https://www.huffpost.com/entry/crabapple-first-baptist-church-robert-aaron-long_n_60552856c5b6d6c2a2a704e4
The church attended by the white man charged with killing eight people at three Atlanta-area massage businesses, most of them women of Asian descent, condemned the shootings Friday and said they run contrary to the gospel and the church’s teachings.

Crabapple First Baptist Church in Milton, Georgia, also announced in a statement that it plans to remove 21-year-old Robert Aaron Long from its membership because it “can no longer affirm that he is truly a regenerate believer in Jesus Christ.”

Previously the church had only issued a brief statement expressing condolences, without mentioning Long. It also shut down its social media accounts and made its website private.

On Friday it said those measures were taken to protect the safety of its congregants.

Congregants were “distraught” when they learned the alleged shooter was a member of the community, the statement said. His family has belonged to the church for many years.

“We watched Aaron grow up and accepted him into church membership when he made his own profession of faith in Jesus Christ,” it said.

“These unthinkable and egregious murders directly contradict his own confession of faith in Jesus and the gospel.”

Investigators are still trying to discover what compelled Long to commit the worst mass killing in the United States in almost two years.

Police say he told them he was not racially motivated and claimed to have a “sex addiction,” and he apparently lashed out at what he saw as sources of temptation.

Those statements caused widespread uproar and skepticism given the locations and that six of the eight victims were women of Asian descent.

Crabapple First Baptist said it would continue to grieve, mourn and pray for the families of the victims and that it deeply regrets, “the fear and pain Asian-Americans are experiencing as a result of Aaron’s inexcusable actions.”

“No blame can be placed upon the victims,” Crabapple First Baptist said. “He alone is responsible for his evil actions and desires.”

The church also said it does not teach that acts of violence are acceptable against “certain ethnicities or against women” or that women are responsible for men’s sexual sin against them.

“Murder, especially, is a heinous evil and grievous sin. We also explicitly denounce any and all forms of hatred or violence against Asians or Asian-Americans.”
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
No word on whether or not the church would keep convincing people they were evil for having a sexual addiction when they were just humans who are naturally sexual creatures who don’t need to take out their sexual frustrations on innocent victims.

But because he's accepted Jesus Christ as his personal Lord and Savior, does Crabapple First Baptist (LOL, only in the South) teach that Long is going to heaven irrespective of his actions? Does salvation by grace cover this, Southern Baptists?

Oh, and since Long's murder victims were (presumably) not Christian, are they going to hell? Do tell, Southern Baptists.

logged out today Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> But because he's accepted Jesus Christ as his
> personal Lord and Savior, does Crabapple First
> Baptist (LOL, only in the South) teach that Long
> is going to heaven irrespective of his actions?
> Does salvation by grace cover this, Southern
> Baptists?
>
> Oh, and since Long's murder victims were
> (presumably) not Christian, are they going to
> hell? Do tell, Southern Baptists.
Yep, Jesus Loves You, even if you murder 8 innocent (non-white) people, nobody is too evil for the power of Christs’s redemption. Only white, Christian lives matter.
Southern Baptist is just White Supremacy disguised as a religion.

Gee, what happened to "hate the sin, love the sinner"?

And those women are still dead.

Dave the Atheist Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> And those women are still dead.

If you join a golf club and one of the members robs a bank, does that mean you all are guilty?

Where did the killer get his insane ideas ?

Dave the Atheist Wrote:
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> Where did the killer get his insane ideas ?

His own head. I'm sure they told him to be celibate etc, but nothing about killing the women. Maybe David Bowie's disembodied voice came through the television and told him to do it.

There are a lot of questions not being asked here, like were the women trafficked? A lot of sex workers are brought in illegally and not allowed to leave the brothels. And/or are beaten by the pimps. A "decent" brothel (if there is such a thing) would have security to protect the women.

Curb your Enthusiasm Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> There are a lot of questions not being asked here,

Because those questions have no bearing on the murders.


------------------
> like were the women trafficked?

Irrelevant according to your own standards. You say his motivation and its sources are not germane. How the women ended up in his sights is even less so.


-----------------
> A lot of sex
> workers are brought in illegally and not allowed
> to leave the brothels. And/or are beaten by the
> pimps. A "decent" brothel (if there is such a
> thing) would have security to protect the women.

All of that is irrelevant.

A man murdered several people. His motives, his actions, and the consequences are all that matters.

Discussing the treatment of sex workers is an important question in its own right, but it has no legal or moral implications for the murders--or, more significantly--for the murderer.

No, it's not "irrelevant". Those women were put in danger, with inadequate security and probably abused, underpaid and trafficked by their employers. That is far from "irrelevant" - it is what exposed them to this situation.

On March 12, you compared prostitution to a Mormon miasion and said, "In both cases you pay once and regret it for the rest of your life."*

Obviously that man regretted it so much he took it out on the women.

*
https://www.exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,2366235,2366318#msg-2366318

Curb your Enthusiasm Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> No, it's not "irrelevant". Those women were put in
> danger, with inadequate security and probably
> abused, underpaid and trafficked by their
> employers. That is far from "irrelevant" - it is
> what exposed them to this situation.

I repeat. What matters when discussing a murder is what happened, who did it, whether race or gender identity were involved, and what penalty is appropriate.

How the victims arrived in the US is irrelevant. Whether they were adequately protected and treated appropriately is important as a policy matter but not to the murder itself.


--------------------
> On March 12, you compared prostitution to a Mormon
> miasion and said, "In both cases you pay once and
> regret it for the rest of your life."*

That was a joke. It had no relation to those women or that man. Are you asserting that I was talking about this incident?


-------------------
> Obviously that man regretted it so much he took it
> out on the women.

You see, here you go back to the motives for the murderer's actions. That's relevant and necessary to a prosecution, but it underscores the irrelevance of how the women fell within his sights.

What matters is that innocent people were killed by a deranged murderer. Period.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/20/2021 08:32PM by Lot's Wife.

Yes.

Curb your Enthusiasm Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> There are a lot of questions not being asked here,
> like were the women trafficked? A lot of sex
> workers are brought in illegally and not allowed
> to leave the brothels. And/or are beaten by the
> pimps. A "decent" brothel (if there is such a
> thing) would have security to protect the women.
===============================

Just fer grins --
Why are you trying so hard to justify these murders?

https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Accused-Atlanta-gunman-was-a-patient-at-16039343.php

"But several experts have said this week that Long's ties to evangelicalism shine a light into a subculture called "purity culture," a belief among some evangelicals that promotes the idea that any sexual desire outside of marriage is lustful, and therefore sinful. Some evangelicals are taught from a young age to control their sexual urges and if they cannot, they are sometimes labeled sex addicts or porn addicts.

In some evangelical churches, sexual behavior outside heterosexual marriage is sometimes treated as a disease that can be fixed with the proper scriptural counseling.

Sexual sin plays an outsized role in many evangelical churches, said Sheila Wray Gregoire, Canadian author of "The Great Sex Rescue," a book about lies Christian women have been taught about sex. In popular evangelical literature, she found, wives are taught to have sex when their husbands want it so the men won't watch porn. They're also taught that all men struggle with lust.

"Women are not seen as people but as enemy who need to be defeated," she said.

Earlier this week, a sheriff's department official said that Long viewed the spas he targeted as "a temptation for him that he wanted to eliminate." In evangelical literature, women are often treated as a sexual threat or seen as sexual fulfillment, said Rachel Joy Welcher, Iowa-based author of the book "Talking Back to Purity Culture."

"He was militant about it," Bayless said. "This was the kind of guy who would hate himself for masturbating; would consider that a relapse."

Residents at Maverick were encouraged to hold one another accountable, Bayless says, and at least three times Long called Bayless into his room so he could confess his sins. Bayless said Long came back from a spa and called him into his room saying he was having suicidal thoughts."


The last two paragraphs sound very mormonish as well.

The golf club doesn’t tell you you are an evil sex addict if you get an occasional happy ending with your massage.

schrodingerscat Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> The golf club doesn’t tell you you are an evil
> sex addict if you get an occasional happy ending
> with your massage.

You haven't seen some of the golf clubs round here. They are the most reactionary places around. A lot of them won't allow women to join.

The one good thing about pandemic in America is no school shootings in a year.
Maybe giving Incels, drug abusers, criminals and the mentally insane more of a right to have guns than I have to catch a trout in my own stream wasn’t such a great plan?