LRC, Houston - the weekends-free church in Houston, Texas

From time to time it seems as though our world is infected by some sort of virus- a madness bacteria or virus. Dean Radi called such crazy world wide destructive thinking as “mass mind infection“. And there is no one who can escape being tainted with such. One would hope that the church could somehow lead the way; however, that’s not been the case historically.

One need only look back a few years at the genocides in various nations like Rwanda and Serbia. You can go back a few decades and find the name of Hitler who in spite of what Ahmadinejhad thinks, killed millions of Jews in one of the worlds worst exterminations. Unfortunately, the church has no place to hide when it comes to such a collective madness.

Most everyone has heard of the Crusades and the Inquisitions, but few about burning witches!

Once upon a time, it was thought by the church that when a storm blew down a home, a loved one was taken suddenly, or a cow was lost or stolen, it was because of witchcraft! I guess they had never heard of “stuff happens” back then. Back then begins in the 1400’s when Pope Innocent VIII (what a name to boot) declared in 1484 that the church had a moral obligation to hunt down witches and burn them at the stake.

With the Pope’s approval, the deal was on!

One Bishop in Geneva burned 500 witches in 90 days while historical church records who some Bishops burned near 1,000 in less than year. This collective madness went on for nearly 200 years with somewhere between 750,000-1,000,000 witches (can you say women!) burned at the stake. In some cases a few children and men deemed demonic got toasted as well.

Here’s the point.

It doesn’t matter who you are, Christian, agnostic, or atheist. When man’s consciousness turns dark, some of the most awful things happen. Mankind is capable of unbelievable atrocities. We better not forget our past, but learn from it because if you take a good look at the headlines of the newspapers (for those who still read paper print), you can see the ghosts of future madness lurking behind the stories.

May the church be an instrument for love and healing and not hate and harming.