Casting Out the Devil: AP News Report; Great quote!

by willyloman 2 Replies latest jw friends

• 

  willyloman

  In the news, AP is reporting that the mayor of a small town in Florida is determined to cleanse tiny Inglis, a coastal fishing community, of Satanic influence. She's issued a proclamation banning Satan from her town, and posted warning signs at the outskirts of the city.
  

  The ACLU isn't happy, and townfolk are mixed in their opinions about whether this is good or bad for Inglis. Here's a terrific quote from a guy named Craig, who ran unsuccessfully for mayor against the incumbent:

  "I got nothing against the mayor. She was trying to do right by the community she loves. But if you start thinking that the devil is outside of you, foreign somehow, you stop taking a good, hard look at the evil inside yourself, in your own deeds."

  This is precisely what the WTS has done by making the devil the chief outside influence over people's lives.
• 

  Gopher

  http://www.sptimes.com/News/112901/Citrus/Mayor_banishes_Satan_.shtml

  "You're either with God or against him," Risher, 61, and a lifelong resident, said from her office on Wednesday. "I'm with him."

  So are a lot of other people in the town of 1,400, most of whom Risher describes as good Christians. "I have a lot of respect for her because she did that," said Martha Eiland, who was shopping for sea shells at a gift shop on U.S. 19.

  Most are good Christians? So where'd this idea come from?

  Risher said she got the idea after Pastor Richard Moore of Yankeetown Church of God announced plans to place the fence posts. Moore asked his congregation to skip one meal a day for a 40-day period that ends in mid December.

  "As the elected leader of this community, she was stepping out as a Christian and trying to do something positive," Moore said.

  "We've gone so far in the separation of church and state it's almost like Christians don't have rights anymore."

  Oh -- Christians have no rights anymore? Like "rights" to blast everyone and anyone else's ideas?

  So what's the real problem here...?

  The proclamation is not a reference to a single event, Risher explained, but an overall sense of concern. She speaks of drunken drivers, fathers who molest their daughters and people who steal from their neighbors.

  Town Clerk Sally McCranie, who signed the proclamation, offered another observation: Kids in town, she said, have taken to dressing in all black and painting their faces white, a style known as Goth. "We are taking everything back that the devil ever stole from us," Risher wrote. "We will never again be deceived by satanic and demonic forces."

  Oh -- so they're having problems with drunk driving, molestation and theft? And some "go away Satan" sign will cure it? Or is it that they cannot CONTROL what clothing styles the town's children are wearing? So in frustration they put up a "go away Satan" sign?

  I guess you gotta invent a straw-man enemy, call it the Devil or whatever, if you have crime-control problems or clothing-style issues.

  Yeah the Devil sure is working hard in Inglis, Florida.
• 

  nilfun

  Steve Morris, a captain on the five-man Inglis force, might take issue with Deal's analysis. Morris' main nemesis is crystal meth. The drug isn't hard to make, and it's sold cheaply on the street. Since the proclamation, Morris says, drug dealing and burglary are way down and busts way up.

  Exactly how much?

  He pauses, his regard clouding a bit. "Significantly." Morris glances upward. "And the Big Man upstairs is the reason."

  Mary Jo Farnan and her husband, Bob, who own the Port Inglis Restaurant around the corner from the police station, aren't convinced. Their eatery has been broken into three times in less than a year. A few weeks ago, they fired a waitress because she and her boyfriend were getting high in the bathrooms on the evening shift.

  "I see Satan all the time," Farnan, 69, says. "His name is crack, pot, coke and meth, and he roams around Inglis like he always has. Steve Morris? Shoot, he doesn't even live in this town. After 5 o'clock, he gets in his car and drives home to Homosassa, a half hour away."

  Farnan grinds out his cigarette stub and frowns.

  "We used to have two cops in Inglis." he says. "Now we've got five men on patrol. If that proclamation had worked, why did we need more?"