Lately, my oldest son and I have been enjoying war movies together. I had quite a collection of war movies when Mark and I got married, from The Dirty Dozen to Wind Talkers to The Gladiator, I enjoyed them all. Austin is always in awe that I - a GIRL - actually enjoy stories of war. It's true, real or fictional, (but especially real) I enjoy a good war story. Austin rationalizes that it must be because my name is derived from the Roman god of war. I just think that "girls" can enjoy history, including the war parts, as much as "boys" can. We recently finished the last episode of World War II in HD from the History Channel. It's no exaggeration to say that I loved this documentary series. It was so well done, and it provided a more in depth look at WWII than I had ever seen or understood before we watched it.
We watched a movie last night called The Eagle about a Roman soldier who was trying to reclaim a symbol of Rome that his father had lost in combat years earlier. I thought the movie was mediocre at best, but I was reminded of something that was also impressed upon me as I watched WWII in HD... I am soft. As I watched the conditions under which millions of people have lived... As I watched the conditions under which millions of people have existed... I am overwhelmed. I don't even want to use the word "lived" in the sense that I think of it. I realize - almost with pain - that I could not live that way.
On Saipan, immediately following its conquer by the United States in WWII, US Marines witnessed the mass suicide of civilians - men, women, and children who had been brainwashed by their government to believe they'd be better off dying than falling into American hands. The Marines watched helplessly as parents killed their children and then themselves - jumping off (or throwing children off) cliffs onto rocks below, drowning themselves, holding grenades to their chests and pulling the pins. These piteous people who lived in abject poverty and who were treated as second-class citizens by their own government crawled out of the caves in which they'd been hiding in order to kill themselves. They believed they had nothing to live for - no reason to believe they could expect better from life than worse than what they had already experienced. But why? Isn't life precious? Not for many. It makes me wonder if, after humanity's fall from grace, it was ever meant to be precious.
Dean Sherman states that Western civilization, particularly Western Christianity, exists in the world of the theoretical. We believe in analogies. We believe in theory, because we rarely exercise our ability to live out our faith in reality. We really have no idea how most of the world lives. Even the poorest of our poor are not abjectly impoverished. We have provided ourselves with so much comfort that we are disgusted by discomfort. We've tried many things (good and bad) to rid ourselves of the types of discomforts that the rest of the world endure on a daily basis. Through vaccinations, pain relievers, lawsuits, foods, diets, climate control systems, and thousands of other things we use every day, we've managed to rid ourselves of "life"... or what is considered life for most of the other people on earth. Even death has become too uncomfortable and inconvenient for many to face these days. Funeral homes go bankrupt because people choose cremation and no memorial service to save on costs and presumably on grief. As a hospice volunteer, I am often surprised had how many families choose no services for their loved ones. Does this really save us? Does refusing to grieve in a traditional sense work for us? At least in the Caucasian culture, we'd already managed our grief down into bite-sized tokens (at least in public) of sniffles and tissues. Why not wail and moan and sit in a heap of ashes like other cultures? Why not ugly cry - snorts, snots, and all? Too "undignified" has become too easy to ignore.
I miss the passion of earlier generations. I miss the sense of duty that people felt toward God, family, and country. I've spoken a lot lately with a lovely single friend of mine who is at a loss to understand why she cannot find a "good" man. Despite her beauty, intelligence, education, and job - all the things the world says she needs to be and do, and then some - there is not a man to be found who will "fight for" her. Not a man to be found who values her enough to work at establishing and maintaining a relationship. Is it her fault? No way. It is all of our faults. We have come to a point in our society where we expect less and less of ourselves and more and more of each other - a combination that can't possibly work. Women have continued to fight for "rights" and "freedom" which mostly boils down to control over our circumstances (and our men), and we wonder why men are apathetic when it comes to pursuing us. We've taken the roles that were traditionally theirs - including pursuer - and we wonder why we are so dissatisfied with the mealy-mouthed, dispassionate man lying next to us in bed. What are they supposed to do? What's left for them? What distinguishes them as different from us? Nothing, and we wanted it that way, and now we hate them for it. What's worse - a strong, confident man who is sometimes insensitive or a soft, sensitive man who refuses to fight for his woman, family, home, and country? I know which one appeals more to me.
The comfortable, soft, sanitized world we've created for ourselves largely rids us of our dependence upon anyone - least of all God - and yet we lament our feelings of loneliness and isolation. We live our lives with the most minimal involvement from God, but He's the first one to get the blame when things go badly for us. Ironically, the most valuable spiritual truths I've ever learned were in the times of my greatest trials and tribulations. My most precious times of being "held" by my Savior were in times when there was no one else to hold me. We wonder why people in more impoverished and persecuted parts of the world seem to have a more vibrant faith, but it's small wonder to me. After all, real life, like it became after man's fall from glory, is rotten. It's not fun. It's not pretty, and it's certainly not easy.
I recall a story that a friend of mine who moved here from another country once told me. He said that when he had lived in his home country, he had been important and prominent. He had much pride in who he was and in his home country. He came to America excited, because he felt God was leading him to make a difference in our country. He asked God what God wanted him to do. He was met with frustration after frustration. He found himself asking God why he would bring him to this country only to meet him with frustration and humiliation. He said he felt God impress upon him that he was not brought to America because God needed him in America but because God knew that, only in America - far away and humbled from his former way of life - would this friend realize his constant need for God. Since that time, I have witnessed many people who think their life's work is to change a person or group of people when the reality is that they can't and never could. We aren't in the business of changing others. God doesn't need us for that. He puts us here so that, through the living of our lives - particularly the most painful parts of those lives - we are caused to depend on Him in a way that grows and changes us. How prideful of us to think that God plans to use us to change other people. It's only when we realize that we are the ones who need to change that we become truly useful to God at all.
Those Marines on Saipan tried everything they could think of to communicate their good intentions toward the civilians who were killing themselves by the hundreds, but the language barrier and the lack of trust between them prevented a potentially life-saving exchange. You can't change a person's heart - no matter how good your intentions might be. Next time, you're facing something difficult and dirty, and you're frustrated out of your mind, the person God probably wants you to change is YOU.
We watched a movie last night called The Eagle about a Roman soldier who was trying to reclaim a symbol of Rome that his father had lost in combat years earlier. I thought the movie was mediocre at best, but I was reminded of something that was also impressed upon me as I watched WWII in HD... I am soft. As I watched the conditions under which millions of people have lived... As I watched the conditions under which millions of people have existed... I am overwhelmed. I don't even want to use the word "lived" in the sense that I think of it. I realize - almost with pain - that I could not live that way.
On Saipan, immediately following its conquer by the United States in WWII, US Marines witnessed the mass suicide of civilians - men, women, and children who had been brainwashed by their government to believe they'd be better off dying than falling into American hands. The Marines watched helplessly as parents killed their children and then themselves - jumping off (or throwing children off) cliffs onto rocks below, drowning themselves, holding grenades to their chests and pulling the pins. These piteous people who lived in abject poverty and who were treated as second-class citizens by their own government crawled out of the caves in which they'd been hiding in order to kill themselves. They believed they had nothing to live for - no reason to believe they could expect better from life than worse than what they had already experienced. But why? Isn't life precious? Not for many. It makes me wonder if, after humanity's fall from grace, it was ever meant to be precious.
Dean Sherman states that Western civilization, particularly Western Christianity, exists in the world of the theoretical. We believe in analogies. We believe in theory, because we rarely exercise our ability to live out our faith in reality. We really have no idea how most of the world lives. Even the poorest of our poor are not abjectly impoverished. We have provided ourselves with so much comfort that we are disgusted by discomfort. We've tried many things (good and bad) to rid ourselves of the types of discomforts that the rest of the world endure on a daily basis. Through vaccinations, pain relievers, lawsuits, foods, diets, climate control systems, and thousands of other things we use every day, we've managed to rid ourselves of "life"... or what is considered life for most of the other people on earth. Even death has become too uncomfortable and inconvenient for many to face these days. Funeral homes go bankrupt because people choose cremation and no memorial service to save on costs and presumably on grief. As a hospice volunteer, I am often surprised had how many families choose no services for their loved ones. Does this really save us? Does refusing to grieve in a traditional sense work for us? At least in the Caucasian culture, we'd already managed our grief down into bite-sized tokens (at least in public) of sniffles and tissues. Why not wail and moan and sit in a heap of ashes like other cultures? Why not ugly cry - snorts, snots, and all? Too "undignified" has become too easy to ignore.
I miss the passion of earlier generations. I miss the sense of duty that people felt toward God, family, and country. I've spoken a lot lately with a lovely single friend of mine who is at a loss to understand why she cannot find a "good" man. Despite her beauty, intelligence, education, and job - all the things the world says she needs to be and do, and then some - there is not a man to be found who will "fight for" her. Not a man to be found who values her enough to work at establishing and maintaining a relationship. Is it her fault? No way. It is all of our faults. We have come to a point in our society where we expect less and less of ourselves and more and more of each other - a combination that can't possibly work. Women have continued to fight for "rights" and "freedom" which mostly boils down to control over our circumstances (and our men), and we wonder why men are apathetic when it comes to pursuing us. We've taken the roles that were traditionally theirs - including pursuer - and we wonder why we are so dissatisfied with the mealy-mouthed, dispassionate man lying next to us in bed. What are they supposed to do? What's left for them? What distinguishes them as different from us? Nothing, and we wanted it that way, and now we hate them for it. What's worse - a strong, confident man who is sometimes insensitive or a soft, sensitive man who refuses to fight for his woman, family, home, and country? I know which one appeals more to me.
The comfortable, soft, sanitized world we've created for ourselves largely rids us of our dependence upon anyone - least of all God - and yet we lament our feelings of loneliness and isolation. We live our lives with the most minimal involvement from God, but He's the first one to get the blame when things go badly for us. Ironically, the most valuable spiritual truths I've ever learned were in the times of my greatest trials and tribulations. My most precious times of being "held" by my Savior were in times when there was no one else to hold me. We wonder why people in more impoverished and persecuted parts of the world seem to have a more vibrant faith, but it's small wonder to me. After all, real life, like it became after man's fall from glory, is rotten. It's not fun. It's not pretty, and it's certainly not easy.
I recall a story that a friend of mine who moved here from another country once told me. He said that when he had lived in his home country, he had been important and prominent. He had much pride in who he was and in his home country. He came to America excited, because he felt God was leading him to make a difference in our country. He asked God what God wanted him to do. He was met with frustration after frustration. He found himself asking God why he would bring him to this country only to meet him with frustration and humiliation. He said he felt God impress upon him that he was not brought to America because God needed him in America but because God knew that, only in America - far away and humbled from his former way of life - would this friend realize his constant need for God. Since that time, I have witnessed many people who think their life's work is to change a person or group of people when the reality is that they can't and never could. We aren't in the business of changing others. God doesn't need us for that. He puts us here so that, through the living of our lives - particularly the most painful parts of those lives - we are caused to depend on Him in a way that grows and changes us. How prideful of us to think that God plans to use us to change other people. It's only when we realize that we are the ones who need to change that we become truly useful to God at all.
Those Marines on Saipan tried everything they could think of to communicate their good intentions toward the civilians who were killing themselves by the hundreds, but the language barrier and the lack of trust between them prevented a potentially life-saving exchange. You can't change a person's heart - no matter how good your intentions might be. Next time, you're facing something difficult and dirty, and you're frustrated out of your mind, the person God probably wants you to change is YOU.
1 comment:
You spoke my heart in this blog. I struggle with the softness of our faith and fickleness of our love for Jesus. We have personally learned that praying for healing for BB requires very little from us. But health that needs constant attention requires a consistent relationship with the LIVING GOD. WE understand all His gifts are good, sometimes we need His perspective to seem them as good. i love your blog and want you to continue to be open with us.
i love you! dina
Post a Comment