I don’t know if I have ever written about this on my blog, but it is an experience I think worthy of contemplation. I was working a fun job after college trying to figure out where to go next. By fun job, I mean a job I loved doing; I would probably go back to working at the movie theatre tomorrow if the money was there. Part of what I enjoyed about the job was working with “kids,” by which I mean sixteen to twenty year olds, highschoolers and those about to go to college.
I don’t remember how the conversation began or what led up to my asserting that, “just because the government did it, doesn’t mean it’s not murder.”
One of my younger companions burst into laughter. He asked me point blank, something along the lines of, “Wait, you think the government can commit murder?”
I tried to explain to him that just because the government sanctioned something didn’t make it right. This seemed to him such a novel idea as to be a sort of joke. I don’t know where he is at, right now, but I always fear his reaction. Was this sample of thought common among the rising generation?
Language shapes perception. Murder, in my mind, differs from killing in its moral quality. To murder is to kill someone you ought not kill. My friend seemed to think the word one of imprimatur; murder meant to him something like unsanctioned killing. To him, what I was saying was apparently Lewis Carroll type nonsense; I was saying to him, in essence, that those who can call it murder should have their actions called murder.
Or maybe, that really is some aspect of what I meant. Judges will be judged. Temporal powers will meet the eternal. “Woe to you who are full, for you will be hungry.” “It is better to be in the house of mourning.” There is a comical aspect to the Beatitudes; a deep truth that can feel like a joke. The joke is that the world is made out of paper, and if the papers say that Jesus is condemned as “King of the Jews,” it doesn’t change the fact that the government committed murder.
I do not know if the next generation even has the language to talk about right and wrong anymore, about the eternal quality of things. Yet, my friend’s reaction gives me some hope. It was such a sudden and violent laugh, it might have been a sudden and violent scream.
Tale Told 