13 bible verses
A pretty story about faith and discipline:
Three [people] have been charged in the death of a 7-year-old Wisconsin boy who, according to a criminal complaint, was punished for not knowing Bible verses.
“Punished” in the sense of being slowly murdered.
Timothy Hauschultz, his wife Tina Hauschultz and their 15-year-old son Damian Hauschultz have all been charged in the death of Ethan Hauschultz. Ethan died in April 2018 from hypothermia and blunt force trauma to the head, chest and abdomen.
…
WLUK TV reports that Timothy ordered Ethan to haul a 44-pound log around for two hours a day for a one-week period. Damian told the police that while Timothy picked out the logs for Ethan and his twin, who was given the same punishment, he was instructed by his father to supervise the enacting of it.
“Ethan had been performing punishment ordered by Timothy which required Ethan to carry a heavy wooden log, weighing approximately two-thirds his body weight, while being monitored by Timothy’s 15-year-old son,” a release from the Manitowoc County Sheriff’s Office says.
The punishment was for “not knowing 13 Bible verses to Timothy’s satisfaction,” WLUK TV reports.
How old was the murdered child, again?
Oh yes: 7.
A medical examiner’s report indicates that there were injuries on Ethan’s body, including blunt force trauma to the head, abdomen and chest as well as a fractured rib. Those injuries correspond with Damian’s statement to police that he thought he had struck Ethan 100 times. He also allegedly hit Ethan’s twin.
“Over the course of 1-1.5 hours, the 15-year-old hit, kicked, struck and poked Ethan numerous times. He repeatedly shoved Ethan to the ground and rolled the heavy log across Ethan’s chest. He stood on his body and head while Ethan was face-down in a puddle,” the Manitowoc County Sheriff’s Office said.
Damian also admitted to authorities that he covered Ethan with snow, placing him “in his own little coffin of snow,” the criminal complaint says.
Amen.
We must respect their deeply-held religious beliefs.
When I started reading I thought it was a bit much charging the 15 year old – they would be acting out of fear that they would be punished for not taking part. But reading what that psychopath did to his brother makes me think the prosecutor has made a very good call.
I just watched an interview wherein Neil deGrasse Tyson sat in Stephen Colbert’s chair and interviewed Stephen as a guest on his own show (I suspect, since they’ve been such good friends over the last fourteen years, they thought it was a welcome change of pace to have the conversation go somewhat the other way). The link is here, and the slice of conversation relevant to my point here begins at the 6:15 mark, though there is more context and banter that can also work to frame it from the preceding minute or two.
In summary, Tyson, who is publicly agnostic in the most milquetoast way but obviously an atheist in every way that matters, asks Colbert, who is perhaps the most famous progressive Catholic in the world, how he resolved his desire to know and his respect for the evidence with the tensions of his faith; Colbert rejected this as a false dichotomy, in a friendly but nevertheless tension-inducing way, and he went on to describe his faith as the answer to ‘why is there something rather than nothing’. It was founded upon his deep and utter gratitude at existing, his inability to explain why, and his personal tradition of channeling that majestic awe through the framework of Catholicism and, more specifically, his ‘…gratitude for Christ, through Him all things were made’.
Which, naturally, got uproarious applause from the progressive audience, who doubtless felt their heartstrings pulled by such piety; and it got an indulgent non-response from Tyson, who doubtless judged his comradeship the better part valour. And, arguably to his credit but I think ultimately to his shame, Colbert defused the tension by saying he was ‘…taught by intellectual Catholics who believed you could be a Catholic and still question your Church’, and followed up with a joke about how the proper term for such a belief was being a Protestant.
And, of course, Stephen Colbert is not personally responsible for this sort of tragedy. The members of his church are likewise blameless. But the high-minded personal faith he espouses in that banter, the guiding light and reassuring answer to the mystery of his existence, is inextricably bound up in the same base urges and failed pattern-seeking that led this little band of psychopaths to feel righteous for torturing a child to death. They come from the same taproot, the same wellspring of desire for order and for answers.
This sort of thing is what inevitably happens when one group of apes holds itself as beyond any critique or inquiry, and the very same faith that Colbert espouses is the most reliable source of such constructions. And the Colberts of the world are somehow never held to account for this.
They are, disgustingly, applauded.
@Rob #2: I’m conflicted about the 15-year-old. I admit that it’s speculation, but one wonders how much living in that situation damaged him, and whether the “guardians” might have twisted the teenager’s behaviour in an attempt to avoid prosecution by having a legal minor do their dirty work for them.
#2
Likewise; at this point, he is exhibiting a horrifying willingness and inventiveness of his own.
Seth, I have a Catholic friend who is wonderfully progressive, and one of the nicest, most moral and compassionate people I know. She reconciles it in a way I have found several others to do, and which I find deeply disturbing. She simply refuses to listen to any negative news or views about the Catholic Church, including not reading any novels or watching any plays that depict them in a negative way. In this way, she can continue to believe that the church believes the way she believes, that they are like her, and that anyone who says otherwise is wrong. We once got into a discussion, based on one of my plays (not particularly Catholic, and the progressive Christians managed to twist my snarky take on Jesus into a positive interpretation). She insisted that there were no passages of Jesus that said anything bad, cruel, unkind, or immoral. She insisted that nothing in the New Testament was anything but progressive. I could quote her chapter and verse, but she cannot see them, claiming to have read the whole bible and never seen a place where Jesus condones slavery or tells his disciples to sell their cloaks to buy swords. I can only conclude that her eyes glaze over when those passages occur.
Theo Bromine, I can be conflicted, too, but…I grew up in a family where the two older siblings did the nasty work for the parents from a rather young age. I was beaten severely many times by people larger and stronger than myself who were themselves not yet in their teens, or were just in their teens (they got older as I did, obviously). Were they warped and twisted by my parents? I don’t actually think so; I think from what I saw growing up with them that my mother recognized something in them that was meaner than she was, that was stronger than she was, and she simply gave over all control to them. Having suffered at the hands of sociopathic siblings, I am less inclined to assume that they were using him so much as that he bought into the worldview. I mean, of course, they raised him, and of course he learned from them. Yes. But at what point do we become responsible for our own actions? That’s a tough question, isn’t it? Because the same argument could be made for someone older who had been brought up in that way and perpetuated it on their own children…and it would be accurate, just as it is here. I did not buy into that, for whatever reason. Genetics? I can’t find me in the genetics of our family. Environment? I can’t find me in the environment of our family. I have had several people (including my husband and my son) ask me how I ever came out of that family. I can’t answer that…luck? Mutation? I didn’t have a strong circle of friends, because my family set up a situation that precluded having friends, so that can’t explain it, either. All I know is that, whatever it is, my brother and my sister were brutally violent from an early age, and most of what they did went far beyond anything my parents taught or encouraged them to do, and were things that my parents actively discouraged. My brother had a habit of whacking me across the back as hard as he could until I couldn’t breathe…fortunately, my mother usually interfered before…well, I guess she always interfered before it became fatal, actually. But it damaged me in many ways. And he knew what he was doing, and he did it against the wishes of the family; my mother didn’t discourage violence, and perpetrated it, but not at the level of my siblings. So I don’t know the answer to that. And I know the brain is not fully developed at 15. But I still find I can have little to no sympathy for that young man who treated a child half his age in such a horrifying way. All I can see is my own siblings, and the pleasure they took in hurting people, and both of them always hurting people smaller than themselves, because they had no wish to be hurt themselves in the process.
I think Holmes said essentially the same thing I did, but much shorter and more succinct.
[…] a comment by Seth on 13 bible […]
Iknklast, I don’t know why we all come out the way we do. Genetics and upbringing have to play some part, maybe even the most part between them. Still, I suspect that in the turmoil of everything going on inside a child’s mind, subconscious and body even minor, random and seemingly chaotic events can trigger some degree of imprinting onto the personality. Maybe this is rare. Maybe it happens to everyone to some degree – some stronger than others. The thought is both terrifying and wonderful at the same time. While I feel some compassion and understanding for those who have been badly raised or subjected to abuse (there but for the grace…), I can’t help but feel that some people are so badly damaged that even if not entirely there own fault, the things they have done can not be excused. I’m still against the death penalty though.
Iknklast, I will freely admit that you have had the unfortunate experience to know quite a lot more about this than I do, and I’m impressed that you made it out of your situation.
It’s just so incomprehensibly sad that a young teenager would be willing to treat a little boy so cruelly, and that the parents were not just ignoring this (which would have been bad enough), but apparently actively using it for their own twisted ideological purposes.
Theo @10, that I think we all agree on.
She wouldn’t be saying this if she were a fig tree.
You know, I never was that impressed about making it out, mostly because my world remained isolated enough for a while that I didn’t see a lot of these cases. Once I got through my depression and anorexia, I began researching things, and discovered how fortunate I really was, and realized it isn’t just something that people can move out of by sheer force of will in many cases. And I will acknowledge that it wasn’t that simple for me. As I look back on those years trying to escape, what seemed like just happening at the time took a lot of time and effort. The struggle was more of a struggle than I realized at the time because I was just so focused on staying alive and as sane as possible.
I consider myself fortunate. I thank my ex-husband in part, because he grabbed me and pulled to help me out.
Since we just honored ‘traditional values’ with World Hijab Day, perhaps we can honor child-rearing with World ‘Stripe’ Day, or have kids wear snowballs and daub their faces in mud…you know, to show Traditional Xtian Values.
No celebration of Biblical Parenting Skillz would be complete without mentioning Abraham’s Amazing Knife of Love and Lot’s Take My Daughters Please Bed & Breakfast.
YNNB, not to mention Lot’s Incest Museum and Petting Zoo…
My mom always said she disagreed with “Honour thy father and mother,” that honour should not be automatic or compulsory, but earned. I’m not aware of anything in her own family past that might have inspired that rejection of the commandment in question, but living in a small town might have exposed her to examples that did. My home life growing up was mercifully safe, dull, and unexciting in all the right places. How lucky I was.
YNNB, I am married to a man who was similarly brought up safe, dull, and unexciting. My family continually amazes him.