Marty Rathbun Melt-Down
Have you ever introspected briefly and wondered if you were actually quite evil? You notice you make a mean comment to your mom or your friend or think bad thoughts? Yeah I think we’ve all done it but there’s a difference between people who do that and people who just run rampantly wild and don’t even notice that they are evil.
I am definitely relieved that I sometimes have some self-loathing because it appears that means I’m not actually as evil as I may be. Not as evil as someone who belongs in an insane asylum like Marty Rathbun—a former Scientologist who betrayed his religion and his position in the Church and went criminal. Freedom magazine reported on the whole thing but here’s a piece of the article I was intrigued by:
It’s a well-known mental phenomenon, mostly seen in institutions for the criminally insane or maximum-security prisons. That is, unable to come to grips with the depths of evil one has engaged in, one instead has an “epiphany.” One “realizes” one day that “None of it was my fault! Those were the cards I was dealt and I was just a victim of fate!” At which point one has a euphoric resurgence, losing touch with all reality of one’s past, and reinvents oneself as what they wish they were. They blame their failures on somebody else (No Responsibility For Anything) and when they look in the mirror they see a “warm and fuzzy guy,” while the rest of the world sees someone in need of an exorcism.
That’s Marty Rathbun. Because while he paints himself as a lovey-dovey, pop-psychology guru to the indigent, his actions belie his self-proclaimed façade. Worse, he seems utterly unaware of the turmoil that is his life. He could have kept fishing from his used trawler like the Old Man and the Sea. But all he sees is an endless battle to be picked and imaginary war to be fought.
The Church is at peace. Indeed, the only battles today are the rantings of Rathbun and his “Posse.” No longer able to create and then fight wars for the Church at Church expense, he now attacks the Church itself for no other reason than its refusal to let him continue to fight his psychotic war against what he imagines are the enemy—the entire world and anybody who doesn’t see it his way.
