Morality of Mortality in Still Life

Photo by David Lassman

This morning was bright and sunny near Syracuse, New York.  The last workday before a long three-day weekend.  And as people logged on to their computers, and surfed over to Syracuse.com, a local news website, they were greeted with this photo at the top of a story about a fatality accident in the area.

A white sheet, covering what's obviously a corpse, on the pavement, near a crumpled motorcycle, and a damaged Jeep.  Skid marks, a lone shoe, and what appear to be bloodstains on the white sheet.  Crime scene tape, two police cars.  With a small group of what likely are police investigators standing about a block away.

You can almost hear and feel the stillness of the scene.

By now, however, if you visit the website, the photo has been cropped to exclude the white sheet covering the motorcyclist's body.  According to purportedly eyewitness accounts from feedback to this story, the deceased was a worker at a nearby office complex.  It is believed that he ran a red light and hit the Jeep.

The reason Syracuse.com decided to crop out the white sheet covering the victim stems from a rush of criticism from dozens of readers posting feedback to this story, objecting to being subjected to such a garish scene in the original version of the photo.

Bad taste, showing what's obviously a lifeless body, even if it is covered by a sheet.  Disrespectful to the victim's family, should they be venturing onto Syracuse.com without knowing their loved one's body is under that sheet.  Needlessly sensationalistic journalism.

Or is it?

This story quickly became one of the most heavily-debated articles on Syracuse.com, as readers went back and forth, posting complaints about the photo, or complaints about the people complaining about the photo.  Hey, at least the corpse itself wasn't visible.  Blood, death, and tragedy are part of life.  Maybe such a graphic depiction of the results of running red lights, as has been assumed was the cause, will convince other people not to take such foolish risks.

On the one hand, it's simply a photo that's generated quite a bit of buzz in an otherwise sleepy corner of New York State.  We've seen far more disturbing images out of Syria lately, and Iraq.  Does it make a difference when the bloody sheet is covering an American?  Or a local guy that somebody might actually have known?

When I lived in New York City, I particularly remember seeing on the local evening news some coverage of a Mafia hit in either Brooklyn or Queens.  A mob operative had been assassinated while sitting in his car underneath an overpass.  It was a burgundy Lincoln, and the driver's side window had shattered from the close-range gunshots.  The news camera angled right in for a close-up of the victim's blood-splattered face, a middle-aged man with greying hair.  And the whole thing was broadcast unfiltered to New York City, as a reporter droned on in the background about plausible motives.  As I recall, there was no "some of the scenes you are about to see are disturbing" disclaimer.  It was simply ordinary news footage of yet another casualty of the city's time-worn mob wars.  Film at 11.

Granted, I have no idea how much angry feedback the station received after airing that footage, but chances are, it wasn't much.  It's not like mob hits are exceedingly rare in New York City.  What might be rarer are mob hits where news camera crews arrive on-site before police detectives have started covering up the crime scene.  Even in the Syracuse.com photo, it seems a bit odd that the body was left on the street for so long.  The accident happened at 7:54 in the morning, the photos were posted at 8:49, and even past 9:00, according to the story, the body was still there, eventually covered by a yellow tarp.  How long does it take for the coroner to show up at fatality accidents in Central New York?

Maybe it's no big deal.  Maybe it is a bit opportunistic of Syracuse.com to run an attention-grabbing photo like this, knowing that if they really have to crop out its most objectionable component, they can do it and still have a photo that tells a story.  We all know that motorcycles aren't the safest mode of transportation anyway.  And people die in motor vehicle accidents every day.  Plus, it's not like Syracuse.com is in the same league as the New York Times or even FOX News.  Millions of people around the world aren't going to see this story and be horrified at the disturbing depiction of a dead person lying on the pavement with a bloodied sheet covering it.

But looking at this photo, it truly is the finality that it captures that makes it disturbing.  Maybe even horrifying.  A lone shoe, thrown from the foot of its owner by the impact of the collision.  A motorcycle, wrecked, never to be ridden again, at least not by the guy who, mere minutes before this photo was taken, was riding it to work.  A relatively new Jeep, looking like a 2013 model, by the narrow shape of its broken headlight - still so new, it doesn't yet have a permanent license plate on its front bumper, assuming it's registered in New York State.  What about it's driver?  How are they coping with the reality that this wreck involved a fatality?

This story never was headline news on CNN or Drudge Report, and by now, it isn't a headline story on Syracuse.com, either.  It's hardly distinctive enough to be nominated for a Pulitzer.  The road is back open, the vehicles are gone, and the victim's body is in a morgue or funeral parlor somewhere near Syracuse.

All we've got left, those of us who never knew anybody involved in this accident, is this photo.  And the story, however ordinary, that it's telling.  A story about finality.  Endings.  Sudden impacts.  And, frankly, how ordinary they are.

That's why people who found it upsetting were, well, upset.  We don't like being reminded about how common mortality is.

One of those cops in the background of this photo appears to be leaning back casually against a squad car, in a pose suggesting far more ease with this type of situation than many of us have when looking at the photo.  And for the most part, that's to be expected.  Cops deal with this sort of thing all the time.  They need to maintain a certain level of detachment for their own sanity.

For the rest of us, however, I think it does us good to be challenged by photos like these every now and then.  They remind us of our humanity.

Even if it is far more fragile than we're comfortable admitting.

Gospel Truth Despite Doubt

What is truth?

That's the basic question of life, isn't it?  In what can we believe?  To what can we affix our hope?

It's the question Pontius Pilot asked Jesus.  It's the question all of us ask - however subconsciously - as we develop our worldview and make our way through our lives.

It's the question that born-again evangelicals say we've answered by putting our faith in Christ.  And while for some, that sounds like a trite answer, perhaps its triteness comes the consistency of its trueness.  Even if, at least for Westerners in general, and Americans in particular, it's an answer that's been given more in theory than in practice.

For generations, regardless of how strongly anybody believed in Jesus, as Americans living in our Christianized society, acknowledging the historicity of the Bible has sufficed in providing at least a benchmark for religiosity.  One didn't have to be "born-again" to acknowledge that the Bible is more than just another work of literature.  For people who took the Bible seriously, their claims that God's Word is true were met, on the whole, with at least a begrudging acquiescence by the general population.  Public dissent against Christianity and its teachings was extremely rare, and its doctrines seldom challenged in the public square.  And when they were, dissenters were portrayed as outside the mainstream.  .

When we talk about America entering a "post-Christian" phase, we're talking about all of that cultural context flipping backside-to.  Whereas Christians had become accustomed to commanding America's moral dialog, nowadays, we're finding ourselves on the defensive more than ever.  Over the past few decades, our culture become more pluralistic, and suddenly, it seems, more and more people have become comfortable with - and even driven to - openly challenging longstanding assumptions about Christianity.

"How do you know that God exists?  Or that the God of the Bible is the only god?"

"How do you know the Bible is completely true?  What makes it so special?  Plenty of cultures throughout history, around the globe, have created their own analogies, myths, and superstitions about how and why the world works the way it does."

"Isn't it awfully convenient for you to say we shouldn't do something, even when we want to, just because a book of Jewish mythology says so?"

Actually, it's not like any of these are new questions.  Nobody's asking anything today that hasn't been asked since Satan tempted Eve and Adam in the Garden of Eden.  What's different about today's questions, however, is that cultural tradition doesn't suffice as an answer anymore.  In the minds and souls of many Americans today, the Christianity that has been part-and-parcel of Americana since Pilgrims set foot in New England no longer is sufficient proof for the Bible's validity.

That's not to say that the Gospel has become irrelevant.  Or that Christ isn't as powerful as He used to be.  Or that God really can be Whomever we want to imagine Him as being.  The orthodox truth of God that has existed and been believed by angels since before the world was created is the same truth in which I believe today.

Evangelicals like me simply can't expect anybody else to take that at face value anymore.

Not that I haven't entertained doubts in my own mind.  After all, I'm not unaware of how bizarre much of the Bible sounds to people who don't believe it.  Six days to create the universe?  A flood that covered every inch of the globe?  Shouting until a city's fortifications were obliterated by some unseen force?  An immaculate conception?  Feeding thousands of people with five loaves of bread and two fish?  Resurrection from the dead?

Come on!

How do I know that I'm not making some massive, foolish mistake by living my life according to some ancient proverbs instead of my own intuition and emotions?  Didn't God make me as a person capable of independent thought?  A lot of those proverbs are found in the literature of other cultures, by the way.  What makes them so special just because they're in the Bible?

And don't tell me that I won't understand about the Bible unless some event like being "saved" through a "working" of some invisible being called the "Holy Spirit" takes place in my soul.  We are an enlightened, educated, and scientific society.  We need proofs, validations, and empirical evidence.  Otherwise, your word is as good as anybody else's.  Merely an opinion.  Which means you're entitled to your opinion, just as I'm entitled to mine.  Everything's relative, and the only absolute is the individual; the self.  Which means I shouldn't have to change my lifestyle to accommodate your beliefs.

Sound like a lot of the push-back evangelicals are receiving by society at large today?

Frankly, to a certain degree, it's all a fair argument.  Little of Christianity makes sense if you take its theology's linchpin out of the picture.  And that Linchpin is Christ.  And even with Jesus, plenty of secular scholars, along with other world religions, acknowledge that He existed, and walked on this planet, and did good stuff for humanity.  It's His divine nature as the Son of God that skeptics can't embrace.  There is no literal, physical proof that Christ is a member of the Trinity.  Even the "Trinity," as God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, is a concept whose very name is never mentioned in the Bible.

So, how do I know the Bible is true?  That God is Truth?  And that Christ is Truth incarnate?  How do I know that believers through the past two millennia who've been killed for their faith haven't been gravely mistaken?  How do I know that God hears my prayers, and that He answers them?  How do I know that Heaven is where my soul will go when I die?

Again, these are just some of the doubts, questions, fears, and aspersions that have bedeviled almost everybody who has ever heard the Gospel of Christ.  They represent just a smattering of the questions for which society wants concrete proofs, so that when evangelicals advocate for heterosexual marriage, or life in the womb, or even morality in the media, we people of faith have what society at large can accept as a legitimate reason for why it should listen to us anymore.

I could provide a listing of Bible verses to try and explain why I believe that eternal truth resides in the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  But none of it will mean anything to anybody who doesn't want to accept them as facts.

So I'll just say this.  Truth is that which honors God.  Don't believe it?  Well, even unbelief can honor God, because His Word teaches that without the Holy Spirit revealing His truth to us, none of us will truly believe it.  We might acculturate to it, like generations of Americans did before us, but that's not the same as accepting Christ as your Lord and Savior.  And maybe one of the unconventional truths about the Bible is that it teaches that the Gospel isn't for everybody.  Nobody can be forced into it, nobody can be chided into it, or guilted into it.  God has created belief and truth to exist whether you want it or not.

Not everybody will be saved.  Not everybody will believe in Christ.  Not everybody will tolerate the Gospel.  In fact, the Bible teaches that most people will not want to hear that heterosexual marriage is the only type of marriage that honors God.  Most people won't really care about protecting life in the womb, either, or whether a young female singer gyrates on a TV show watched by youngsters.  People will intentionally fly planes into office buildings.  People will kill other people simply because of the color of their skin.  People will hate, castigate, and fornicate with apparent impunity.  And some of them will claim the name of Christ.

But the Fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.  The Fruit isn't literally edible, but it is a lifestyle given by the Holy Spirit to everybody who accepts Christ as the Lord of their life.  And to the degree that these Fruit - they're a set - can be seen in my life, and in the lives of everybody else who professes faith in Christ, then you will know that we are His disciples.

You still may not want to believe that what we believe is the truth.

And you'd be in good company.  After all, the powerful Roman prefect, Pilate, didn't, either.

Holy Providence in an Inequitable World

Inequity.

It's a tricky thing.  Although we Westerners know that sociopolitical equality is good for society, we often forget that capitalism thrives on inequity.  Pursuing dreams is one thing, but even when dreams are realized, we know we're not all going to die with the same number of toys.  The ideal objective in capitalism is that everyone has a relatively equal playing field to pay for what they need in a peaceable society.

Not that this is about acquisitions.  It's about life experiences, and the paths along which God leads each of us in our individual faith walks.  Being humans, and Westernized humans in particular, we're enculturated to compete against each other, and peg our life's progress against a particular peer group.  We're told that if we don't aim our sights high enough, we'll be lazy, ineffectual, poor, and expecting handouts from others.  Aim too high, and we'll be hopelessly unfulfilled, perpetual strivers, conceited, and jealous.

The trick, we're told, is to aim for somewhere in the middle, between untapped potential and blind ambition, so that we stand a good chance of gaining respectable ground beyond where we're standing today - but if things don't work out as planned, we don't actually become unacceptably poor.  Fortunately for us Americans, we've been able to build the largest, most stable middle class in the world using the least amount of corruption and civil warfare.  When people say God has truly blessed America, this is what I think of.

The Lord Giveth, and Taketh Away

The problem, many of us soon learn, is that inequity in our society can hamper our conventional strategy for success.  Depending on how much we start out with, and the resources we acquire along the way, we may be able to insulate ourselves from personally punitive inequity, even without knowing it.  Others of us let our morality become our conscience more in theory than in practice, and we figure out which rules we can bend - or even break - along the way towards "success."  After all, the ends justify the means, right?  "Whatever it takes."

Some of us, however, particularly during these days of volatile - or, actually, downright stagnant - economic activity, are simply trying to hang on for the ride.  For people of faith, trusting in Christ for guidance and provision is a daily practice, not a grateful acknowledgement of sheer abundance during our quarterly update from our financial adviser.  We tell ourselves it's not what's in the bank - or our portfolio - that counts, as much as what's in our heart.

But what does all this mean about our understanding of God's perfect providence?

How many times have you heard a believer in Christ exclaim about the Lord's providence, and then learn that what has been assumed to be providence may simply have been His common grace?

Everything that happens to us is providence, right?  Everything!  In our Christian parlance, however, we like to reserve those things we think are extra-special as "providential," as if they wouldn't have happened to us any other way than an extraordinary working of God for our benefit.

For example, somebody gets a better job in a more exciting city, and they talk about it as though they wouldn't have gotten that job or the opportunity to move to the more desirable city without God's explicit intervention on their behalf.  Hey - at least they're giving God the credit!  We often forget to do that.  Still, sometimes, I wonder if this has become an acceptable way to brag about our accomplishments among churched friends, since cloaking the "good" things that happen to us in a garment of religiosity negates our personal pride in having something go our way.

Now, bear with me, I'm not talking about being jealous of somebody else's success, even though that's another real temptation in this scenario.

Nevertheless, think about it:  Isn't it common sense that, in the normal course of human events, at least for us Westerners, if we work diligently, study well, and engage with others productively, we ordinarily progress up the ladder of life?  Unsaved people do this all the time.  If we knock on enough doors for which we have the appropriate credentials, and they open, and we walk through them, what's the big deal?  Yes, it's providential, but isn't it also providential when people who hate God knock on those same doors and walk through them?  Isn't it simply what happens in a rewards-based society like ours?  Might the difference be that we know to thank God, and that we use this opportunity for His glory, not ours?

After all, plenty of unGodly people get promotions, earn big salaries, live in exciting cities, and lead lives that dazzle us.  Sometimes, God's people don't get chosen for promotions, but He's still sovereign, right?  According to Psalm 145:9, God is "good to all," and "has compassion on all He has made."  That's the essence of common grace.  The sun shines and the rain falls on both the just and the unjust, according to Matthew 5:45.  Not that it's wrong for us believers in Christ to praise Him when good things happen to us.  But how often, when good things happen to us, do we credit our own specialness as the reason?  Or when we think we're missing out on something good, do we assume it's due to some fault of ours?

Look at it this way:  How often do we credit God with a demotion, or the loss of a job, or having to move to a less desirable address?  How much less providential are those things?  Not everything "bad" that happens to us is our fault, is it?  Inequity, remember, is part of life.  God can use what we think is negative for His glory, and His glory is the reason for our very existence, right?  Scripture doesn't tell us that we should be happy when "bad" things happen to us, unless we're suffering something directly because of our faith in Christ.  But evaluating God's goodness to us based on the desirable qualities of those things He allows us to steward and enjoy is only half the story, isn't it?

Appreciating Blessings, In All Their Forms, and He Who Bestows Them 

After all, many more people on our planet live in poverty than live in wealth, and much of the poverty on our planet comes not from personal sin, but from various forms of suppression and exploitation, which are results of - you guessed it! - inequity.  And no, these inequities aren't necessarily caused by us big, bad Americans, but by unscrupulous power brokers within their own countries.

The point is that God has blessed Westerners with many good things, but that doesn't mean we're any more special to Him than people in Majority World countries.  Unfortunately, we Westerners often take for granted God's material bounty to us, even as we tend to inflate the parameters of what God's providence should provide.  God promises us that His people will not starve or lack clothing or shelter, but He never says anything about smartphones, automobiles, or even college degrees, or crime-free neighborhoods. 

Not that any of these things, nor reliable supplies of electricity, nor functional systems of law, nor cutting-edge healthcare, are wrong.  Taking them for granted - that's what's wrong.  Promotions, new homes, and better living conditions aren't wrong either, and neither is crediting God's goodness in supplying them.  However, isn't there a fine line between assuming we're entitled to things because we've worked hard to attain them, being genuinely appreciative to God for allowing us to experience them, and implying that if we don't attain these things, God is somehow being less good to us?

"It's a God thing" can be quite inaccurate, since everything is a God thing.  Even things that don't happen are God things.  Yes, God gives good gifts to His children, and many of those good things are enjoyable, and in a sense, we deny the goodness of those enjoyable things by, well, not enjoying them.  Don't not enjoy something because it's been granted to you and not somebody else.

In God's perfect Kingdom, there is no inequity, even though we may be responsible for different facets of His assets.  There's the parable of the talents, and also the metaphor of the parts of the body.  Ironic, huh?

So, if something isn't granted to you, couldn't that withholding be a form of goodness from God, too?  Probably not an enjoyable goodness, of course, but something in which a lesson exists for us to learn something more about God's providence?  Whether God gives us something or doesn't, is it necessarily based on whether or not we've earned it, or deserved it?

Sometimes, it doesn't seem that God "gives," as much as He "allows."  Evaluating the merits of what He allows based on our culture's expectations and definitions, then, might not be telling the whole story.

Collie Dog Days

They're here.

Those dog days of summer.

The hottest part of our year, in the Northern Hemisphere, anyway:  July and August.  And particularly August! 

For us Texans, all things considered, it has been a mild summer so far, with some downright rainy days dragging their way half-way through the month of July, of all things!  Usually, we say goodbye to the rain after Memorial Day.  We even had a couple of days in July when the temperature didn't get out of the 70's.

Of course, with the cooler weather, many right-wingers here in the Lone Star State were gleefully goading environmentalists who insist global warming is a reality.  "Gotta love that global warming when our first 100-degree-day comes near the end of June."  Instead of the more typical May.

Mm-hmm.

It was the ancient Greeks and Romans who coined variations on the term "dog days," in honor of Sirius, the bright "dog star" in the constellation Canis Major.  Oddly enough, as the millennia have plodded along, the dates for the original dog days have lost their astrological significance to our Northern Hemisphere's summertime, with the best time to view Canis Major now occurring in February, when summertime is winding down in the Southern Hemisphere.

But our dog days persist, if for no other reason than that our canine friends help exhibit the strain of July and August's heat on their fur-clad, perspiration-incapable bodies.  They tend to slow down, they pant a lot, and they enjoy walks on pavement a lot less.

My Dad used to have a wonderful, pure-bred collie that he rescued from a pound in suburban Dallas.  Before the collie had been taken in by the pound, it had suffered an injury to his rear-right hip, and he limped slightly from it, and had a hard time climbing stairs.  We figure a touch of arthritis must have set in, because Feliz - Spanish for "happy" - would love to go outside, even during scorching dog day afternoons, with temperatures over 100, and lay flat on the backyard lawn underneath blazing sun.  Always with his rear-right hip facing the sun!

We'd have to call him to come inside for his own good, even as his long torso heaved from all of his panting.  A few minutes inside, in the air conditioning, and with a bowl of water, he'd be fine.  He'd also sprawl beneath any of the ceiling fans in my parents' house, and enjoy the breeze, but almost always with his rear-right hip buried under his fur, and resting on the soft carpeting.

The times we all went to Maine in the summer, I think Feliz thought he was in Heaven.  Maine's summer sun seems even hotter than the one here in Texas, if that's possible, but the ground there stays cool and moist.  Maine's summertime breezes never seem to heat up like an oven's the way dog day breezes in Texas do.  What bliss for Feliz, who could lay in the sun all afternoon, and warm up his hip, but keep his overall body temperature down.  We sometimes had to sharpen our tone to order him inside on those days!

Feliz was a sweet and obedient dog, and we rarely ever had to raise our voice to him.  Usually, those times only came when he was smothering a visitor with furry, drooling affection, since he was one of those dogs who figured everybody who came to my parents' home was there mostly just to play with him!  He'd have made a pretty ineffective guard dog, except when it came to the neighborhood cats.  It got so that we couldn't even spell the word "c-a-t" within his earshot, or he'd be at one of the windows, growling, whining, and scouting for his mortal enemy.

He was great with kids.  He never bit, and only barked when they were making too much of a ruckus, or he thought they were hurting themselves.  He didn't like us humans to touch each other, which led us to believe that in some former home of his, he may have witnessed physical abuse.  Whenever we'd hug somebody, he'd always bounce over, growling, and try to nuzzle us apart.  We'd have to comfort him and thank him for protecting us, but that nobody was getting hurt.

Sweet, huh?

My best Feliz story, however, took place not during the dog days of summer, but one Christmas morning, when we were all getting ready to open presents in front of the Christmas tree in my parents' front living room.  My brother and sister-in-law and their family - which at the time, consisted of four kids (there are five now!) - were down from Michigan, and I was sitting on the piano bench when my sister-in-law swooped into the living room with my niece, who was only a few months old at the time.

"Here, Uncle Tim, you can watch your new niece while I go get ready," my sister-in-law pronounced, and she softly put my little niece, in her infant outfit and wrapped in a soft blanket, on the carpeted floor at my feet.  I can't remember if I already had something in my hands, which would have explained why I just didn't reach out and take the baby in my arms.  Anyway, my sister-in-law got back up, twirled around, and swirled towards the kitchen.

Feliz was curled up over by a bookcase at the far corner of the living room, and saw what had happened.  He looked at the tiny human, all bundled up on the carpet, and its adult caretaker bounding off to another part of the house.  Feliz pulled himself up from his corner resting place, and intentionally strode over to where my niece lay on the floor.

And he promptly settled down, length-wise, right alongside my niece!  He glanced around, with a look on his fuzzy face that said, "well, SOMEBODY'S gotta protect this helpless little creature!"

Collies are herding dogs, and exceptionally protective.  And that Christmas day, Feliz proved he was no exception.

As it happens, today, my niece enjoys a particular affinity with all sorts of animals, with an uncanny ability to immediately befriend anything from zoo animals to noisy seagulls at the beach.  I like to think it all comes from the morning when a huge, hairy, and somewhat smelly collie plopped himself down next to her to guard her when she was very, very young.

Happy dog days, y'all!