"I had to send my son to heaven and myself to Hell."

[moobu2]

Mom kills son, then self at shooting range

'I had to send my son to heaven and myself to Hell,' suicide note says

CASSELBERRY, Fla. - A central Florida woman who fatally shot her son then killed herself at a shooting range wrote in suicide notes to her boyfriend that she was trying to save her son.

"I'm so sorry," Marie Moore wrote several times. "I had to send my son to heaven and myself to Hell."

She signed two of the notes "Failed Queen."

Authorities said Wednesday they still had no motive for the murder-suicide that shocked fellow customers and employees at the Shoot Straight range in Casselberry, about 10 miles north of Orlando, on Sunday.

"We have no clue. I don't even want to begin to speculate," said Deputy Chief Bill McNeil of the Casselberry Police Department.

Another crazy murder suicide

[doctor jazz]

1. "failed queen" is a frightening phrase to use in a suicide note.

:scared:

[patrice]

2. Absolutely unfathomable act, to kill a child.

Any child . . . but there's an extra dimension to this, because he was a young adult. She had known him so long, knew him as the person he would one day fully become, and they, apparently, shared an interest in guns and shooting.

[rug]

3. This has nothing to do with religion or theology

any more than Heaven's Gate had anything to do with astronomy.

"Woman reportedly had mental illness

"Mitchell's father, Charles Moore, told police that Marie Moore had a history of mental illness and had previously attempted suicide and been involuntarily committed to a mental hospital in 2002 under the state's Baker Act.

"Marie Moore refers to the incident in records she left for police and Shoot Straight, saying she spent a year in and out of a "mental home" but insisted: "I'm not sick." Family members found the audio tapes and three suicide notes late Monday and gave them to police."

[moobu2]

4. Obviously she was mentally ill.

All religious people who kill their children are, along with many who don’t. However, if she hadn’t believed that she was simply sending herself and her son to an after life, rather than simply ending life altogether, which is what she did, she might not have acted out. I think she probably wouldn’t have.

I'm sorry to do this in your place of business, but I had to save my son," one message said. "God made me a queen and I failed. I'm a fallen angel. He turned me into the anti-Christ."



Moore said she could have killed only herself but felt she had to "save" her son and do it in a public way so the world could also be saved. "Hopefully when I die, there will 1,000 years of peace."

yes, she was very disturbed, but you can go to many churches, on any Sunday, and hear some of the same crazy shit.

[rug]

5. No, casting this as a religious issue insults both the mentally ill and the religious.

They are vastly different.

The pain you hear from patients in psychiatric centers is not at all alike to what you hear in religious centers.

[struggle4progress]

6. I never heard anything like this preached in church: no church I ever attended taught

that anyone should kill herself to give peace to the world or should kill her child to send him to heaven

And I rather doubt that you ever heard such a message preached in any standard church. It's fine with me is you don't like religion or going to church -- but that's no excuse for you to make dishonest claims about what the churches teach

[northernsoul]

8. What is "the faith of Abraham" if not a willingness to murder one's own child

I grew up in a fairly mainline to liberal Presbyterian church, and I distinctly recall being taught that Abraham's willingness to murder Jacob upon God's request was the apex of "faithfulness" and therefore praiseworthy.

[struggle4progress]

10. The Angel Stopping Abraham from Sacrificing Isaac. Rembrandt. 1635

http://www.abcgallery.com.nyud.net:8090/R/rembrandt/rembrandt98.JPG

.. "But where is the lamb for .. offering?" Abraham answered, "G-d .. will provide" .. But the angel of the LORD called .. to him from heaven, "Abraham! Abraham!" "Here I am," he replied. "Do not lay a hand on the boy," he said Abraham called that place The Lord Will Provide .. "all nations .. will be blessed, because you .. obeyed me" .. Sarah .. died .. in .. Canaan and .. Abraham buried his wife .. in the cave .. of Machpelah near Mamre ..

You misrepresent the story by extracting a single element from its larger context. It's fine with me if you do not like these stories, but the meanings of the tales have been discussed carefully for millennia, and the resulting traditions do not practice child sacrifice

[IdaBriggs]

12. Just as an FYI, one of the big points of the story is the end of HUMAN

sacrifice, which was heavily practiced in the area. Sodom & Gomorrah (sp?) wasn't about sex, but about disobeying the laws of hospitality in a desert country. Context is everything. :)

[muriel_volestrangler]

13. But it also is about rewarding the willingness to kill Isaac

Abraham didn't expect to have to kill his son - that's why he asked what he was going to be able to sacrifice - so sacrificing your son wasn't standard procedure. God tells him it's the boy who's for the chop; and when He's checked that Abraham is willing to go that far, he says it's not necessary after all. And rewards him with long life and riches, for being so trusting.

The moral is: morals are whatever God tells you they are, whether or not that's consistent. Do what God (for which one should read: God's priests) tells you, at all times.

[IdaBriggs]

14. Actually, human sacrifice was the standard/norm for the area.

Google it. The point of the story isn't just about being obedient to God (which everyone tried to be), but about the fact there was a major shift in values: Human Sacrifice is No Longer the Rule. No tossing babies into fire pits, no more killing the sacrificial God-King for spring to come, no more burying people in the corners of buildings, etc. Animals are now acceptable substitutes. While modern day values find this odd, it was actually a HUGE step forward in the civilization scale (at least, in my opinion), and the animals were then actually eaten.

But if you want to pretend what you were taught is the 'correct' interpretation, go for it. Ignorance is bliss. :)

:shrug:

[muriel_volestrangler]

15. You're right - it was Isaac who didn't know about child sacrifice

and who got the nasty surprise; Abraham was OK with it from the start. Nevertheless, that indicates that, in the story, child sacrifice wasn't a common occurrence, since Isaac was suckered into going along without a clue to his apparent fate; and Abraham leaves his servants behind, indicating this is not an everyday act (he lies to them, and says they'll both return after worshipping). And since Abraham then gets blessed for his actions, being willing to sacrifice your own son was obviously highly unusual.

"The standard/norm for the area" is fairly irrelevant - it's all a myth designed to make a point about the religion. The historical stuff in the Bible doesn't start until about the time of David. It could have said "God told Abraham that, after the circumcision, there was no need for human sacrifice" if the purpose was to say "Judaism has banned human sacrifice". But the author wanted to say that a really zealous man would even be willing to kill their own son if God asked it, and even if God has previously promised that Isaac would have descendants (from the previous chapter).

[struggle4progress]

16. That is an incoherent reading of the story. Isaac is the child of the long-childless

Abraham and Sarah. He is born to them after Abraham shows hospitality to strangers wandering in the desert. One cannot imagine anything that would cause Abraham and Sarah more grief than the loss of their precious only child -- and in fact the next thing that happens in the story after the return from the mountain is that Sarah dies, one commentary being that she dies from sorrow at this strange tale. Nor is the actual blessing to Abraham long life and riches: it is that this long childless man shall have countless descendents, something that essentially depends on Isaac having lived rather than died. And the faithfulness of Abraham is somehow odd: he thinks he hears G-d tell him to sacrifice his son but in the end he instead obeys the angel who tells him to desist -- an oddity for which there is also a commentary, that only G-d can tell us to kill and we must still refrain if even the slightest angel tells us not to kill. So perhaps the faithfulness of Abraham is not that he ultimately listens to what he thinks is the voice of G-d, but rather that he listens to the more minor voice of the angel

To take the story seriously, one might ask who first told it and from what point of view -- for it seems only Abraham and Isaac were upon that mountain. If so, the story must have been retold by one of them. Then which one retold it? This is a literary-critical question that can be asked whether or not one thinks the story has any historical root

Similarly, as a sociological matter, one might ask to whom was this story told and why? Stories do not exist in a social vacuum: people tell them to other people for a variety of reasons. The meaning of a tale depends on the context in which it is told: the meaning, that this tale originally had, may have been linked to a context no longer familiar to us. With the original context and meaning lost, new ad hoc meanings may have been invented by later tellers. Such new interpretations could completely miss the original intent

Such stories have been subject to thorough scrutiny for thousands of years. Why, for example, does the angel call his name twice Abraham, Abraham, and what is the significance of his answer Here I am?

[moobu2]

17. I cant see any difference in this story, and the story in my OP

Besides in the Jewish fable, the attempted murder went unpunished and is the basis for several religions. If the woman in the recent news story had lived 3 or 4 thousand years ago, her story could have found its way into some religious scripture, and if the Abraham character had attempted to murder his child today, you’d be saying he was mentally ill and deserved to be in jail etc…



"One cannot imagine anything that would cause Abraham and Sarah more grief than the loss of their precious only child"

No one ever mentions the fear and terror Isaac would have felt from almost being murdered by his own father. Poor poor Abraham and his wife, what a tragedy it would have been for them if he had murdered Isaac…lol what a creepy twisted story.

[struggle4progress]

18. One difference is that your story ends with two people dead

[moobu2]

19. Maybe God actually did tell this woman to kill her son and herself

and she Obeyed his commands. Maybe Abraham disobeyed God and didn’t kill Isaac…Who knows? Maybe they were both crazy. In any case, if Abraham pulled some crap like that today, he'd be thrown in jail hopefully.

[struggle4progress]

24. It's no problem to me if you want to read the Abraham-Isaac story as a tale about mental

illness. It may admit an interesting interpretation along those lines. If so, it still ends somewhat more happily than your news item

[Duke Newcombe]

29. Don't pull a hammy stretching...

to pair religion and this sick woman's actions.

[muriel_volestrangler]

27. The only 'incoherent' bit was that I thought Abraham questioned it at first

but he doesn't. He goes along with it right away (as I acknowledged in the subsequent post). And far from the 'next thing' being that Sarah dies, she lives until Isaac is 37 (and Isaac is called a 'boy' in the sacrifice tale). There's a bit after the sacrifice and blessing. And then an entire new chapter is started, indicting the editors regarded her death as something separate (not surprising, if it's 20 or more years later).

Gen 17:17: "Abraham fell facedown; he laughed and said to himself, "Will a son be born to a man a hundred years old? Will Sarah bear a child at the age of ninety?" "
Gen 21:5: "Abraham was a hundred years old when his son Isaac was born to him. "
Sen 23:1: "Sarah lived to be a hundred and twenty-seven years old."

And the sacrifice story (from chapter 22), without your strange lacunae or your attempt to stick Sarah's death onto it without the mention of Abraham moving to Beersheba, or the birth of his nephews, or the new chapter:

Some time later God tested Abraham. He said to him, "Abraham!"
"Here I am," he replied.

2 Then God said, "Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about."

3 Early the next morning Abraham got up and saddled his donkey. He took with him two of his servants and his son Isaac. When he had cut enough wood for the burnt offering, he set out for the place God had told him about. 4 On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance. 5 He said to his servants, "Stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship and then we will come back to you."

6 Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and placed it on his son Isaac, and he himself carried the fire and the knife. As the two of them went on together, 7 Isaac spoke up and said to his father Abraham, "Father?"
"Yes, my son?" Abraham replied.
"The fire and wood are here," Isaac said, "but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?"

8 Abraham answered, "God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son." And the two of them went on together.

9 When they reached the place God had told him about, Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it. He bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. 10 Then he reached out his hand and took the knife to slay his son. 11 But the angel of the LORD called out to him from heaven, "Abraham! Abraham!"
"Here I am," he replied.

12 "Do not lay a hand on the boy," he said. "Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son."

13 Abraham looked up and there in a thicket he saw a ram caught by its horns. He went over and took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering instead of his son. 14 So Abraham called that place The LORD Will Provide. And to this day it is said, "On the mountain of the LORD it will be provided."

15 The angel of the LORD called to Abraham from heaven a second time 16 and said, "I swear by myself, declares the LORD, that because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, 17 I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will take possession of the cities of their enemies, 18 and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed me."

One cannot imagine anything that would cause Abraham and Sarah more grief than the loss of their precious only child

Quite possibly true. But we see that Abraham doesn't complain when told to sacrifice his child. It's God that's told him to do it, so he has to.

the next thing that happens in the story after the return from the mountain is that Sarah dies

Wrong, as shown above.

Nor is the actual blessing to Abraham long life and riches: it is that this long childless man shall have countless descendents

Not precisely true; "I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous ...". The blessing may be something other that the descendants (oh, and notice that the existence of Ishmael has already been denied with "your only son". Nice touch, that).

And the faithfulness of Abraham is somehow odd: he thinks he hears G-d tell him to sacrifice his son but in the end he instead obeys the angel who tells him to desist

Not odd at all, for a religious story. Abraham does whatever God or his messenger tells him, at all times. That's the simple reading, with no commentary necessary.

If so, the story must have been retold by one of them.

This is the Bible, remember. It has the story of the creation. No human witness is needed for anything claimed in it, even if you take it all literally.

The meaning of a tale depends on the context in which it is told: the meaning, that this tale originally had, may have been linked to a context no longer familiar to us. With the original context and meaning lost, new ad hoc meanings may have been invented by later tellers. Such new interpretations could completely miss the original intent

You're really clutching at straws here. You're having to invent the possibility of some lost context, rather than reading what the story says. This seems to be because you don't like the literal meaning of the story, ie God blesses a man who is prepared to cut the throat of his son at God's command. So you hope, with no evidence at all, that your God isn't really as demanding of murderous loyalty, and fear, as the Bible tells us. And you missed out the "your descendants will take possession of the cities of their enemies" bit in your abbreviated version. What's the matter - too bloodthirsty for you? Who's really being 'incoherent' here?

Why, for example, does the angel call his name twice Abraham, Abraham, and what is the significance of his answer Here I am?

:rofl: Yeah, try to divert attention from the willingness to sacrifice his child with questions about the literary style. What are you going to say - it's all in code? :rofl:

[struggle4progress]

28. "Midrash Aggada Genesis 23 ... Sarah’s lifetime – why does Sarah’s death follow the Sacrifice

of Isaac? It is to tell us that when Abraham returned from Mount Moriah, he found that Sarah had died because of Satan’s words (telling her about the sacrifice). Therefore, we blow the shofar on Rosh Hashanah, so that Sarah’s death will be our penance, since the sound of the shofar is a sigh and a wail"
Torah portion: Hayyei Sarah
http://www.ynet.co.il/english/articles/0,7340,L-3327937,00.html

The notion that Sarah died of grief as a result of the near sacrifice of Isaac is not my peculiar invention but one old exegetical tradition. My point, which doesn't seem to interest you much, is that the story can (and has been) be read and understood in various ways. Questions such as Why, for example, does the angel call his name twice Abraham, Abraham, and what is the significance of his answer Here I am? are not ad hoc inventions of mine but belong to the very long history of reading this text. On the other hand, if someone who doesn't like the text as a religious text, and is uninterested in any traditional discourses surrounding it, might still consider it from a purely literary point of view -- which would raise questions about the narrator's perspective and the context in which it was told

Of course, I think you are reasonable to wonder why Abraham does not question the sacrifice from the beginning: this, after all, is a man who argued that Sodom should not be destroyed and who met G-d as three strangers in the desert; if he cared so much for Sodom and for strangers, why not his own son? Still, in the end, despite your claims that this is a bloodthirsty tale, it is not an account of a murder but of a potential murder, happily interrupted

[muriel_volestrangler]

30. So they're clutching at straws too; it 'follows' in the same way that Isaac's marriage 'follows'

The gap of 20 years or more is plain to see - that says she lived to 127 too. And they ignore the 'some time later" for the report of the birth of his nephews. "When Abraham returned from Mount Moriah, he found that Sarah had died" is, not to put too fine a point on it, a lie by the Rabbi. Abraham moved where he lived (to Beersheba), rather than 'returning'; 'some time later' he was told about the birth of several nephews; and, an unspecified time later (but when Isaac is 37), Sarah dies. Isaac marries at 40.

"One old exegetical tradition" - I'm not saying that we've only just realised that God is portrayed in the oldest bible stories as a tyrant with a vicious streak a mile wide; by the time the written Bible was being compiled, around the time of the prophets like Isaiah, God was getting a much better write up, with compassion becoming a major feature. Maybe a wrathful god had suited the Israelites when they were a people fighting against similar sized peoples, and so their first stories had him as an authoritarian, but by the time they were a small nation that'd never hold its own against the Assyrians, Babylonians and so on, they found peace a more attractive prospect. So their stories about God calm down, and they start making excuses for the old stories they've inherited. Like pretending 20 years or more didn't happen.

If people weren't so tied to their old myths, they'd do the sensible thing, and rewrite them to get across the message they currently want. But that's the problem with holy scripture: once you've made the claim that it's true, you look foolish if you alter it to show some more up-to-date morals in it. So they've resorted to keeping the old story, but then adding lots of things in commentaries to try to make it look less authoritarian.

My point, which doesn't seem to interest you much, is that the story can (and has been) be read and understood in various ways

It can be; but my reading is the straightforward one, using all the words in the chapter (and those around it), rather than writing '...' when something inconvenient turns up, and paying attention to the timeline the story gives us. I wouldn't care so much, but you called mine 'incoherent'.

[struggle4progress]

31. I personally find nothing interesting in literalist readings of these texts, so there's not much

ground for further discussion along those lines.

On the other hand, I would regard your claim that by the time they were a small nation that'd never hold its own against the Assyrians ... they found peace a more attractive prospect. So their stories about God calm down as indicating a possibly interesting and productive critical approach to the texts

[ZombieHorde]

20. God killed his only son in most versions of the Christian faith. nt

eta: The Bible tells us we should kill our children if God asks us to.

[struggle4progress]

22. If you dislike these stories and the associated traditions, don't pretend to provide their meanings

Your interpretation seems not only nasty, but deliberately nasty, and it doesn't really accurately reflect any interpretation I was ever taught, though it sometimes uses some of the same words

If you don't like these stories, why not spend your time on something you do like, instead of diligently misrepresenting other people's views?

[ZombieHorde]

23. "misrepresenting other people's views"

Who's views were misrepresented?

What aspect of my post is inaccurate?

[struggle4progress]

25. I'll assume you know the standard narratives, according to which the man from Galilee was

crucified .. under Pontius Pilate by Roman soldiers, following political maneuvers by the local religious and political authorities

[ZombieHorde]

26. Yes, but they were acting according to God's plan.

If they did not act out God's plan, then Jesus would not have died for our sins. Even Jesus was expecting to be saved from his plight, hence the 'God, why have you forsaken me?' line; but God did not forsake Jesus, God wanted Jesus right where he was for the sake of human salvation.

[GKirk]

32. It seems that some Islamic sects

encourage their followers to take others, and their own lives to promote their religion.

[Occam Bandage]

7. I have never been to a church of any sect of any religion that could be compared to that.

The only things she said that could be heard in any church I'm aware of are the words "God," "angel," "Christ," and "peace."

[PassingFair]

9. Don't forget BLOOD.

Shed blood, innocent blood, blood of martyrs....

Last time I went to a catholic church, I
almost became a vegetarian.

[muriel_volestrangler]

11. And 'heaven', hell'; and she said God told her to do it

On audio recordings left for her family, police and gun range owners, Moore apologized for what she had done, but said God commanded her to do it. She said God made her the 'Antichrist,' and that she must die to save her boyfriend, son and the world from violence, and her mother, father and brother from hell.

"You have a gun, you can do it," she said God told her while she was in a mental hospital. "I have to die and go to hell so there can be a thousand years peace on Earth."

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/seminole/orl-marie-moore-shooting-video-040709,0,3803527.story

So that's "must die to save the world" too. And "thousand years of peace".

Yes, this is most definitely an appropriate subject for the R&T forum.

[ZombieHorde]

21. There is a Bible story in which an God asks a man to sacrifice his son,

the man agrees and leads his son to the place of sacrifice. Before the man can kill his son, an angle comes down and says good job, no need to actually kill.

There is another Bible story where God has a son and has him killed to save us all.

There is another Bible story where God kills many many children around the world with a flood.

There is another Bible story where God kills Job's kids to prove a point to Satan.

There is another Bible story where God kills every kid in two different towns.

eta: '