VA Tech Shooter’s Mother Thought Him Afflicted by “Demonic Power”
VA Tech shooter Seung Hui Cho’s mother sought help from a church to deliver her son from a “demonic power.”
Hyang In Cho was so desperate to find help for her silent, angry son that she sought out some members of One Mind Church in Woodbridge to heal him of what the church’s head pastor called “demonic power.”
But before the church could act late last summer, Seung Hui Cho had to return to Virginia Tech to start his senior year, said the Rev. Dong Cheol Lee, minister of the Presbyterian congregation.
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Cho’s family has said nothing publicly about his medical history, his academic performance or anything else that might explain what drove him to kill. Nevertheless, Hyang In Cho knew last year that her son was troubled. Before finding One Mind, she had gone to several other congregations of various denominations seeking help, according to officials at several Northern Virginia churches.
“His problem needed to be solved by spiritual power,” said Lee, whose church members met with Cho and his mother. “That’s why she came to our church — because we were helping several people like him.” Those churchgoers told Hyang In Cho that her son was afflicted by demonic power and needed deliverance, Lee said.
I have spoken many times about how delusions wrapped in the cloak of religion are socially acceptable. (See my book for more.)
Cho’s mother and all the people in the congregation talk to people who aren’t there and believe things that are fantastic and unreal. They live in a delusional world, but because it is religion, it is socially acceptable and they get away with it. Because they share their delusions with so many others, they get away with it.
When they take from others or label them demonic they justify the theft or abuse with religion and get away with it. After all, God thinks they’re better than everybody else. At least that’s what they believe. The most damaging thing they take away is the ability to think rationally.
Delusions ran in Cho’s family.
It is such a massive betrayal when your own mother believes that you are possessed by the devil. What hope do you have of self-esteem or sanity if nobody steps in to save you from her delusions?
Mothers (and fathers) get away with this type of child abuse all the time. Even the tone of this article paints her as desperate to “help” her son, to save him. She was suffering. She was a victim. There’s not even a hint of the possibility that his delusions had their roots in hers.
I suspect that the “demon” that “possessed” Cho was his mother’s religious narcissism, reinforced by the religious narcissism of the congregations she visited. Every time a person says that God likes them best, they are fantasizing about their image in a spiritual mirror and telling themselves that God thinks they’re more beautiful than others.
Religious delusions are not benign. Throughout history the planet has been littered with the corpses of those who have fallen victim to those who embrace them as truth. Think 9/11. Bush’s war in Iraq. Andrea Yates. Witch hunts. The Crusades. The 33 VA Tech victims.
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