And, for some strange reason, people think he’s crazy:
HAYDEN, Idaho (AP)—A man who believed he bore the biblical “mark of the beast” used a circular saw to cut off one hand, then he cooked it in the microwave and called 911, authorities said.
The man, in his mid-20s, was calm when Kootenai County sheriff’s deputies arrived Saturday. He was in protective custody in the mental health unit of Kootenai Medical Center.
“It had been somewhat cooked by the time the deputy arrived,” sheriff’s Capt. Ben Wolfinger said. “He put a tourniquet on his arm before, so he didn’t bleed to death. That kind of mental illness is just sad.”
There are a lot of people out there who claim to believe every word in the Bible as being literally true. That Bible contains passages about the mark of the beast and where it might show up (head and hand) and it also says what to do if a part of your body (hand) causes you to sin (cut it off). Based on all of that and assuming that A) this guy really believes those passages to be The Truth™ and B) this guy really believed his hand had the mark of the beast on it then his action C) of cutting it off was a perfectly rational act. Microwaving it was probably unnecessary, but then perhaps he’d recently watched Evil Dead and wanted to make sure his hand didn’t come back to haunt him. When you consider that he had the presence of mind to put a tourniquet on prior to cutting his hand off then there’s really no reason to think he’s nuts.
And yet people do. How strange is that?
Religion Induced Self Mutilation (RISM) should be encouraged. We need to see more posts about RISM involving marks on the head.