The Unseen Here and
Now . . .
Stuart
Revercomb
Stuart
Revercomb is a marketing consultant and joyously married father of four
children. He seems to remember someone once telling him he ought to be
a writer. "The Unseen Here and Now" -- Thursdays.
E-MAIL
Click
Here
to
subscribe to
"Thursday's Fare"
August 29, 2002
The Not So Great View From Here
I have often said that this column was about the "view from here" - that it was an open invitation to come take a look for yourself and make your own decision about God's movement through the world and our lives.
Well, today the view is not so good.
In fact it stinks - reeking like the worn out, days old carcass that the world so often seems to be.
The local daily news is an endless list of mindless and cruel acts that are enough to make the stomach turn, while the national scene now reads like an everyday horror novel, as innocent young children are snatched from the ones they love and then sexually assaulted and murdered. We watch numb in disbelief as the life and beauty of their young hearts are snuffed out and they are discarded by the side of the road with an apparent indifference that is beyond our ability to fathom.
Occasionally the horrific stories that seem so far away geographically, come racing home as another brutal act is perpetrated yet again, but this time just "down the street" in an adjoining county. The brutal murders of Michael and Mary Short in Henry County Va. and the disappearance of their nine-year-old daughter, Jennifer, wrenches the soul, and part of us can't help but ask - "Where is God in all of this?"
But even when the news is close and present we find a way to steel ourselves against such stories, until that's what they become - stories - no more real to us than the fantastical depictions that we watch every night in our living rooms. We are in denial - the world just couldn't be as hopeless and horrific as it appears to be. Could it? It's just on television, isn't it?
Just after September 11, several national commentators spoke of how they and others had felt that what they were watching that day seemed like something out of the latest Hollywood thriller - that the reality of what they were seeing just could not be comprehended. They went on to say that perhaps this tragic event would "reawaken" Americans to the real world around them and help us overcome our addiction to the insanity and mindlessness of "modern entertainment."
Think we've gone back to sleep yet? The truth is, we were back in hibernation before the winter set in. It took just about as long as the postponement of the release of the five movies that happened to be "just too much like the events of September 11."
"Whew, that was close. We're O.K. now . . . Let's watch Washington get nuked."
It's easy to say that its always been this way - that the types of human behavior that support the most corrupt side of life have been with us ever since the blood of Abel ran warm into the ground at the hands of his jealous brother. And it's true - the wars and acts of violence of years past make much of today's armed conflicts and civil violence seem tame by comparison.
But perhaps the question should be - have we ever, in the course of modern history, experienced such everyday moral degradation and violence with the regularity that we do in American society? And has the acceptance of even the most simple and basic tenets of "anything goes" helped to create such a culture of abuse?
I'm not a good enough historian to answer the first part of that question. But even if I were, I think it would be difficult to make a good case that we have. I think it would be far easier to argue the opposite - that our culture IS uniquely challenged, and that our relatively recent acceptance of the law of "anything goes" in lieu of the Law of God, or even our own frail sense of right and wrong, continues to propel us down a road to a place that none of us wish to reach.
Recently a newspaper insert for a local department store featured a back-to-school page for young girls clothing. First, let me clarify that while some might describe me as reasonably conservative in the political realm, I can take some pretty quirky norms as far as teenagers go. After all, I can still remember the excesses of my own generation, and as "excesses" go we had some pretty darn good ones. But the mainstream message of this particular advertisement floored me. There was more skin showing in that ad than in the R-rated movies we used to sneak into at the 220 Drive-In. "Madonna" in her heyday had nothing on this group. I remember thinking, "In a movie trailer, maybe. . . but in an advertisement for young girl's clothing in Southwest Virginia??"
The radical Muslim practice of requiring every square inch of a woman's body to be covered seems as ridiculous to me as encouraging and allowing early teenage girls to attend school in clothing so scant and revealing that many look as though they're applying for work at a Singapore whorehouse. What is our expectation of both them and the hormone-charged bodies of the young boys around them? Worse yet, does our acceptance of such "norms" encourage the sexually delinquent of society to translate their warped lust into wanton and seditious acts against the innocent?
Notice that I said "our acceptance of such norms." I am not suggesting that people that make questionable decisions in any aspect of their lives deserve to be preyed upon - they don't. But the sick and disordered perpetrators of such madness will always be among us, and they, like the rest of us, will continue to be influenced by the ongoing lie we tell ourselves in movies and television. Namely, that the freedom of the individual to express his or her own idea of "happiness," regardless of the consequences to others, is the single most important goal of our self-governing Democracy.
Do our little acceptances of this misplaced ideal and our daily tolerance of even the most mundane aspects of "the law of anything goes" make a difference? I think they do. And I think we read about it everyday.
Which takes me back to the everyday question. "So, where is God in all of this?"
Like the parents of the headstrong teenager who knows he has "it all figured out," I think our loving Creator is watching and listening and acting to help where he can, but the rest he must leave up to us. It is part of his gift of free will to each of us - a gift that we ourselves can make a blessing or a curse.
My prayer is that one day, we shall do a much better job of it.