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| Dirty Laundry and Vicarious Violence |
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I confess- I have a deep weakness for true crime stories, whether they be in print or on TV. I admit to watching COPS marathons as well as tuning in to Forensic Files, The First 48, The Shift, and other programming of that genre with the same rabid regularity that some women watch Oprah or tune into QVC, or the Home and Garden Channel. I am not much of a fiction reader save for the classics, and perhaps a good thriller by Stephen King from time to time. Most of my reading other than devotional is non-fiction and is typically scientific, historical, or involving true crime. Some of my favorite books involve all three, such as "Mindhunter" by John Douglas, or "Senatorial Privilege" by Leo Damore. I'd like to say that my reading and viewing habits are along the lines of "Little House on the Prairie" or "Davey and Goliath" (I did watch both programs quite often as a kid) but where many women have a taste for the "who's wearing what" or the "who's involved with whom" sort of intrigues, I have a taste for the macabre, especially if it's real. I like a good murder mystery, and sadly, there are no shortages of them in this world. I would like to say that my fascination with such intrigues stems from a desire for justice and an interest in forensic science, (which is partially true) but that is not always the case. .
Don Henley commented in his song "Dirty Laundry," "It's interesting when people die/ give us dirty laundry." One of the ironies about the news and even about the programming we like to watch on TV is that the more drama and pathos and blood and guts are involved, the more likely we are to watch. Very few people are interested in news stories about flowers and puppies, but if the local refinery blows up, or there's a serial killer loose, everyone is tuning in to the news. I bet the History Channel just got some spectacular ratings, with last week being "Apocalypse Week." Apocalypse Week showcased specials on the myriad ways the end of the world can come about. One special included two hours of experts informing us that according to myriad sources, including Nostradamus, that the world is scheduled to end on December 21, 2012. Yes, I was twisted enough to actually watch it, even though I cast a very skeptical eye on the credentials of the "experts" involved. Personally when it comes to things eschatological (having to do with the End of Days) I would rather trust what Jesus said in Matthew 24. Some things were never meant to be pencilled in to one's schedule. The End of Days is something we were never meant to be able to predict, and I believe that's a good thing.
The ancient Romans as we know loved blood sport, but in some ways I think today's society has even more blood lust than the Romans did. I am just as guilty of the enjoyment of vicarious violence as anyone, and possibly more so than most. Back in the 80's I watched every slasher flick out there- from "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" to "Nightmare on Elm Street" and its numerous sequels, numerous times. While it was interesting to try to figure out how they pulled off the special effects, I admit that the plots are all too predictable, and slashers are not terribly edifying entertainment fare. I believe their popularity comes from that sarx desire for blood sport, to find some sort of excitement or even catharsis in witnessing the suffering of others. Part of the problem with our fascination with the macabre is that viewing all the vicarious violence can serve to inoculate us from the offenses and the horror of them. We tend not to take notice, let alone offense, from the things we see as daily occurences.
The reality of life in this world is that we live in sarx. It is all around us- hedonism, intrigue, murder, and all sorts of carnality, the dirty laundry that we are neck-deep in. We can either embrace it and call it normal- which is not a healthy response, or we can step back and view it for what it really is. This world is indeed fallen, and the unholy and the holy exist side by side, intertwined to the point that separation is nearly impossible. Whether we like it or not, it is not possible for us to completely remove ourselves from the evil that surrounds us, but we don't need to be constantly, consciously taking a bubble bath in it either.
13:24 Another parable he put before them, saying, "The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field; 13:25 but while men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away. 13:26 So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared also. 13:27 And the servants of the householder came and said to him, 'Sir, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then has it weeds?' 13:28 He said to them, 'An enemy has done this.' The servants said to him, 'Then do you want us to go and gather them?' 13:29 But he said, 'No; lest in gathering the weeds you root up the wheat along with them. 13:30 Let both grow together until the harvest; and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Gather the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.'"
Jesus knew good and well what we would be surrounded by, and that even those who follow Him will be burdened by living out the paradox of being saints and sinners at the same time. Paul talks about this paradox at length in Romans 7. Sometimes it is hard for us to take life with the weeds growing right next to us, and sometimes, perhaps to make us look better to ourselves, because deep down we know that we are not so far removed from the weeds after all, we even develop a sort of sick fascination for watching what they do.
But if the weeds were torn up, we would find that their roots are intertwined with ours and left to our own devices, apart from the grace of God, we would be one and the same.
There are some agnostic humanists and others who teach that the Bible is a violent and archaic book and should not be used as a guideline for anything. In this argument the Bible should be banned because of its violent content, usually gleaned from wrenching verses and passages out of context for extra shock effect. Arguably the Bible is NOT politically correct, and there are very few what I would call "flowers and puppies" references. The Bible is the word of God, and as such it is a real book complete with all the things of real life such as murder, intrigue, cataclysm and the entire spectrum of humanity including human depravity. I remember with a little bit of humor one of the eighth grade boys in one of my catechism groups who took it upon himself, when asked to find his confirmation verse, proceeded to pick out all the Bible verses containing the word "prostitute." In the NIV Bible, there are seventy-four such references, for anyone who wants to know. In the end I reminded him that at Confirmation he would have to read his verse out loud, and that his mother would be there. Fearing his mother's wrath, he chose a little less earthy topic for his confirmation verse..
Life on this earth is dirty. We are born dirty (nurses don't scrub newborns with what appears to be a wire brush for nothing) and we die dirty, because sarx is built into us and into this world. If we pretend that all humans need to do to make the world a perfect, non-violent place would be to just act nice and behave and refrain from any violent references in media then we are missing the boat. Every single attempt at human-made utopian society has disintegrated into abysmal and brutal failure because the designers of such ideas discount both the idea of a Higher Designer and the reality that apart from that Designer, humanity is just plain sorry and sick. Recent failures of utopian experiments include Nazism as well as Communism- ideologies notorious for both their Godlessness and their brutality. There is no human way to take the sarx out of the human- it comes prepackaged in our DNA.
I think most of us learn by the age of two, if not earlier, that Barney the Dinosaur isn't real and the world is definitely not all "I love you, you love me," twiddle. Frankly, when observing toddlers one generally sees an attitude of, "I love me, and only me!" The Bible wasn't written to cater to the image of a human-made, non-violent utopia, but to reveal the story and the will of God. The writers of the Bible were inspired by the Holy Spirit to get the story and the message across to a real world using imagery that world could see and understand. Brutality was and is, part of the reality of this world.
If anything the violence that surrounds us should offend us and spur us to work for justice and peace rather than entertain us. I would like to put myself in a "higher category" than the Romans who went to the Coliseum to watch the gladiators tear each other to bits, but I have to admit that I do enjoy a good car chase or a drunk bust or a fudged robbery caught on tape. We all love dirty laundry. I am not immune to the effects of sarx any more than anyone else is.
The good in this is that as God changes us, as we learn and grow and are transformed by the Holy Spirit, we start to produce the fruit of the Spirit rather than simply remaining a weed made of sarx. |
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