Were demons involved?

I keep thinking about those kids, don’t you?

They ran for the forests, and the water, screaming, clinging to each other, as they tried to find someplace, anyplace that would offer them safe shelter from a crazed gunman.

Now that gunman — Anders Breivik — wants his day in court.  He wants to explain to the good people of Norway why he murdered their children. If he acted alone, as Breivik claims he did, he killed nearly one child for every minute of the 90-minute rampage.

I can’t imagine what that’s like, losing a child. I hope I never have to find out. But I know this — it wouldn’t matter to me if God himself showed up and told me why, it wouldn’t be answer enough to appease me.

I remember a war widow telling me that she slapped the Marine who delivered the news to her about her husband’s death. Slapped him right across the face. Then she beat on his chest, and that Marine, he just stood there, not flinching or drawing back or making any effort whatsoever to stop her from whaling on him. A Marine, mind you. I think God is like that Marine. I think when we are crazed by grief, he doesn’t bother with explanations. He just stands steadfast, often silent, allowing us our red hot rage in times of deepest sorrow.

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There is an outcry from the Norwegian people to deny Anders Breivik the right to speak. Nearly 76,000 people are participating in a Facebook protest.

I’m not familiar with Norway’s legal system, but I see no reason why Breivik should be given a public forum to vocalize his rantings. One interview I saw with police interrogators said that Breivik is quite proud in his own mind over all that he was able to accomplish. I assume that means he’s pleased that the body count was so high. The more dead bodies the bigger chance one has of garnering international attention, after all.

There are reports are that Breivik, an active participant in online gaming, used certain games as his “training tools.”

But this was no game for Prableen Kaur, one of the hundreds of teens who literally ran for their lives. In a blog post titled Hell on Utoya, Kaur recalled the real-life terror:

People jumped into the water, started swimming. I was lying. I decided that if he came, I would play dead. I would not run or swim.I cannot describe the fear, you can only guess what I felt.

When he came, he said, “I’m from the police.” I was lying still but I heard someone shout back that he had to prove it. I do not remember exactly what he said, but the killer started shooting. He shot those around me. I was lying still, thinking: “Now it’s over. He’s here. He takes me. Now I’m dying.” People screamed. I heard that others were shot. Others jumped into the water. I was there. The mobile phone in hand. I lay on top of the legs of a girl. The mobile phone rang several times. I played dead. I lay there for at least an hour. It was completely quiet. I gently turned my head to see if I could see someone alive. I looked. I saw blood. Fear. I decided to get up. I had been lying on top of a dead body. I had a guardian angel.

This was no random act of violence. It was well-planned, like the 9-11 attacks. There will be those who argue that Breivik is mentally unstable. They’ll get no argument from me on that. I’m sure that he is.

But if I were to suggest that the cause of his particular manifestation of mental illness is demonic in nature, I’d be dismissed as being one of those right-wing extremists myself (which regular readers of this blog will immediately recognize as a ridiculous notion.)

Still, such evil makes sense to me only in terms of the demonic.

I don’t think of Breivik as a Christian. What I think he was practicing is an extreme form of the Religion of Certainosity. So convinced is he that he is right about everything — including the need for a revolution — he reasoned, in that addled brain of his, that killing children was an end that justified the means: “Better to kill too many than not enough,” he wrote.

What’s truly sobering is to realize that there are people out there, behind laptops of their own, who consider Breivik a hero of sorts. Consider these remarks I found at a forum talking about the Norway killings and a video that Breivik posted (I’m not going to link to it. You can find it if you really want to.):

Breivik also pointed out the fact that the new so called “conservatism” in Europe isn’t conservative at all and should be more like real conservatism (American conservatism), which is true. He also showed that multiculturalism has killed European cultures and that Europe is become more and more Islamified, which is actually true as studies show that in a few generations Muslims will become the majority in Europe. The man is truly a genius and has figured out what most brainwashed liberals are too naive and stupid to understand. He also calls on for more people to stand up for what they believe in and put an end to these horrible liberals.

I’m just glad I live in America, where we have real conservative/libertarian freedom and aren’t freedom hating liberals and radical pro-Sharia Law Muslims like in Europe. Who knows, maybe he’ll have started something big here and we’ll get a conservative/libertarian revolution in Europe and it will become free like the United States, one can only hope. I don’t condone violence, but I understand why he had to do what he did. He had to get the message across and this was the only way to spread it so that it would work, he dd it not out of hatred, he wasn’t killing those teenagers and “civilians” he was turning them into heroes. They were the first casualties of his war against the liberals. This is no different from how some innocent people died in the American Revolution, the end justifies the means.

It’s stuff like this that ought to compel all of us to pray with a renewed fervor. To pray as Prableen did: I prayed, prayed, prayed. I hoped that God saw me.

So what about you? Do you consider acts such as Breivik’s demonic in nature, simply delusional, sorely misguided, or something else altogether?