'Church-going' doesn't mean a motherfucking thing

The day will be glorious when people stop using that expression as some sort of high watermark of the lofty character of someone else. We have all heard it, typically recounted in news stories where the subject did something especially heinous that is, well, a contradiction to the morals evidently promoted in the church atmosphere.

It means nothing. It stopped meaning anything a long time ago. I was reminded of this today, when I saw a local newspaper reporting on the fatal shooting of a municipal police officer near the community where I sleep and poop. Turns out that the late Johnny Law stopped a teenager in his car who had no license. The cop then drove the kid two blocks back to an apartment building, as the story goes, to release him into the custody of someone older and presumably more responsible than his 16-year-old ghetto ass. There was a struggle. The cop was fatally shot. The kid turned himself in a day later. In the news report, the suspect's aunt decries the murderous tendencies of the 16-year-old as some sort of aberration, some little hiccup in this choir boy's daily regimen of peace, patience, and respect. "He's a good kid," the aunt is quoted as saying. "He was brought up in the church."

Insert needle-across-the-record sound effect here.

Is this empty-headed bitch for real? What is that supposed to mean? I know people who have never stepped foot in a church, who have denounced organized religion or who otherwise stopped giving a fuck about the unsubstantiated hoo-ha that is the Bible, and they're not wired to kill. By the aunt's remarks, apparently coming up in the church is not a preventative measure against cop and serial killers. And why would anyone believe that in the first place?

Because you are a part of the church community, this is supposed to somehow elevate you to higher moral ground, where murder, adultery, and sexual abuse are not an option? How? Because you confessed to some sins -- the same shit everyone else is doing, by the way, so are they really sins? -- ate a wafer, and called it a day? Because you listen to a person on a pulpit espouse homilies and sermons and read from the Bible? And this is supposed to make you immune to impulses? People still believe that shit? It looks like Auntie Mame is buying. Anyone else?

The Kansas and national media sure did when authorities arrested BTK killer Dennis Rader in 2005. His list of victims sat at 10, many of them raped, tortured (and really, aren't raped and tortured pretty much the same thing?), and strangled to death. The gruesomeness of the murders was nearly usurped by Rader's highly visble presence in his local Lutheran church, where he reportedly held the post of president of the congregation council. That's a pretty big fucking title for a dude who likes to chase the air from the lungs of young women and have sex with their fresh corpse. Yet, that "he was a church-going man" seemed to accompany every broadcast of Rader's connections with the murders.

And what about the men who addressed those flocks from their pulpits? The ones who fucked countless little boys in their asses? They were "church-going" fellas, as were Rader and this little shithead who shot the cop the other night. All of them, church-goers. And in churches every week, you have the violent, the lying, the wily philanderers, the sexual abusers of children, the thieves, the evil, the fraudulent. They're all there, resting comfortably behind the myth that because they chose to enter the doors of the church and mumble a few words, they are less likely to kill or rape than the guy who is sleeping in, jogging, or making an omelet at 11 on a Sunday.

Next time I hear someone say "But he was a church-going man," in regard to some quiet loner who decorated his mother's basement with the entrails of 9-year-olds, I'll be thinking to myself that the church-going part should've been a warning sign.