Sunday, August 12, 2007

It can’t end like this. We can’t go out this way.

With all of the positive influences we have had, we should be much better people than the cruel and sadistic people who take pleasure in hurting each other, that we have allowed ourselves to become.

I was reminded of this recently by hearing two particular songs from my past one of which has special meaning for me, though a great number of other songs could have had the same effect, because the best ideals of our world were most often expressed in the music we heard, and this music was usually the most positive influence in our lives, and it is the efforts of the musicians we heard that we most dishonor by having become what we have allowed ourselves to become. This music was available to all of us, as my experience proves, as I as a young person in a small town in rural Ohio frequently heard this music even in what many people would see as an isolated existence. The two songs that recently reminded me of this were Meatloaf’s “Paradise by the Dashboard Light”, with its lesson that it is important to think of the long-term consequences of our actions, and the Electric Light Orchestra’s “Telephone line”, with its high level of compassion and empathy for the feelings we all often feel. Both of these songs were staples for me in my most formative years, as I heard both of them often, and they are especially good reminders of the positive influence our music should have had on us, because they were by no means two of the best songs of their time, but were instead very mediocre among the songs of their time. If two such mediocre songs taught us important lessons about being thoughtful and compassionate people, we can see how positive the legacy we have inherited through music is, and we can see how greatly we dishonor that legacy through what we have allowed our world and our selves to become. Through Guantanomo Bay we dishonor this legacy, through Abu Ghraib we dishonor this legacy, (Even though younger people did most of both of these things if we had honored our legacy we would have taught those people much better than we did.), every time any person in power abuses any person who seems to have less power, we dishonor our legacy, and every time we or anyone we should have taught better, are cruel to other people in any way, we dishonor the great legacy we are the inheritors of.

There will always be excuses and rationalizations for abandoning our legacy if we want to use them. Guantanomo Bay, and Abu Ghraib happened in great part because we were frightened, but there will always be things that will frighten us, and if we allow our fears to cause us to abandon our legacy, then we never truly inherited that legacy in the first place.

People in our parents generation were not the inheritors of such a positive legacy, so their sins are much more expected than our sins are. To whom much has been given. From that person much is demanded. We have obviously been given much, so much is obviously demanded of us.

I used to believe our world was a good world, full of people who were not cruel and sadistic. Now I no longer believe this, but I know that our world should be this way, based on the positive influences we have experienced. And I believe that our world still can be this way, if we take hold of the legacy we have let go and follow our better natures. And I believe that a great part of doing this must involve taking hold of the true legacy of Jesus Christ: a legacy which the vast majority of us have let go, even the vast majority of those of us who call ourselves Christians.