I’m not a hunter, just so you know. But I occasionally fish and willingly accept the packages of meat hunter friends give to me. If you’re going to eat it, and it’s not endangered, or it runs across the kitchen floor on six legs, have at it. That’s not what this little rant is about.
Here’s what it is about:
This is Paige Patterson, president of Southwestern Baptist Seminary in Fort Worth. He likes to kill animals- lots of them, the kind you can’t eat, but which you can call “trophies.” His Southwestern profile page used to contain many pictures of the tons of formerly live, free, usually African animals which have now had their hides stretched over styrofoam forms with glass eyes replacing their real ones. Apparently, others were as aghast as I was over the slaughter of God’s other creatures, because those pictures are long gone from the site.
Patterson’s not alone in his desire to see elephants, giraffes, lions, and cheetahs dead so he can lean in against them while they are still warm and bleeding. There are any number of Christian and non-Christian organizations dedicated to the extermination of exotic animals. I just happen to find the ones doing it in the name of Jesus particularly repugnant.
(What is that little animal toward the front there? A lion cub? The family dog gotten old and useless? A lamb?)
Patterson sponsors special gatherings around the United States for fathers and sons called Sportsman Safaris. Here’s what he stated at a recent safari in Arkansas as being the Numero Uno problem in America today:
“That problem, is a war against boys and the establishment of laws to prevent men from hunting and owning guns..it has produced a generation of fathers disconnected from their sons,” he said. The article, posted at Southwestern’s website, goes on:
“But Patterson said he believes dads can still give boys what they need, and that when fathers provide for their sons the nation is strengthened. Little boys, he said, need three things: a dog, a gun and a dad.
“Every little boy needs a dog,” Patterson said, “and not a little yip dog, but a big dog that he can be proud of.”
This is the stuff of Christianity in America, 2007. Read it and weep, or laugh, or join me in feeling like I need to vomit.
The First Morning 
That is pretty sick. Funny how someone so “pro-life” can be so “pro-death.”
There are many reasons that fathers are disconnected from their sons, but gun control isn’t one of them.
This is the kind of hypocrisy that keeps many in the world out of our churches.
I wonder what Jesus would think about his ‘gun’ theory.
doesn’t he treat people the same way?
Just what the world needs–a Baptist “good ole boy”!!
Yeeeccchhh!!!!!
now,now, Mike..
Funny, I always figured that you could be a dad by coaching your son or daughter’s baseball or soccer team? What about involvement in Boy Scouts? Guess many of us missed it somewhere along the way.
Actually, my dad grew up having to hunt to put food on the table as a young boy growing up in West Virginia. But he was a Marine and served on Iowa Jima. After the war he never shot anything except tin cans for the rest of his life. He had his fill of killing. He was a great dad and we never went hunting together, ever.
I probably overreact to this mentality because, as a kid, I engaged in this activity for a few seasons to please someone in my family. To this day, I cringe at the thought of every shell I left on the ground; it makes me physically ill to remember it.
For a so-called “man of the cloth” to demonstrate this brand of cruelty is an abomination. Putting meat on the table is one thing; trophy hunting is quite another!
Blind faith is a killer.
Faith is “a firm belief in something for which there is no proof.” Through the centuries, millions of innocent people have died because fundamentalists have faith in the myths and traditions of manmade religions. Islamic suicide bombers get the most media attention but fundamentalist Christians are actually doing more long-term damage.
Fundamentalist Christians are planning the deaths of more than a few hundred people in a bus station. They support and anticipate the obliteration of all non-Christians, and they have faith it will happen very soon. They faithfully expect Jesus Christ to return to earth, scoop them up on a one-way trip to heaven, and kill everyone else.
Patterson comes across like he’s a member of the Masonic Lodge. Do you people have any idea the wording of the oaths they take as they go from one degree to the next? There are reasons why the USA legal system is teeming with Masons, and there is the awful impact harming the rest of us who aren’t—and would refuse to become—members.