Alien Drums

My wife and I finally saw “300″ the other night. Well, I didn’t see all of it; I hid my eyes. Peeked a couple of times and saw stuff I didn’t want to see — often seemed to be heads flying assunder from their bodies.

Bloody, bloody, bloody; but beautiful, too. It’s odd to see a film that is both visually alluring and disgustingly violent, and it was not the violence that was alluring. The visual was a frame for the disgusting.

Why did I close my eyes? Afraid? Yes. Not of being grossed out, though I was, but of what that violence does to one’s brain and spirit.

I listened recently to an audio book titled Living Buddha, Living Jesus, by Thich Nhat Hanh. He talked about Buddhism as teaching that a person should only bring good into his or her body. Food and drugs, of course, fit into that; but Hanh also spoke of bringing violence into our minds through the things we watch, reach and see. I kept thinking of that book as I watched “300″. I felt polluted, that I was allowing a crafty filmmaker to pour evil into my soul.

Of course, the basic point of the movie is good — freedom is worth the sacrifice of one’s life. At least that’s what we in the West or the United States believe. So maybe in order to sustain a culture of freedom we must continuously be reminded that our liberty required deaths in the past and will require more.

One thing I like about today’s war movies, like “300″ and ”Saving Private Ryan”, is that they do not make war seem only to be a heroic affair. They show it to be grossly vicious, unbelievably dehumanizing, even animalistic behavior.

Freedom requires war and death because there are those who fear freedom or want power or harbor ethnic prejudices.

I don’t know how to completely hormonize freedom’s need for defensive war with Jesus’ turn the other cheek. Jesus, I’m convinced, points us to a heavenly world that is not this one; but I think He’s given us insight to begin creating shades of the heavenly even now.

Summation: War is terrible. Freedom is good. Jesus, and Buddha, would want freedom and not war. It’s a shame that some people want only war or freedom, but I’m afraid you cannot have freedom without war when you live in a fallen, sinful world. This is not heaven, “300″ reminds us; but I hate the violence of it.