I wouldn’t normally have interest in this news story, but for the fact that just a few weeks ago, as a bookseller, I took an order for four different titles authored by Debi Pearl or Michael and Debi Pearl.   When some random web surfing took me to their site, I got concerned and did a Google news search and Google blogs search
So what caused this child’s death? Going back in the same news source, The Chico [CA] Enterprise-Record, we find more backstory two days earlier.
Paul just stepped into a murder of a little girl named Lydia and the abuse of her sister and a brother and thousands of us around the world share his horror.
Parents Kevin and Elizabeth Schatz of Paradise California have been charged with murder, torture and child abuse. This story did  went international. What makes this a bit different than the last case of  murder which swirled around Debi and Michael Pearls teaching is that this time a District Attorney is not afraid to say the teaching of the Pearls and their No Greater Joy Ministry had a part to play in Lydia’s death.
Those four Pearl books coming into Canada makes me sick. I don’t believe in banning books. I’m glad Paul is the seller,  he took the time to do some research on why at DA is standing up and naming a ministry in the death of a child at her parent’s hand. Maybe a curious  Canadian bookseller who did some digging will get an opportunity to direct the purchaser to some of the websites he compiled to show how utterly bereft, soul-breaking and murderous the religious home-spun behaviorism teaching of No Greater Joy Ministries is. It’s too late for Lydia. It’s too late for Seth.
Michael Pearl laughed at the DA and mocked his critics when Lydia’s death became publicly tied to his teaching. Lydias parents will be back in court June 24th.
Update: Kevin Schatz, 40, and his wife, Elizabeth Schatz, 42, have pleaded not guilty and will each face trial by jury starting November 1st.
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In one way or another we all seem to have arrived with the seed of religion sown somewhere in our life. Like any ‘seed’ it can either grow into a healthy plant or a plant that is prone to disease resulting in a distorted growth pattern (s). Americas seeming obsession with the culture and life time and ways of Jesus breed in some such desires and longings that in an unstable mind or mindset perversion occurs and unrealistic steps in on a grand scale – When you have evangelists that ‘feed’ that need, desire, objective (ie; Todd and his ever increasing demands on our belief and hope and ‘money’) then perpetuation of situation has a field day.
Its sick – and religious zealotry has been known to be down the ages its just that its been overshadowed by those who desire its ‘high’.
Snake cults have claimed many a victim, the Davidic cult claimed many a victim, texas cults have also claimed childhoods, wealth and well-being and so on and that despotic ‘life’ that seems leads some of them has a root that sits in a desire that is less than noble, to say the least. Sadism can play a part and sexual desire bathe it. Religion in some hands and minds is a hot bed of conflicting messages and desires all mingled in with a carnal mentality that has, for one, taken its toll in the Vaticans hallowed borders of so called sanctity.
Paranoia is another root of zealotry and the cult mentality is susceptible to its call.
If the enemy wants to take our power to discern then making us into religious zombies is one good way to do it.
Jesus came to bring us a truth that would gift and also take that which would deny us its embrace. Just look what he and his message has been turned into – by the wharped associations of man and his desires.
Cultism is rife and its fruits rotten.
I don’t think we have much of a cult mentality in that respect in Britain ‘apart from being hippy for a while! I just hope it stays that way. We have enough odd balls to deal with as it is without giving ground to more.
I’m not sure there is a criminal murder case to be had there, but there probably is a civil case. I’m reminded of the case of a KKK leader who was sued by the Southern Poverty Law Center on behalf of a person of color beat up by the guy’s followers at at county fair. The leader hadn’t put a hit on the victim, but the venom he spewed was ruled to have led to the attack.
Likewise, this Mr. Pearl wasn’t likely to condone murder, but allowing heavy corporal punishment as being on the OK side of the line will have angry folks going over the line into lethal violence. Probably not enough for a manslaughter rap but one that could bankrupt him in civil court.
The problem is that the people who would get the money would be the grandparents or siblings, since the victims are dead and the parents were the ones doing the tort.
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