To say that it's been an interesting week in American history is a gross understatement. It's been a week that, ironically, we've seen life both valued and devalued in the most horrendous possible manner. Evil and brutality struck a college campus in Virginia, and in Washington, D.C., the U.S. Supreme Court banned what has been a legalized form of brutality--an interesting juxtaposition of events that could occur only in America. And it doesn't seem that there is much left to say about all of this, because so many have had so much to say, so I'll share with you some of the most interesting insights I've read and heard.
In his April 18 post, Al Mohler wrote about "The Dinner Party Test." He discussed a London newspaper report that indicates that there is a "crisis" in the availability of doctors willing to provide abortions in that country. A key factor contributing to this "problem" is "the dinner party test." Gynecologists who specialize in fertility treatments for childless couples have become heroes who are admired for their work--"but no one boasts of being an abortionist." Mohler points out that while everyone at a dinner party would want to talk with a doctor who helps people have babies, the reaction to someone who announces that he or she aborts babies for a living would be awkwardness and embarrassment. And those studying this situation have labeled it "the dinner party test." This is an example, Mohler explains, of "a common grace display of suppressed moral knowledge."
Another interesting comment comes from Dennis Miller, who appeared on The O'Reilly Factor, also on April 18. Miller stated that he was intrigued by Liviu Librescu, the 76-year-old aerodynamics professor who was murdered at Virginia Tech. Miller commented that Librescu, as a Holocaust survivor, had probably seen the face of evil, and he recognized it in the face of the killer that appeared at his classroom door. And he tried to stop it. But the most interesting insight from Miller is this: He believes that because young people have become numb to violence because of its prominence in video games and because of the nonjudgmental character of our society, students don't know real evil--even when "it springs up in a door at their college."
And in an ABC news special that I watched on April 17, a survival specialist observed that we are teaching our children to be too polite. We should be telling them that if they are faced with a life and death situation, they should do what they have to to survive. And in this violent society, they had better be prepared. He explained that the students who were barricading doors with their bodies would have been smarter to take their belts to form a wedge under the door. And we should tell them that anything can become a tool of survival. As an example, he picked up a computer and threw it through a window to shatter the glass, providing a means of escape.
So it would seem that in some cases, culture and civilization are factors that are working to protect life in some ways, but those same factors work against us at times when we're faced with protecting our own.
