Innocence and Reality

On a break at work yesterday I checked the feeds. It was a menagerie of horrors.

In the span of about five minutes, I saw:

• The body of a slain child on a police officer’s body cam footage

• The police shoot the killer, a deranged woman

• A man stabbed to death in front of a Starbucks. His family watched him die, face-down in his blood

• A man sat at a table sipping his coffee while it happened

• Overwhelming joy on the face of the young man filming the slaughter. He seemed to be gleeful at the “awesome” scene he captured. “Bro – this is going viral!” (My take).

The West is diseased. We’ve lost the courage to stand up to evil. I believe it’s irretrievably lost.

I wondered, as I contemplated these horrors, how we’ve managed to shield our kids from “reality” for so long. We’ve taken many precautions, and we try every day to show them actual reality, which most of the world would call fantasy or wish fulfillment. Our greatest desire is to preserve their innocence, despite the darkness rising everywhere around us. The darkness isn’t just out on the edges now, somewhere out beyond the firelight. The light of civilization is going out, and the darkness is moving in.