Hey friends,
Heavenly Father, bless all eyes reading this blog today. You know our needs, and are with us each and every step of our journey to You. Thank you, Lord. I especially want to thank You for counting me worthy to 'stand in Your presence and serve You.' In Jesus' Name. Amen.
Not only did I see a violent movie this weekend, but my brother shot his first gun, ever, on the same day, which brought home a powerful message to me. (side note: Carlton tells me the gun instructor was a good one, so kudos to the teacher.)
This movie was ultra-violent though; in fact, one of the critics I heard describing the movie, said that movie-making people call this brutality 'wet'.
I was grateful knowing about the violence beforehand, because I could prevent myself from being subjected to it. I closed my eyes when I 'knew' or 'sensed' something awful was about to befall one of the characters, and judging by the audience's reactions, I'm happy I wasn't watching. (Ha, ha to the director, jokes on you!)
Violence in movies is nothing new, and will continue to appear, more's the pity.
But I'd like to add one more reason to the list of reasons why seeing violent movies, and using guns, aren't good for us: because they cause us to lose our innocence. And here's the definition I'm using for innocence: simplicity; absence of guile or cunning; naivete; lack of knowledge or understanding; harmlessness; innocuousness.
I think that when we're born, we are 100% innocent. But society: movies, the media, etc, (everyone of us knows 'the list' of terrible things that go on in the world without me further enumerating them), chip away at that innocence. And maybe I'm overly sensitive to this idea of losing our innocence because I am a teacher.
I remember years ago, when it was okay to hang out with the students outside of school, I took some of the girls in my class to fly kites. For some reason that eludes me at the moment, the girls and I had to go to the grocery store. When the students and I were in line to make our purchase, I remember looking at the 'headlines' on all of the magazines facing us in the aisle. Almost every single magazine was basically telling these young girls they weren't good enough, pretty enough, and how to make themselves perfect...I'm sure the girls didn't even notice; it was just another day at the grocery store for them, but I was jolted to awareness by all the blasts at our self-esteem, our thinking, and, most of all, our decency.
What's sadder to me than the media tearing at our innocence, is our willingness to let go of it. We seem to be saying, "Sure, I'm not supposed to see movies that make me cringe at the horror, but it's all in the name of entertainment, and I want to be entertained."or "Learning to shoot a gun isn't robbing me of my innocence; I'm learning to protect myself."
Losing our innocence isn't just about 'becoming educated,' or 'knowledgeable'; as a teacher, I understand the importance of education and knowledge; what I'm protesting is that people don't realize that when we lose our innocence, we lose our wondering about the world around us, we lose our curiosity about how things are made; we lose our creativity. It's almost like since we know what's going on behind what's happening, there's no point in using our imagination.
The movie I saw would have been just fine without all the goriness of it, as everyone knows. The person who thinks guns are the only way to protect ourselves, is forgetting about self-defense classes...I for one won't be seeing anymore violent films; and if I mistakenly happen to be watching one, I know I'll be covering my eyes again; because I'm aware I'm not just covering my eyes, I'm protecting what little innocence I have left.
"I am a little pencil in the hand of a writing God who is sending a love letter to the world." Mother Theresa
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