benchwarmer wrote: ↑Mon Jul 29, 2019 3:42 pmIt's an interesting perspective on the passive aggressive 'love' that some Christians are employing and probably not even realizing what they are doing.
They absolutely do realise what they're doing; they just disagree about the consequence. That telling little tidbit "we are praying for God to stop you, no matter the cost" just tells me they're willing to do anything, hurt their son in any way necessary, to stop him from facing eternal punishment.
If you actually believe in it, the rest is logical.
To see this, merely erase the religion from the situation.
Imagine there are two men in front of you, one who has stuck his arm into some machinery and appears to be getting slowly sucked in. The man getting sucked in doesn't seem too upset, but the other fellow has drawn out his machete and is poised to strike off the first man's arm.
"Whoa! Don't cut my arm off! I'll be fine," says the first man. "This machine, past this mechanism, is just a conveyor belt. I'll just come right out the other side."
"No, I saw them install a crushing mechanism yesterday," says the second man. "If you fall in you'll be smushed down into a fine paste. I must cut off your arm; it's for your own good."
The inside of the machine is not visible at all; nothing can be seen past the man's stuck arm. The two fellows argue some more, seeming to agree that there is a crusher but disagreeing on whether it has been installed yet. At last, the first man is about to be sucked in, no more time is left, and the second strikes off the arm of the first.
Whether the second man did wrong depends on whether there really was an inescapable crusher active within the machine, don't you think? And since the knowledge wasn't available, can you fault him for acting on his best judgment?
Certainly there are nasty people who use religion as an excuse to abuse people, and I'm not even saying the parents described in the video in the OP are not that. What I'm saying is that the "by any means" course of action becomes reasonable if you actually hold those beliefs, so the religious people willing to sacrifice anything, lop off arms if necessary to prevent Hell... well if they think Hell is worse, and they really believe it exists, I'm not really seeing the wrong they commit.
...Especially in light of the fact that such a stance is self-correcting. If they really are wrong, and God doesn't exist, praying to it isn't going to hurt anyone now matter how hard they petition it to.
