Bob Mattila’s letter (“Turn to God in repentance,” Our Readers’ Views, Oct. 1) is amazing in its moral repugnance and disingenuousness, which is found in every sentence of his missive. Several points:
1. Just because the Bible says “fear the Lord” does not mean that we should be ruled by fear; the Bible was written by a clerical class in a theocracy who certainly had an ethical conflict of interest when it came to pronouncements of what God did and did not say, and certainly benefited from a populace afraid of the deity they were preaching about.
2. Mr. Mattila shares those ethical conflicts of interest. He writes, “We have thought that we know more than God.” Are we really to believe that Mr. Mattila includes himself in his accusations against society by way of his use of “we”? Isn’t it really the case that Mr. Mattila, by donning the language of Christian religiosity, is letting “God” stand in for himself? To me, it looks too much like blasphemy.
3. Mr. Mattila ends the letter with what is literally a threat, and as more than a few Christians would point out, is a violation of the Ten Commandments.
