Schindler
I realize at 25 I should already have seen this film, but tonight was the night. My first thought was Darfur, and the 400,000. And then the string of genocides from Cambodia to Rwanda that we can’t seem to figure out a way to prevent. Then, I thought about Amon’s callous, arbitrary destruction of lives, and I was struck by the thought that a whole group of Christians views God as that arbitrary decider of life and destruction. As the bodies flopped to the ground, that thought raked against my understanding of unalienable dignity ad the knowledge that I am certainly not more loving than God.
And I struggle processing the simultaneous hope and despair involved in these overwhelming scenes. Trying to save so many, knowing many many more go unsaved. Hoping that “whoever saves one life, saves the world entire.” But thinking all the time of how much money I have already wasted in my life and “this is gold; two more people.” It is the same here, now. People dying, doing a little to help, wasting some money. But here, here I can forget it for a while. I don’t want pain reliever, I want a cure.
December 30th, 2006 at 0.57
So tough isn’t it? The balancing of priorities that involve life and death is something that I ponder often. Today this person might ask me to loan X and that person Y. But if I give both then in a week I can’t give to yet another person I meet. And while we know that if all people stopped being selfish and gave then much existing hurt would end, we also recognize the recurring problem of selfishness in almost every era, generation and record of life throughout time. It doesn’t seem likely to end for us right now.
Personally that has led me to a place of both greater sacrifice but then also of greater trust in God. While I do want to challenge all people to give more, I also want to challenge all people to trust and hope more. It’s not that we bank on pennies from heaven and never work, but without the pennies from heaven our work will never happen to the degree we long for.
January 16th, 2007 at 10.45
Hey Guy,
Are you the one who set up the bookclub site? I’d like to revamp it a bit and clean some things up if that’s ok with whoever created the original deal.
January 16th, 2007 at 21.25
Jake, do you have this vox site connected somehow with your jakemalloy site? That is can you post there and a post comes up here, etc. Or are they not linked like that in any way? Just curious, I’ve been thinking about some things and thought I would ask.
Also, sent Tiffany an email tonight for both of you. I couldn’t find your email address anywhere so that’s why it only went to her.
talk to you later.