God Is Needed

I was very distressed today to hear about campus life at two Maryland universities in the metropolitan area. At the first a student was murdered after an escalating argument because of an iPod. At the second I think three female students reported that they woke up and discovered a strange man cuddling with them. Both stories left me wondering about the world that I live in, the world that is always in my prayers.

Strange and weird things happen each day. Senseless crimes happen each day. There is no explanation, no justification for uncontrolled anger. Logic teaches us for every action there is a reaction. Morality warns us for every action there is a consequence.

It is a strange violent world fueled by anger, rage, profanity. Where is reverence? Where is respect? Where is love? How many dreams were destroyed with the death of this Freshmen female student? How many lives were shattered?

As I think of this tragedy, this murder feels unreal, foreign, as if it was part of a heavy metal or gangsta rap music video. I can imagine the anger, I can imagine the rage. It is too often part of movies and television shows. Two lives ruined, two families in turmoil.

Young people making bold, brash decisions, young people rushing to be adults, young people behaving childishly, foolishly, callously now must face the consequences of their actions.

Where is religion in their lives? Where is love in their lives? Where is God in their lives?

God is missing from many lives. Morality is missing from many lives. The frontier mentality is encouraged, the rugged individual is glorified, the rebel outsider is canonized. Violence is glamorized. Cinematic death is beautiful, cinematic death is ambivalent, ambiguous. Cinematic murder is rationalized. In real life murder is messy. Lives are changed, devastated by murder.

Murder surprises many people when it occurs in their neighborhood, when it occurs on their campus. Murder surprises parents when their children are involved. Murder makes me yearn for God’s protection.

The only true security that we can ever have is the security that God provides. Man can neither protect us or offer true security. Only God can do that.

God is needed in this world.

Being Bad

THE not uncommon view that goodness, holiness, kindness are no longer hip, no longer valid behavior models for youth needs to remember the simple truth, being bad might create great conflict for movies, television, plays, and novels but being bad in real life creates problems, creates consequences. Being bad is not amusing, or disarming. What is highlighted is not always the best type of behavior, is not always the best choices. Our mistakes, our badness at times might be entertaining to our friends but not everyone will be laughing. Just imagine what the world would look like if every crazy thing we did, every temper tantrum, every time we used profanity ended up in a viral video on the internet and people viewed it and rated it. How would you feel? How would your friends and family feel? Our society is at a crossroads now, an intersection of taste, morality, and commerce. Commerce will probably win as more images of rudeness, betrayal, deception are presented to the public as normal behavior, as reality. Television distorts reality. It has since the medium began. Television provides a backdoor education for many people in what is and what is not acceptable in our society. What is presented does not truly reflect life in our society. It does project images which people can aspire to, images which people can see and imitate. We are all bystanders in someone’s latest internet movie. Just walk down the street and you will see someone with a camera pointed your direction. Will you be the gum chewing, coffee and scotch gulping, chain smoking, mustache twirling villain? Will you be the compassionate, merciful Good Samaritan? The world we live in today could easily be a Laurel and Hardy comedy of errors, rudeness, violence. The world we live in today is filled with excited voices both in front and behind cellphone cameras try to incite, trying to capture a scene. Cruelty is never funny. Brutality is never funny. We want to forget the pain and sorrow of the recent past by creating more pain, more heartache. We do not live within a movie set. People get bruised, reputations ruined, friendships and marriages destroyed. In the the world that we live in people die because of someone’s choice to be bad, to be the baddest person on the block.

Being bad does not require courage, confidence. We pretend that it does. Being bad is not funny. We pretend that it is.

Real courage, real confidence, real strength of character require a foundation of humility, charity, compassion. Real courage, real confidence know when to speak, when to pray, when to leave. Life is short enough why waste value time doing stupid things? Why not simply do something else, walk on a different path?