OK serious post time! Bear with me guys :-) :-) :-)
3 things really unnerved me this past week.
1. Is that scene in The Avengers where the villain Loki, after destroying buildings and blasting people with his ray gun thingy, stands over a crowd of people scared to death and tells them to bow before him. Everybody bows and Loki goes on and on about how he is the greatest being in the universe, humans are pathetic and need a ruler blah blah blah, and one old man stands up and says he won't bow. Loki challenges him and the man says he wont bow to a guy like him, he's no king...or something to that effect.
It kinda got me thinking, one day, I'll be challenged over my faith. It happens and it will happen, and it may be in a small setting like an interaction with a stranger in public, or it might be huge, where I'm asked to choose between Jesus and life. I saw the fear in that crowd's life, they were facing a horrible death, I was scared and I was sitting in a theater! My point is, as a Christian, I have to be so rooted in faith and belief that I can stand and say Jesus is better that anything that wants to stand before Him. Better than money, better than public support or popularity, better than relationships, better than LIFE. He is life. I'm not there yet, but God, I desperately want to be there.
2. I watched an old episode of 7th Heaven, where Simon talks to a Holocaust Survivor and she speaks of her family dying in the gas chambers and ovens. That just breaks my heart in pieces and I even had to stop and hold back the tears when I wrote this.
A couple of days later, I saw on the 700 Club, the story of the Milgram Experiment. Where a group of Yale Psych dept. members were asked by an authority figure to administer electric shocks of increments of 15v to someone else (an actor). The test was to see how far the Yalees (subjects) would go to please the authority figure before being convicted by their conscience to stop. At each voltage spike the actor would scream in pain and when the Yalee would want to stop, the authority would say,
When someone you respect asks you to do something you're uncomfortable with, how far would you go before you spoke up?
God, help your voice, my conscience and my will not be drowned out or subdued because it's easier to say yes to a person towering over me than to walk away.
3. Tying into this holocaust story, is this murder case going on in the States. It's easy as a Kenyan to look at this and think, a racist gets away with shooting an innocent kid, but as I read the fact of this case, I'm ashamed at looking at it as a matter of race, because it goes far beyond that. We live in a world that's full of fear and hate.
We're fearful because we've seen things and heard things and gone through experiences of hatred. Even in Kenya we went through the Post-Election Violence not because it mattered who was president or not. not because Luos and Kikuyus are enemies, but as a result of hate in the world today.
Authority figures or even random people spark something up and perpetuate the fires of hatred for their own good, and it poisons us and seeps down through the generations.
We have a duty as human beings who call ourselves evolved and open-minded to erase the hate from our lives, from our families, from our communities. Fear and hate led to the holocaust, fear and hate led to the P.E.Violence, fear and hate led to a kid's death.
God, help me spread love and not hate. Help me see people as you see them and not as a representation of the lies and mistakes of others
xx
Jo
3 things really unnerved me this past week.
1. Is that scene in The Avengers where the villain Loki, after destroying buildings and blasting people with his ray gun thingy, stands over a crowd of people scared to death and tells them to bow before him. Everybody bows and Loki goes on and on about how he is the greatest being in the universe, humans are pathetic and need a ruler blah blah blah, and one old man stands up and says he won't bow. Loki challenges him and the man says he wont bow to a guy like him, he's no king...or something to that effect.
It kinda got me thinking, one day, I'll be challenged over my faith. It happens and it will happen, and it may be in a small setting like an interaction with a stranger in public, or it might be huge, where I'm asked to choose between Jesus and life. I saw the fear in that crowd's life, they were facing a horrible death, I was scared and I was sitting in a theater! My point is, as a Christian, I have to be so rooted in faith and belief that I can stand and say Jesus is better that anything that wants to stand before Him. Better than money, better than public support or popularity, better than relationships, better than LIFE. He is life. I'm not there yet, but God, I desperately want to be there.
2. I watched an old episode of 7th Heaven, where Simon talks to a Holocaust Survivor and she speaks of her family dying in the gas chambers and ovens. That just breaks my heart in pieces and I even had to stop and hold back the tears when I wrote this.
A couple of days later, I saw on the 700 Club, the story of the Milgram Experiment. Where a group of Yale Psych dept. members were asked by an authority figure to administer electric shocks of increments of 15v to someone else (an actor). The test was to see how far the Yalees (subjects) would go to please the authority figure before being convicted by their conscience to stop. At each voltage spike the actor would scream in pain and when the Yalee would want to stop, the authority would say,
- Please continue.
- The experiment requires that you continue.
- It is absolutely essential that you continue.
- You have no other choice, you must go on.
When someone you respect asks you to do something you're uncomfortable with, how far would you go before you spoke up?
God, help your voice, my conscience and my will not be drowned out or subdued because it's easier to say yes to a person towering over me than to walk away.
3. Tying into this holocaust story, is this murder case going on in the States. It's easy as a Kenyan to look at this and think, a racist gets away with shooting an innocent kid, but as I read the fact of this case, I'm ashamed at looking at it as a matter of race, because it goes far beyond that. We live in a world that's full of fear and hate.
We're fearful because we've seen things and heard things and gone through experiences of hatred. Even in Kenya we went through the Post-Election Violence not because it mattered who was president or not. not because Luos and Kikuyus are enemies, but as a result of hate in the world today.
Authority figures or even random people spark something up and perpetuate the fires of hatred for their own good, and it poisons us and seeps down through the generations.
We have a duty as human beings who call ourselves evolved and open-minded to erase the hate from our lives, from our families, from our communities. Fear and hate led to the holocaust, fear and hate led to the P.E.Violence, fear and hate led to a kid's death.
God, help me spread love and not hate. Help me see people as you see them and not as a representation of the lies and mistakes of others
xx
Jo
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