Some good points, imho.
However, I’m not at all in agreement that he no longer had choice.
. . . there was a certain kind of logic to his convictions . . . a twisted logic but largely sensible from HIS REALITY.
I also am not convined that he was psychotic to the degree so many seem to insist he was.
There evidently was SOME TRUTH to
1. the horrors with his mom
2. the absence of his dad
3. the real and significant hypocrisies of far too many Christians and Christian leaders in his life in too many ways he experienced as personally affronting, abusive, rejecting . . .
4. the satanic music etc. and websites of disaffected Pentecostals et al . . . served to provide a rationale, justification for; reference group; pseudo family etc. harboring and feeding his twisted rationale and rebellions. But it should be kept in mind that in at least some respects to some degree—any sane person would have rebelled against a good measure of what (A) he really experienced and (B) certainly against what he perceived that he was experiencing.
5. He made plenty of very calculated, rather precise, very targeted, very relational, very historically connected choices about who he wanted to exact vengeance on.
6. He made very good choices—from his perspective—about how he was going to achieve a realtively high level of vengeance against large numbers of people associated with the focus of his outrage. Thankfully his plan failed. But it could well have succeeded massively. His plan did not fail because he was an irrational, frothing at the mouth, staggering around, ravingly irratic loon. His plan failed because God had a fine tuned opponent in his way.
7. He made—from his perspective—sensible choices on the net in terms of leaving very pointed outrage very calculated to stab viciously but very surgically and precisely at the heart and core values of his mother and every spiritual leader involved.
I realize that there’s plenty of ‘justification’ to apply various DSM IV labels to his consciousness, behavior, state.
I just do not find those labels anywhere near sufficient descriptors of the whole of what was going on with this kid. I think they are too simplistic; come out of too much of a secular bias; leave out major chunks of this kid’s reality.
There's no bias there. The reality of a man's mind is real. Murray's mind was blown and needed the attention and care of a psychiatrist, as per Gen 3:19. So, I'll toss in my spiritual considerations.
"His plan failed because God had a fine tuned opponent in his way."
Murray's opponent was a man and it was a woman that stood him down according to their own choice for self protection and the protection of others, as per Gen. 3. God's plan is bigger.
Murray was a cripple, in the condition of the blind man in John 9. His affliction was that his mental capacities had been rendered rather useless. No one stood in the place of the teacher in John 9 and healed Murray, as per Gen 3 and Matt 10:8. Instead they played the role of the Pharisees in John 9 and said the man was sick from sin and was steeped in sin at birth(John 9:34). How dare you lecture us, they said to the blind man. "Are we blind too?", they said to God in John 9:40. To which God replied in John 9:41, ""If you were blind, you would not be guilty of sin; but now that you claim you can see, your guilt remains."
Murray wasn't the strong man of Luke 11:21 who could guard his own house. That house was taken over by demons. I'm sure God knew that he didn't know what he was doing.