Prayers of Hope for a Child Killer

Casey Anthony killed her two year old toddler Caylee in Florida last year. She hid the body. It was months before the remains were found near the grand parents’ house. The case has been dragging on for eight months. Anthony has been stonewalling police efforts to get information and to nail the case shut; evading questions about her failure to report the child missing for weeks, lying to investigators multiple times, etc.

Last week a story appeared that a pastor is organizing a prayer vigil for accused child murderer Casey Anthony to give her “hope and comfort”. In discussing the absurdity of this misplaced Christian goodness one of the faithful offered this:

“There's no harm done here, if you don't believe prayer does anything then that's it, it just doesn't…. but these people do, and at least they're putting forth the effort to give hope in the way they think is right to do so. They're just doing the best, the best way they know how to. That's true love.”

My reply follows:

Thank you for that genuine Christian gibberish.

That praying for a child murderer, or anyone, has no effect isn't at all the issue. "Effort to give hope …”? Hope? Hope of what? ... a hung jury, a verdict of not guilty, of escaping the death penalty or life in prison? And why, for a mother who murders her child and feels no remorse nor takes responsibility?

The problem with the mindlessly devout is that they cannot discern between people who are worthy of sympathy, who’s misfortunes evoke empathy, and those who are due only societies disgust, revulsion, condemnation, and punishment.

But I am unsurprised. Christian doctrine allows murderers, rapists, genocidal maniacs, et al, to get their reward in a celestial candy land as long as they telepathically promise some alleged dead man-god that he is their master, then symbolically eat his body and drink his blood. Then all is forgiven. All the while the same doctrine claims innocents like Anne Frank, or great humanitarians like Jonas Salk burn in hell. Frankly, it’s a despicable and obscene doctrine; one that would likely disgust Jesus himself.

The absence of Ms. Anthony’s humility, civility, humanity, accountability for her actions, since they mean nothing to Christian salvation doctrine, is easily over looked and not highly valued by the faithful. That she is offered sympathy and support for murdering her child makes me want to retch. More so does the sanctimonious justification for such inane acts of symbolic Christian benevolence.

One has to wonder if it’s because she is a self-proclaimed Christian that she is the recipient of the flock’s good wishes. Do Christians make a distinction between Christian, pagan, atheist, Jewish, Muslim child murderers? If so why? Will the devout hold a prayer vigil for Bin Laden when he is captured and faces legal judgment? Is he not equally entitled to, worthy of, their love, their comfort, and their hopeful prayers? Or perhaps it’s only the murderers of innocent children and not 3,000 adult Americans who warrant these good Christian’s loving platitudes.

I can’t determine which disgusts me more; the grotesqueness of the doctrine, the idiocy of the gesture, or Christian hypocrisy.