For those who remember, Josef Fritzl was the Austrian man who did the unthinkable – he kept his own daughter captive in a basement dungeon for 24 years.
It’s the kind of story that makes you question everything you thought you knew about the world.
Kemi Badenoch couldn’t look away. “I couldn’t stop reading this story,” she admitted in a BBC interview Thursday, with the kind of honesty that’s rare in political discourse.
She found herself absorbed in the victim’s account, learning how this woman prayed every single day for rescue – prayers that seemingly went unanswered for nearly a quarter-century.
Then came the moment that changed everything for her. She started thinking about her own life, her own prayers. As a young person, she’d asked God for the kinds of things we all do.
“Why were those prayers answered, and not this woman’s?” she wondered aloud. “It was like someone blew out a candle.”
It’s the kind of question that keeps people awake at night, the sort of spiritual crisis that doesn’t have easy answers. How do you reconcile a loving God with unspeakable suffering?
It’s probably something many of us have grappled with, whether after reading a devastating news story, losing someone we love, or witnessing injustice that seems to go unpunished.
What’s striking about Badenoch’s revelation is her nuanced approach to what followed.
She didn’t become an angry atheist or throw away everything she’d been raised with.
Instead, she describes herself as having “rejected God” while still considering herself a “cultural Christian” – a complex position that probably reflects how many people actually feel about faith, even if they don’t always articulate it.
This deeply personal confession comes just days after she stirred up controversy by declaring she was “no longer a Nigerian,” showing a pattern of someone willing to make bold, sometimes uncomfortable statements about identity and belonging.
