Beware of voices inside your head

It doesn't have to be a little voice. It could be a big voice. A loud voice. Or a soft voice. It doesn't even have to be you who hears it. It could be something that someone told you that was spoken to him by a voice inside his head. Or something he saw by reading the spots on a damp wall, or a burnt toast, or the apparent patterns of the stars in the sky. Or something you read in a book written by someone who heard voices in his head and saw drug-induced apocalyptic visions. The point is, as long as something can be traced to voices in one's head, or visions or personal "revelations" - beware. These things are not as harmless as they seem.

I suppose I am not the only one who is absolutely disgusted by this news: A poor five-year-old Mexican boy had his eyes ritualistically gouged out by his own mother "to prevent an earthquake and save the world". Drugs were involved. Connect the dots. It is the story of Abraham's near-sacrifice of his own son Isaac all over again. Except, this time, the boy was physically harmed before intervention came.

I could imagine the ritual to be a lot like this:

And they came to the place which God had tolde him of, and Abraham built an Altar there, and layd the wood in order, and bound Isaac his sonne, and layde him on the Altar vpon the wood.

And Abraham stretched foorth his hand, and tooke the knife to slay his sonne.

Isaac had a narrow escape when God stopped Abraham at the last minute, and Abraham found a ram to offer instead:

And the Angel of the LORD called vnto him out of heauen, and said, Abraham, Abraham. And he said, Here am I.

And he said, Lay not thine hand vpon the lad, neither do thou any thing vnto him: for now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withhelde thy sonne, thine onely sonne from mee.

And Abraham lifted vp his eyes, and looked, and beholde, behinde him a Ramme caught in a thicket by his hornes: And Abraham went and tooke the Ramme, and offered him vp for a burnt offering, in the stead of his sonne.

The poor Mexican boy wasn't as lucky as Isaac, but I am pretty sure that both boys were more or less equally traumatized. And I hope that people would be reminded of this and other incidents like this and be disgusted all over again every time they try to talk to those guys who they think can hear everything they say wherever they are. Because, really, there are far worse things that those voices and visions can do than take someone's eyes out.