Website owner:  James Miller

Is the clean, straight, religious loner dangerous to society?

            


   Three young girls, ages 9 to 11, are found brutally murdered in 
   some woods near their house.  Two had been stabbed more than 30 
   times, one twelve or thirteen times.  Three days later a father 
   turns in his 16 year old son for the murder.  He had found a 
   bloody hunting knife in the boy's bedroom.  The boy was 
   described as clean, straight and studious.  He sang in a choir 
   in a Presbyterian church and got good marks in school.  He wore 
   glasses and a policeman that took him in said he looked so 
   serious and studious that he just didn't look the type --- it 
   was hard to believe he would be one to have done such a thing.  
   One thing.  He was apparently a loner.  Kids ridiculed him, 
   made fun of him, called him a "sissy", "straight arrow", etc..  
   One kid said, "He was a 'square'.  He was just too straight.  
   Kids just don't like kids who are too straight". 

   So what does one make of this kind of thing?  Why would it be a 
   clean, straight, religous kid?  What does it mean?  This is not 
   an idle question.  It is a very important one.  Why?  This is 
   not just an isolated incident.  It has happened before.  Some 
   brutal, gruesome, grotesque murder ends up being the work of 
   some clean, straight religious loner.  Usually the person is 
   driven by some bizarre compulsion, some weird, irresistible 
   impulse or urge --- indicating some deep-seated emotional 
   problems.  So what does it mean?  What is responsible for these 
   weird compulsions?  Where do they come from and why?  Is it due 
   to repressed sex?  Is promiscuity really healthy and to be 
   encouraged as so many people in our society believe?  Is it 
   unhealthy and dangerous to be too religious and straight?  Do 
   the Christian standards on sex and morality lead to these kinds 
   of strange compulsions?  Or does the problem lie in the 
   ostracism of his peers?  In their ridicule and mockery?  In all 
   the anger, hate and anti-social feelings that ostracism and 
   ridicule generates?  And if this be the case does Satan own the 
   world so lock, stock and barrel that one dare not resist him, 
   dare not stand alone against the crowd?  Is it so dangerous to 
   resist the crowd that one dare not try?  The crowd tends to 
   love the bad, is inclined toward the bad.  It ridicules and 
   ostracizes a person for his inhibitions against doing wrong --- 
   for standing true to the highest within him.  It's mind is 
   controlled by Satan and the forces of evil.  Must one then sell 
   his soul and go along in order to be accepted and popular?  
   Should he?  Does he dare to be different?  Is emotional 
   confusion and frustration the terrible price that the Devil 
   extracts for resisting him? 


   Oct 1977