An 86 year old woman is in jail in North Carolina for misusing the 911 system.

You can read the story for yourself here.

She may well be saner than you or I. She may well be lonely and cantankerous.

I don’t think jail is where this lady belongs. It sounds like what she needs is a good medical examination and appropriate care.

A PBS documentary aired May 10th says 1/2 million mentally ill people are jailed.

“Crazy old coots” as the pizza parlour staff called her, don’t need to be sitting in a cell if they are experiencing what sounds like dementia.

Baptist church sign
Normally reading a story like this one would irritate me, but I can’t summon the energy.
This church sign at a Baptist church in North Carolina is really sad.
And the explanation of the minister of the congregation is even sadder, because he appears to completely miss the point.

“I believe that it is a statement supporting the word of God and that it (the Bible) is above all and that any other religious book that does not teach Christ as savior and lord as the 66 books of the Bible teaches it, is wrong,” said Lovelace. “I knew that whenever we decided to put that sign up that there would be people who wouldn’t agree with it, and there would be some that would, and so we just have to stand up for what’s right.”

If you say so.

“Our creed as a Christian, or a Protestant, or a Baptist church — of course we don’t have a creed but the bible — but we do have the Baptist faith and message that says that we should cling to the 66 books of the Holy Bible and any other book outside of that claiming to know the way of God or claiming to be God’s word is automatically written off and is trying to defeat people from the way of true righteousness inside of our viewpoint in how we view the word of God,” Lovelace said.

I get the strong sense this pastor hasn’t ventured far from home and is unaccustomed to any culture but his own. And of course we get the usual persecution caveat.

“Well, I thought about it and I said there may be people who are offended by it but the way I look at it, Jesus told his followers that if the world hates you, don’t feel bad because they hated me first,” said Lovelace. “If we stand for what is right and for God’s word and for Christianity then the world is going to condemn us and so right away when I got a complaint I said ‘well somebody’s mad, somebody’s offended, so we must be doing something right.’”