Tuesday, September 4, 2012

I'm So Over Violence


Why is violence considered entertainment? The fan fiction Punisher film “Dirty Laundry” is awesome, but also disturbingly graphically violent. Not that I was shocked by that. I knew it would be going in. Considering this type of entertainment and the rash of violent shootings I'm starting to wonder what kind of people our society is forming us into.

Let me be clear that I am not saying there is a direct relationship between violent forms of entertainment and actual violence. Everyone except the seriously deranged can tell the difference between a video game and the real world. Healthy people playing violent video games do not walk out their door and start popping people.

My point is that we seem to be a war mongering, brutal violence is entertainment, let's do worse things to the bad guys than they did to us up kind of people. Revenge is our motivation not justice or love.

I have to try to distance myself from this culture. I'm not going to go hermit myself and the family off in the woods, but my goal is to be as like Christ as I can be. Jesus taught to turn the other cheek (Matthew 5:38-40), put down your sword Peter (John 18:10-12) and Paul said to feed your enemy (Romans 12:20). This is not modeled in our culture. Quite the opposite actually. Remember the shooting in the Amish school? They forgave that man for a horrible crime. Instead of being impressed by the Christ like love they showed we think (myself included) what the hell is wrong with them.

Maybe we should ask that of ourselves?

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