Another fruit-loop Texas mom has murdered her children and claims that God told her to do it. Soon to follow (if they're not out there already) will be scores of stories about how conservative Christianity "forces women into rigid gender roles" and how she was "forced by her husband" into some sort of lifestyle which boiled over and led to these murders. I haven't read any of these stories yet, so I don't even know if she has a husband, but I know the media well enough to know what their tone will be.

Why do these people do this stuff? What causes a mother to do something so reprehensible?

First, it's mainly caused by evil combined with a good dose of mental illness.

Second, I think that there's a lesson to be drawn here about the lessening influence of the Bible as our sole infallible source of divine revelation. The pundits will say that it was too much Bible that set these women on their hideous courses. I think it was not enough Bible.

In modern evangelicalism, Christians are now trained to believe that God "speaks to their hearts" apart from the Bible. Walk into any Christian bookstore and you will find myraid books, pamphlets, and lesson plans on "how to find the will of God," and "how to know when God is speaking to you." Rather than trusting the Scriptures as God's revelation of His will for us, Christians are now taught a complex divining process where they are to try to find the keys for sifting out the whispers in their ears that are from God from the whispers in their ears that are from the world or their own sinful natures. They spend their time trying to decipher the complex code that God is supposedly sending them, which can finally be cracked with just the right combination of prayer, reflection, and intuition.

The result is that some folks think the things they hear in their heads are direct communications from God. They feel no need to test these communications against the Bible, since these "promptings" are just as trustworthy. Teach that sort of theology to a schizophrenic, and watch what happens. Give her a reason to think that the voices in her head are to be obeyed because they are communications from God.

We need less Henry Blackabys and more pastors who are willing to say "I don't care what whisper you're hearing in your heart or what 'prompting' you think you're having. If it contradicts Scripture, it's not from God. You don't have to think about it, you don't have to consider it, you don't have to weigh it. It is absolutely not from God, period. Flee from it."