The Crazy is strong in this one … “Death Penalty For Rebellious Children”

Humans are indeed prone to believing some weird and wonderfully excentric stuff, but every now and then you come across somebody who is pushing the boat out into uncharted territory, and here is a truly jaw-dropping incarnation of that.

The Republican candidate for the Arkansas House of Representatives,  Charlie Fuqua, wrote a book in which he called for expelling Muslims from the United States, oh and let us not forget that he also is known to have promoted slavery as “a blessing”.

The problem with this complete lunatic is that such claims and demands are just the tip of the iceberg of craziness residing within his very befuddled religious mind. In addition to the above highly offensive lunacy, he has written within his 2012 book, “God’s Law,” that a process could be set up to allow for the institution of the death penalty for “rebellious children,“.

<insert your stunned silence here>

It has been reported within the Arkansas Times, that Mr Fuqua wrote:

The maintenance of civil order in society rests on the foundation of family discipline. Therefore, a child who disrespects his parents must be permanently removed from society in a way that gives an example to all other children of the importance of respect for parents. The death penalty for rebellious children is not something to be taken lightly. The guidelines for administering the death penalty to rebellious children are given in Deut 21:18-21:

This passage does not give parents blanket authority to kill their children. They must follow the proper procedure in order to have the death penalty executed against their children. I cannot think of one instance in the Scripture where parents had their child put to death. Why is this so? Other than the love Christ has for us, there is no greater love then [sic] that of a parent for their child. The last people who would want to see a child put to death would be the parents of the child. Even so, the Scrpture [sic] provides a safe guard to protect children from parents who would wrongly exercise the death penalty against them. Parents are required to bring their children to the gate of the city. The gate of the city was the place where the elders of the city met and made judicial pronouncements. In other words, the parents were required to take their children to a court of law and lay out their case before the proper judicial authority, and let the judicial authority determine if the child should be put to death. I know of many cases of rebellious children, however, I cannot think of one case where I believe that a parent had given up on their child to the point that they would have taken their child to a court of law and asked the court to rule that the child be put to death. Even though this procedure would rarely be used, if it were the law of land, it would give parents authority. Children would know that their parents had authority and it would be a tremendous incentive for children to give proper respect to their parents.

For the record, that text he is talking about reads as follows …

If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother, and that, when they have chastened him, will not hearken unto them: Then shall his father and his mother lay hold on him, and bring him out unto the elders of his city, and unto the gate of his place; And they shall say unto the elders of his city, This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton, and a drunkard. And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die

So there you go, it is OK to murder your kids since the bible says so …right?   You know that the correct answer there is ‘no’, but alas sadly he apparently can’t work that out.

All this is only part of the controversy around him. The HuffPo reports…

He also describes liberals and Muslims as the “anti-Christ” and says he believes they are conspiring to create a “bloody revolution.”

So lets play that back then … he advocates death for rebellious children, and is surprised that liberals have an objection. He also advocates expelling all Muslims from the US and is surprised when Muslims raise an objection! and now he thinks that there is some grand anti-christian conspiracy because of the almost universal hostile reactions he stirred up.

Am I suggesting that all Christians think like this? No, not at all. While he might think it is “Christian”, such thoughts do not in any way represent mainstream thinking. Most, with or without beliefs, will rapidly discern that this guy is simply a nut who not only has political ambitions but is also intent upon offending as many as possible with his wacky beliefs.

We live in a world filled with people who hold crazy and truly bizarre ideas, but the thing that makes Mr Fuqua different is that he is a Republican candidate, and is in fact so crazy that most other Republicans (who are often cretinous lunatics themselves) are rapidly distancing themselves from his lunacy.

It is indeed a scary thought that if elected, this guy gets to influence the laws that many would live under … so when casting your ballot within his constituency in a couple of weeks, you might like to ponder that thought.