Recently, I ran across the above statement made by war correspondent Matthew Halton in 1945, regarding the Second World War. It somehow spoke to me about how we look at life and death now-a-days.
Although I was only eight years old when the war ended, my memories are still pretty clear. I had a sister and two brothers in the armed forces…what was going on ‘over there’ was very much a part of my life.
The years after the war seemed idyllic…young men coming home, even finishing their schooling (two or three even attended the grade 12 class in our high school.) But we knew what death was and there was no attempt to dress it up in finery to make it appealing to the masses.
Such is not the case today…my TV schedule is a rerun of one war after another. Not necessarily war between countries, but war between individuals and groups right in our own towns and cities. I could list the TV schedule but you all know who they are. We have made a carnival out of death.
I don’t think that was God’s intentions…He wanted us to have life in all its fullness. There is enough tragedy built into everyday life without having it shoved into our faces all night long on TV and the problem is it can become addicting…oh yes, the good guy usually wins and we give a sigh of relief and press the ‘off’ button. The characters have become a part of our lives and we are ‘hooked’.
I am no different and must admit an attachment to “Murdock Mysteries” and you actually can find Christian mysteries in most libraries, but flipping from TV channel to channel often leaves you with very little to watch.
Instead, Andrew Faiz, (you all should know who he is) once advised us to ‘binge on the Bible’, well the four gospels, so I am giving it a go. I have developed a ‘sleuthing’ kind of mind and found interesting discrepancies between Matthew and Luke…but then I find discrepancies in today’s world too.
It is sometimes hard to remember the Lord’s admonition to live life in all its fullness when we see nothing around us but a ‘carnival of death.’ Our young people seem especially in love with death and all its aspects…just check the symbols and sayings on their t-shirts.
In 1957 I walked through Dachau, the Nazi concentration camp with its gas chambers and pock-marked firing wall…I have seen fields and fields of cross-filled cemeteries in Europe… I have seen the ‘carnival of death.’ It is not glorious or colourfull and not the celebration of life that God intended.
I pray that somehow we will all learn to live in peace and our carnivals in the future will be ones of joy and fellowship and God will be very present in it.
Photo by US Air Force via Flickr
