Sunday, June 7, 2009

Cartoon Murder

I learned many Bible stories as a child. These were often accompanied by kid-friendly pictures to look at and pictures to color. Those drawings helped us remember the stories, of course. But they also became my mental images.

The first two chapters of Exodus briefly describe how the Israelites' status among the Egyptians shifted from favored foreigners to oppressed slaves, and how Moses - an Israelite - grew up with favored status even while his people were in slavery. But that changed, too, when Moses killed an Egyptian and fled for his life.

The kid-friendly images in my mind don't show slavery very well. They break down completely when it comes to murder. "[Moses] saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his own people. Glancing this way and that and seeing no one, he killed the Egyptian and hid him in the sand" (Exodus 2:11-12) It's like interrupting my mental show on the Cartoon Network with a gruesome scene from CSI.

It is good to see this, because I (and you) resemble this very human, clearly fallen person more clearly than the two-dimensional character I seemed to see in childhood stories. The complex character of Moses is one I can relate to.

1 comment:

SUAHB said...

I agree with this. I think that things are to "hidden" from our minds because visuals aren't made available. Although I think it good to retain the innocence of our children, we should take into consideration those children forced to greusome spectacles of violence. Such children I speak of include those in the Middle East and other war torn areas. We too often don't regard them because we aren't given regular "reminders" of how horrible it really is. The same is true with things like abortion and capital punishment. They are "out of sight, out of mind". I don't think it wholesome to glorify these things with greusome imagry, however, I also think we ought to remember that these are just as much sins. Pray for the downward progress of mankind, that God will spare the innocent from these tortures. Keep them in your prayers.
-Jason M.