a good movie, though somewhat controversial in it's retelling of history.
the scene - old jewish women surround a young german soldier as he cries out that he has a wife and child. one of the jews cries out, "so did i!" the horrific scene unfolds as the frail, hungry women beat the german to death with sticks and rifle butts.
good people drawn to horrible deeds.
watching the movies on the rwandian massacre it seems unbelievable how ordinary people could be guilty of such butchery, such blood crimes. i have often wondered what could drive a person to such acts. surely i could not be forced, coerced, cajoled into acting like that?
even as i write this i know there are circumstances under which i could become that monster. if someone raped my wife, or hurt my children, there is no power on earth that could suppress what would happen. i love the story of the bus driver who sacrificed hitting his own son rather than a large group of strangers. i think it's a good story, but not my story. i would run over the lot of you in a heartbeat to protect my kids and not even think twice. there is no way.
there is something evil in all of us. bible people call it 'original sin'. there is a propensity for evil in my being that occasionally shocks me. as much as we suppress and deny, there is no denying that given the right situation at the wrong time i am bound to do the wrong thing. too often when this happens we excuse ourselves, blame another or even say "god told me to". i wish it was someone else's fault. i wish it was because i was improperly bottle fed as a child, but it's not. it's all me. i try to clean it up, make it look acceptable but nothing works.
when i was a kid my dad took me fishing on primrose lake. primrose lake is a private military lake that is used for target practice and inaccessible to the general public. my dad pulled a few strings and before i knew it we were fishing between bombardments. it was incredible. the fish practically jumped in the boat. it took 20 minutes for three of us to catch our limit of big, big fish. the cleaning took far longer than the catching.
we filled our freezer with fish that summer. summer also brought holiday time and before long we were off to the family camping trip, thoughts of primrose lake far behind us. what we didn't know was that, just before we left, someone had accidently pulled the plug on our huge freezer.
two weeks later.
we got home and the house reeked of bad fish. why, we wondered, was that odor so pronounced? it didn't take us long to find our way downstairs and finally open the now completely defrosted freezer... full to the brim with brine and water and dead smelly fish. what to do?
it was tempting to just just close that lid and walk away. we could have dressed up that freezer, even painted it a new color, but that wouldn't have changed what was inside it. we could have hired a psychotherapist to talk to the fridge, maybe a pastor could have come by and cast a demon out of the thing. it would not have mattered. dress up that thing any way you want and the fact remains that it still is a freezer full of rotting fish. no amount of therapy could have changed that.
that's alot like me... like you. i try to make excuses for my idiocy and blame someone else but at the end of the day the fact remains that it is still my mess-o-fish. it is not my ex-wife's problem or my kids or my parents, it isn't even my ex-churches issue - it is mine alone. at the end of the day i can blame whoever i want, it's still my problem.
so why is this so hard to accept?
the scene - old jewish women surround a young german soldier as he cries out that he has a wife and child. one of the jews cries out, "so did i!" the horrific scene unfolds as the frail, hungry women beat the german to death with sticks and rifle butts.
good people drawn to horrible deeds.
watching the movies on the rwandian massacre it seems unbelievable how ordinary people could be guilty of such butchery, such blood crimes. i have often wondered what could drive a person to such acts. surely i could not be forced, coerced, cajoled into acting like that?
even as i write this i know there are circumstances under which i could become that monster. if someone raped my wife, or hurt my children, there is no power on earth that could suppress what would happen. i love the story of the bus driver who sacrificed hitting his own son rather than a large group of strangers. i think it's a good story, but not my story. i would run over the lot of you in a heartbeat to protect my kids and not even think twice. there is no way.
there is something evil in all of us. bible people call it 'original sin'. there is a propensity for evil in my being that occasionally shocks me. as much as we suppress and deny, there is no denying that given the right situation at the wrong time i am bound to do the wrong thing. too often when this happens we excuse ourselves, blame another or even say "god told me to". i wish it was someone else's fault. i wish it was because i was improperly bottle fed as a child, but it's not. it's all me. i try to clean it up, make it look acceptable but nothing works.
when i was a kid my dad took me fishing on primrose lake. primrose lake is a private military lake that is used for target practice and inaccessible to the general public. my dad pulled a few strings and before i knew it we were fishing between bombardments. it was incredible. the fish practically jumped in the boat. it took 20 minutes for three of us to catch our limit of big, big fish. the cleaning took far longer than the catching.
we filled our freezer with fish that summer. summer also brought holiday time and before long we were off to the family camping trip, thoughts of primrose lake far behind us. what we didn't know was that, just before we left, someone had accidently pulled the plug on our huge freezer.
two weeks later.
we got home and the house reeked of bad fish. why, we wondered, was that odor so pronounced? it didn't take us long to find our way downstairs and finally open the now completely defrosted freezer... full to the brim with brine and water and dead smelly fish. what to do?
it was tempting to just just close that lid and walk away. we could have dressed up that freezer, even painted it a new color, but that wouldn't have changed what was inside it. we could have hired a psychotherapist to talk to the fridge, maybe a pastor could have come by and cast a demon out of the thing. it would not have mattered. dress up that thing any way you want and the fact remains that it still is a freezer full of rotting fish. no amount of therapy could have changed that.
that's alot like me... like you. i try to make excuses for my idiocy and blame someone else but at the end of the day the fact remains that it is still my mess-o-fish. it is not my ex-wife's problem or my kids or my parents, it isn't even my ex-churches issue - it is mine alone. at the end of the day i can blame whoever i want, it's still my problem.
so why is this so hard to accept?
posted by Scott at 1/29/2009
2 Comments:
Scott, let's face it. If we're really being true to ourselves; isn't it all Mike Abercrombie's fault? I say we go get that guy. Make him pay for our crappy lives.
Right on Mat! And Scott, if you'd taken my car and gone to the store earlier yesterday - I wouldn't have gotten another ticket!
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