A striking example of the kind of biblical violence most of us ignore

What is more “biblical”? To be kind to family members that belong to a different religion or to beat them with rocks until they bleed to death?

Turns out there is no specific verse about loving such family members, but there is one saying it’s “biblical” to murder your family if they try to convert you to another religion.

“If your very own brother, or your son or daughter, or the wife you love, or your closest friend secretly entices you, saying, “Let us go and worship other gods”… Show them no pity or compassion and do not shield them… You must certainly put them to death…you shall surely kill them; your own hand shall be first against them to execute them… Stone them to death.” (Deut 13:6-10)

Many African Christians are are religiously motivated to abuse, torture, or kill children for “witchcraft”

Some of the African converts to Christianity, whom you may see on television during a large evangelistic crusade go back to their local towns and practice very dangerous version of Christianity.

According to numerous human rights agencies, there have been tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of children who were abused, tortured, or killed, by a strange kind of Pentecostal/Charismatic “Christians” for the accusations of witchcraft.

For example, “the officials in one northern Angolan town identified 432 street children who had been abandoned or abused after being called witches. A report last year by the government’s National Institute for the Child and the United Nations Children’s Fund described the number of children said to be witches as “massive.”(1, 2, 3, 4, 5

The perpetrators of this abuse, who consider themselves Christians, pastors, prophets often mix in Old Testament theology, which commands the murder of witches (Exodus 22:18), with local African superstition. The moral of the story is that certain kinds of theology can be very dangerous.

Why do religious people focus on converting impressionable children?

Surveys have found that the vast majority of people who enter, and remain in, their religion, converted as little children. 71% of Christians converted before 14 years of age. Before they were allowed to drive, work, vote, drink, marry, or make any important life decisions.

Barna’s research group also found that children converted before their teen years are more likely to remain “absolutely committed” to their religion. Barna writes “Anyone who wishes to have significant influence on the development of a person’s moral and spiritual foundations had better exert that influence while the person is still open-minded and impressionable – in other words, while the person is still young.”

To this end there are huge global initiatives like the ‘4 To 14 Window’ that specifically target children under the age of 14 because they are “the most open and receptive.” As an extra creepy example, see this:

Why does every religion try to indoctrinate their children when they’re impressionable?

Why not let children grow up and choose their specific beliefs?