Friday - December 19, 2008
LowJack Jesus
A sad commentary on our times ...
When Baby Jesus disappeared last year from a Nativity scene on the lawn of the Wellington, Fla., community center, village officials didn’t follow a star to locate him.
A GPS device mounted inside the life-size ceramic figurine led sheriff’s deputies to a nearby apartment, where it was found face down on the carpet. An 18-year-old woman was arrested in the theft.
Giving up on old-fashioned padlocks and trust, a number of churches, synagogues, governments and ordinary citizens are turning to technology to protect holiday displays from pranks or prejudice.
About 70 churches and synagogues eager to avoid the December police blotter jumped at a security company’s offer of free use of GPS systems and hidden cameras this month to guard their mangers and menorahs.
Others, like the Herrera family of North Richland Hills, Texas, took matters into their own hands. Upset after their teeter-totter was stolen, the family trained surveillance cameras on their yard and was surprised when footage showed a teenage girl stealing a baby Jesus worth almost $500. Police have obtained the tape.
“They took the family Jesus,” said Gloria Herrera, 48, a Catholic. “How can anybody do that?”
For two consecutive years, thieves made off with the baby Jesus figurine in Wellington, a well-off village of 60,000 in Palm Beach County, Fla. The ceramic original, donated by a local merchant, was made in Italy and worth about $1,800, said John Bonde, Wellington’s director of operations.
So last year, officials took a GPS unit normally used to track the application of mosquito spray and implanted it in the latest replacement figurine. After that one disappeared, sheriff’s deputies quickly tracked it down.
So far in 2008, Baby Jesus has appeared in several police reports. At First United Methodist Church in Kittanning, Pa., a baby Jesus was stolen and replaced with a pumpkin. In Eureka Springs, Ark., someone who absconded with a plastic baby Jesus from a public display last week also took the concrete block and chain that was supposed to act as a deterrent.
Previously, stolen Jesus figurines have also been defaced with profanity or Satanic symbols.
The incidents raise a question: Is stealing Baby Jesus harmless juvenile fun, or anti-Christian?
...
Stephen Nissenbaum, a retired history professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and author of “The Battle for Christmas,” views the thefts as neither innocent vandalism nor religious hate crimes.“What it means is that it’s OK to go around violating even pretty important norms, as long as real human harm isn’t being done,” he said. “It’s not exactly devaluing Christianity, but it is sort of a ritualized challenge to it. It could be Christian kids doing it — and on Jan. 2 they become good Christians again.”
“sort of a ritualized challenge”? Only if ever other aspect of your morality has failed. First you have to start with an utter lack of respect for anything and anyone. Then you go through totally ineffective parents who never say NO to their selfish brats. Then a stop off that mentions that we live in a society that imparts no limits to behavior. And is totally egocentric. Then maybe you get down to a ritualized challenge, like football fans trying to steal the other team’s mascot. It’s NOT Ok to go around violating important norms. I think this situation has much deeper significance than that.
I can’t begin to imagine the beatings that would have come from someone doing this when I was a kid. They’d never end. The perp’s family would have to move, right away and far away.
Posted by Drew458
on 12/19/2008 at 12:56 PM
Filed Under: • Miscellaneous •
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