A reader writes:
Can I urge you to consider removing that post about the naked couple dying. I read it somewhere else with curiosity. But I would suggest that your heading and the comments don't pass the Christian charity test. Maybe I am being a nitpicker, but many of us have fallen far short of the demands of Christian morality, though most of us have not died doing it. I cannot imagine the pain a parent goes through losing a child; the thought of something happening to my daughter son freaks me out. But to have that pain compounded by such a public, embarrassing death and to have people making fun of it as your heading might be construed to be doing and certainly some of the comments to the post do, is certainly worse. I thought about being in that situation with a woman and falling to my death as a Catholic and imagining the horror I might feel as I worried about the state of my soul. Even without the context of morality, can you imagine the horror they felt plummeting to their deaths and wondering about the shame of it all to their family. Should we as Christians be contributing to that? I don't mean to come across as a prig, but something about that post really bothers me. If I am off base here, please tell me.
You're not off base. I've removed the entry and the comments, and I thank you, reader, for calling me out on this.
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Well said. I'm embarrassed to say that I saw the headline and laughed, and didnt think it through as this reader has.
Neil Postman said that TV inherently trivializes events, and that there was no catastrophe so tragic that it couldn't be followed (at a respectful distance) by a commercial. That's the world we live in now. There is no way you or I could die, no matter how horrible, that couldn't become wowie-zowie internet fodder, and be forgotten ten minutes later.
I replied in the original with a sarcastic remark because I found the casual attitude towards two people dying in such an especially horrible way totally offensive. There were even some snide remarks about their sinfulness if I remember correctly, absurd and utterly offensive in the most intimate extent. Television most definately desensitizes us, but that is never an excuse. Thank you for responding to your readers Rod, it will not be forgotten.
I support the emailer and the removal of the posts. As for the sinfulness of the couple, I didn't see anything in the original article that indicated the couple's relationship to each other. (Maybe that was reveiled elsewhere, but I didn't see it.) It's not like married people never do "crazy" things. Just a thought.
Good point, naturalmom, though I think that reckless disregard for one's own safety is also morally problematic and worth offering a prayer for.
a true 'do unto others' moment.
Lord have mercy.
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