would never heal in those survivors.  I’m sure he meant that those children are now in heaven, and better off than their families (and the rest of us) stuck down here on earth.

That outlook.  That feeling.  That… faith… is completely lost on me.  Not to be trite, but it just doesn’t compute. 

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