I wonder how many of us, regardless of political affiliation and who are over the age of fifty, would have ever imagined that the events of the past few weeks could ever occur in America? The June 14th ambush shooting of Louisiana congressman, Steve Scalise and others at a Congressional baseball practice by an enraged supporter of former presidential candidate Bernie Sanders was nothing but despicable. At least that would have been the thinking in the America that we grew up in. Of course, it is not the shooting itself that is so inordinate. Clearly our nation’s past has been often clouded by such shameful violence. For example, I would wager that those old enough to remember the assassination of President Kennedy, can still recall where you were and what you were doing when you heard that news. But regardless of one’s politics, we all felt the loss and grieved as would a single family. The point is this. What most of us could never have imagined happening was a time such as now when there is apparently a growing acceptance of such brutal and naked barbarism.
But even more egregious and dismaying than the unprovoked and planned attack itself are the hateful words and expressed opinions of so many who try to justify the assault. There are even some who condone such politically based blood-lust. Is this exaggeration? Who can honestly deny that conservatives in general and our President in particular are routinely verbally bludgeoned and symbolically assaulted and even murdered by a large segment of those who refuse to accept the results of our last election.
Radical activist and revolutionary groups such as “Black Lives Matter” and the various “Occupy” movements regularly call for violence against police officers and often celebrate when officers are killed or wounded. College administrators, professors, and campus cops are often complicit with radical students and intruders as they threaten violence and/or death to conservatives or anyone expressing an opposing view of some popular liberal mantra. These campus threats of violence and the blatant thuggery have become so routine that lately, they barely can rate a mention in the nightly news.
But there are even more ample illustrations of a nation being coerced and incited into the acceptance of the tyranny of violence. The “has been” entertainer Madonna has publicly expressed her desire to “blow up the White House.” How about the “never was” pathetic comedian, Kathy Griffin who tried for fame by displaying a pretend severed head of the president?” The New York Theater production of “Julius Caesar” depicted the gory and merciless stabbing death of a Donald Trump look-a-like. Within hours of the ambush and near fatal shooting of Steve Scalise, a sociology professor at Trinity College in Connecticut opined on several social media sites that the first responders “should have left the victims die.” Professor Johnny Eric Williams’ justification for such inhumanity was that the victims “were all conservative and white.” By the way, Williams is still teaching at Trinity. Recently dismissed CBS “Evening News” anchor Scott Pelley charged after his firing that the vicious assault on Congressman Scalise, was to some degree “self-inflicted.” Lastly, a few days ago, Hollywood star, Johnny Depp asked an Art Festival audience in England “when was the last time an actor assassinated a President?” Depp then observed that “It’s been awhile and maybe it’s time.”
It is these insane verbal incitements to violence and apparent approval by many of such talk that brought to mind and caused me to reread a quote from an old classic history book which I first read in seminary forty years ago. That book vividly portrays the dying Roman Empire during the first century of Christianity and may yet prove a window for viewing what is now happening in America.
"Roman literature and art were immersed with the prevalent degradation. Promiscuity, pedophilia, incest,
homosexuality, bestiality and every other sort of sexual perversion were glamorized and portrayed. The actors'
popularity was generally in direct proportion to the infamy of their character and debauchery of their conduct."
“Dignity, wit, and pathos were no longer expected on the stage, for the dramatist was eclipsed by the swordsman or the
rope- dancer. And while the shamelessness of the theater corrupted the purity of all classes from the earliest age, the
hearts of the multitude were made hard as the millstone with the brutal insensibility, by the fury of the circus, the
atrocities of the amphitheater, and the cruel orgies of the games."
"The old warlike and proud spirit of the Romans 'was dead among the gilded and effeminate youth of the freeman' and
was now satiated by gazing on criminals fighting for dear life with bears and tigers, or upon bands of gladiators hacking
each other to pieces in the bloodied sands of the stadiums."
"The languid enervation of the delicate and dissolute aristocrat could only be amused by magnificence and stimulated by
grossness or by blood. Thus the gracious illusions by which true Art has ever aimed at purging the passions of terror and
pity, were extinguished by the realism of tragedies ignobly horrible, and comedies intolerably base. Two phrases sum up
the characteristics of Roman civilization in the [last] days of the Empire--heartless cruelty, and unfathomable
corruption." Frederick W. Farrar, "The Early Days of Christianity," New York: A.L.Burt, Publisher, 1892, pp. 5¬-7
A final thought. Of all the bible recorded sermons given by the Lord, probably the most profound and most studied is the one known as the “Olivet Discourse.” Though mentioned in three of the Gospels the most extensive version is given in Matthew [chapters 24 and 25.] The sermon in its entirety deals with events still future and the end of the age. The Lord mentions in chapter 24:37 “But as the days of Noah were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.” And what was the “norm” in the days of Noah or before the destruction of the earth by the Great Flood? “And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth and every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. . . . The earth also was CORRUPT before God, and the earth was filled with VIOLENCE.” WEN