I spent two years or so deep within a coven of Baptists, during the early peak of the religious right, and I can top pretty much any story along these lines. The levels upon levels of delusion, wishful thinking and outright mental illness are… dizzying. But that experience cured me of dismissing stories like the OP as aberrations or exceptions within some more sensible community. They’re not. They’re coin of the realm. You can’t underestimate how many people, nationwide, are reading that story and angry at “government interference” and “war on Christianity” and so forth.
Seems to me a lot of these folks have taken what amounts to the passive aggressive approach to suicide.
IOW, they want to get off this Earth ASAP and claim their “Heavenly Reward” or whatever they call it right away. But their beliefs also interfere with taking the direct way out. So they take the indirect way and hope somehow to fool the Omniscient One into thinking it wasn’t *quite *deliberate enough to disqualify them.
Logic was never their strong suit.
And these are the same folks harrumphing about those silly Muslims and their silly beliefs. Sheesh!
This might be an obvious question but why don’t these people just get a license if they want to drive these church-owned vehicles? Isn’t that far easier than passing a law exempting some people from it?
Hmm, wouldn’t it be really hard for Jesus to drive? I mean, he’s got injured hands and injured feet. Just gripping the wheel or pushing down on the gas pedal is gonna hurt. Not to mention how messy that’s gotta be.
Actually, churches have historically (at least in the US) been at the forefront of literacy education. Higher order thinking? Not necessarily. But basic ABC’s and See Spot Run? Yeah. They want people to Read The Bible and very much want to do what it takes to get people to do that, including teaching them how to read.
Some churches even have massive overseas literacy programs. Jehovah’s Witnesses are a famous example of this - they send missionaries to various third-world countries and set up schools to teach everyone to read the local language. Then, they give everyone a Bible and a Watchtower subscription before they discover more critical works.
Except, of course, for releasing multiple tons of metal being controlled by an uncertified driver onto the roads where other drivers, cyclists, and pedestrians are.
If god so powerful he can protect the believers from accidents, shouldn’t he be able to cough up the money for a licence? Should be easy enough on balance.
Its not so much the money for some as the time. Getting 2-4 volunteers to commit the time for the application and testing/training process in the hopes of having one available any given Sunday is more the issue.
(And again – I ain’t saying its right. Its just where they - and the folks backing the law - are coming from)
Hellish tough call. If he ever did pull it off it would probably rip a new hole in the space-time continuum. But he could probably make a driver turn into a tree…