I was listening to the News on the radio today while driving home when a story came on about a woman who was shot to death by her son-in-law. They announced that they were going to air the woman's 911 phone call that was recorded just moments before she died. They advised that it would be disturbing.
All in a split second my sense of being overwhelmed by the darkness that looms so large in the world began to argue with my desire to confront suffering and evil in the world. Normally my desire not to hide my face from the reality of evil would prevail but not this time. I chose to turn the radio off. And only moments after I turned it off I felt the strangest sensation. It was so much easier to sit in silence than to listen to the voice of a desperate woman pleading for her life.
It was then I realized it... apathy, in that moment, was the best feeling in the world. It was like taking a drug and easing into a false reality. Similar to the way a hypothermia victim longs to sleep or how a drowning victim peacefully and willfully slips away after their struggle for air is conceded. Apathy is cunning and woos, yet its bite is poisonous.
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I would have to argue against the response that apathy is behind the gesture of not watching. That may be true for you, but for myself, as someone who is so acutely affected by graphic images and in this case, "sounds" or desparate voices; simply the knowing that it has occurred is enough to convict my heart and draw me to tears. To engage beyond this, for me, would be more than my heart can take and therefore makes me grateful that there is a God who can, and did, take on the sins of the world.
ReplyDeleteGood call. I think the way I would adjust it would be to dial it back to the level that you can handle and then choose to ignore even that. I guess I was simply choosing the easy road, choosing my own self comfort.
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