GET SERIOUS ABOUT SAVING DOWNTOWN MISSION

Editor, the Times:

If we're serious about saving the downtown core of Mission then what
needs to happen - among many things - is that the various
evangelical/fundamentalist churches blighting the down town area need
to be kicked out of the drug rehab business. They and their clients
are not a symbol of hope as much as they are, in fact, major
contributors to the local urban blight which is growing like a cancer.
A healthy and viable business district doesn't attract them but a
downtown core in decline does.

It's ludicrous that so many biblical illiterates are trying to use
prayer and verses they barely understand themselves to save all these
fallen angels. All I see are both the religiously disadvantaged
churchy types and the addicts themselves using each other in a con
game: the churches pretend to help the addicts and the addicts pretend
to be "saved" to get the handout freebies.

Here you have these churches for addicts being mostly run by people
who have no right at all to be trying to cure these people of their
addictions. That job should be left up to professionals, not people
who get their moral teachings from a wind storm talking to Abraham.
Would you go to an unqualified doctor who had no degree in medicine?
Not likely or if you did you'd be an idiot.

Nor do these padres and self-titled preachers in these places do their
mischievous work among the addicts for free. No Christian charity if
the addicts don't sit and sing the songs and listen to chapter and
verse on how God loves them and will send them to Hell if they don't
repent their evil ways. They don't have "evil ways", they have
chemical addictions.

That's how they train dogs: reward for proper behaviour and no supper
if they don't go Hallelujah on cue. At best, the problems of the
addicts are only temporarily masked. At worst, these churches of the
addicts only enable the addicts to coast along. But never mind, as
long as the padres can pretend to be doing god's work, why should we
care? In the meantime, Mission's downtown core goes further into decline.

We should care as these churches of the addicts keep society from
facing up to the problems the addicts cause. We're not in Victorian
England. We shouldn't be having religious groupsdispensing charity and
praying for salvation from 'demon rum' as if it was the 19th century
world of Charles Dickens again.

We should be forcing the government to fund legitimate rehab places
that don't try to suck the soul out of people. Mandatory treatment is
what's needed, not unlicensed parishioners of various forms of
religion. But let me be clear that I'm not simply just bashing
religion again. It's me demanding that the government provide the
necessary funding and institutions and take charge again by
remembering that government does have a place in society despite the
opinion of the Fraser Institute and the whining of pious do-gooders.

Hopefully you'll now look at the various bible thumping churches in a
new light and realize that they are in fact a large part of the
problem of the drug culture here in Mission and not part of the
solution. Certainly, as enablers, they've already done enough damage
to downtown Mission and the rot they've encouraged has got to be
stopped. These churches might as well hand out crack pipes and needles
at the end of their coerced attendance charade for all the real good
that they are doing. And that's the brutal truth for which I'll gladly
risk bruising some people's feelings for.

Robert T. Rock

Mission