G-Poppers… June 26th, 2015

Jonathots Daily Blog

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G-Pop was wondering how much a sixteen-year-old girl could truly understand. Not because she’s unintelligent or devoid of grasping adult concepts–it’s just that all information remains merely data until curiosity soaks it up. It’s hard to be curious about anything but your own life at sixteen.

But on the other hand, there is something going on in the country that is significant and needs to be addressed.

Even though in collective horror we watch foreign renegades parade a prisoner in front of cameras and behead the hapless fellow, we have to realize that it is equally as ignorant and counterproductive to “head” our captors.

We do not cut off the head of the people we arrest. Instead, we give them a “head”–a face, a personality, a back-story, interviews with their friends, and speculate for days on what prompted them to commit their recent atrocity.

The average criminal receives millions and millions of dollars of free publicity when the main reason that the wickedness flowed from him or her was the desire to be known.

It’s like feeding a bear cub in your backyard and wondering why you go out with provision one day and get eaten by the fully grown beast.

Somehow or another we have to stop sensationalizing evil. I understand that most people do not find goodness, joy and praise-worthy deeds nearly as interesting as the vile expose of a murderous act, but in some fashion we need to strip these perpetrators of the trappings they so desire.

G-Pop saw a news report last night where the picture of the person who had just killed his wife was some sort of Photoshopped air-brushed version, making the murderer look like Denzel Washington.

It’s wrong–and not morally wrong, but culturally wrong.

People who do atrocities against their fellow humans should not be granted face, body, story or future.

How would we achieve this? Well, let’s start with a simple thought: Only heroes get stories.

If you decide to kill someone, you become a silhouetted cut-out on the news, without a name–or given a name not your own to further mock the stupidity of the pursuit of notoriety. We certainly have no problem calling people “John or Jane Doe” when they’re a corpse. Therefore, when someone’s a dead man walking due to crimes against humanity, why can’t they be “Jake or Janice Dork?”

If we as a society do not communicate that such behavior is abhorrent and refuse to grant space, then those who are tormented with obscurity will gladly give their last breath and life for seventeen minutes of fame. (The original fifteen minutes seems to be growing.)

I am fully aware that those who work in the news room will object to this line of thought because they make a living off of affording us gory detail. But gory detail could still be provided without granting the one who produced the anguish any photo space.

How could G-Pop share this with a sixteen-year-old girl without coming across as an old man who is out of step with time?

Would she understand that to give people what they want is to encourage them both to continue to want and also to do things that will get it?

Yes, people who behead are truly barbarians.

Yet I must tell you, in our culture, the decision to “head” our villains only encourages the insanity of evil.

 

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Rabble and Rubble… March 31, 2013

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Some were killers. Others watched. The rest ran away in terror, except for a tiny handful, which stuck around to stow the mutilated corpse in a tomb.

I didn’t know what to do. I was no killer, didn’t have the stomach to watch, couldn’t run as fast as the cowards and wouldn’t wrap my mind around a “grave” conclusion for my best friend.

So I just walked.

Actually, I’ve been walking for twenty-four hours, now. Of course, I exaggerate, but it sure seems like an endless odyssey of meaningless meandering. I walk and I look.

I don’t know exactly what I’m looking for–I guess some sort of sign of shock, revulsion or horror over the atrocity just committed on that hill so far away. But truthfully, life seems to be going on. Nothing is canceled. No one discusses postponing local events to consider the murder of an innocent man. I even came across a wedding in progress, with the sound of jubilation and music. The Passover is in full swing. The Romans are in control and religion has dressed up for the day.

I feel like I’m about to go insane over the calmness that’s settled in on a world gone mad. Jesus loved the rabble. He embraced those souls the world deemed riff-raff. He met them in their hour of need, saved them, healed them and even raised them from the dead. Yet when he reached his critical moment–when he required the support of these who were benefitted by his mercy–they accepted the wisdom of a Council which they normally mocked, and they screamed in unison for a murderer and robber to be released to their fellowship. They chose the allure of darkness because it was closer to the coloration fo their own souls.

Mostly I’m disgusted with myself. Because the absence of knowing what to do is not the presence of an excuse for not doing anything. It may seem that way in the moment, but it is a lie.

I don’t know where to go. Some of my friends went fishing to take their minds off the dilemma. There are a few hiding out in an upper room–simulating prayer, but really shaking in their sandals over every rustling outside the door, wondering if it is the Romans coming to slice them into pieces.

I just can’t be with any of them. The rabble disgusts me because they denied their own best solution. And the rubble of a once-great “kingdom movement” is so insipid and vacant of ideas that I can’t tolerate sitting in their presence, commiserating.

I feel so alone that I’m taunted by the specter of suicide. Yet I won’t do that. That would require a certain amount of courage which I lack, and an insanity which I refuse entrance.

I walk on.

Has it really come down to the simplicity of the rabble and the rubble? My friend Jesus dedicated his life to protecting the lost and innocent, only to have them choose cowardice in his hour of need. Likewise, he spent hours and hours instructing people like me–his followers–but when he was confronted with evil, he only found frightened little Jewish boys and girls, who had learned much but acquired little.

Now hours have passed. I must have dozed off, although I would have sworn I was incapable of sleep. The Sabbath is over and the first fruits of the light of dawn are creeping into the velvety haze of darkness. It will soon be morning. What will I do?

Even though I used to enjoy the beginning of each day, now the sun mocks me because it shines its light on my indecision. Do I go and resume my life among the rabble–pretending that the little piece of misfortune that happened on Calvary was a thing of the past?

I can’t do that. Too many miracles. Too many blessings. Too many hugs. Too many roads. And too many reasons to remember.

I guess I will head to the tomb. In the long run, it is better to be with the rubble–the remains of a great idea–than with the rabble, lacking any inclination toward solution.

Sunday morning. I will go to the tomb.

After all … it is the last place I saw Jesus.

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