There once was a gal quite alive
Who could think of no way to deprive
The spectre of death from from a-stealin' her breath...
But she knows in the Lord she'll survive
Every year or so I like to take a vacation, and I go spend a few weeks in the morgue. A fictional morgue, but a morgue nevertheless. In a novelistic fashion, I have been present at autopsies (virtual autopsy link, not for the squeamish), seen the sharp surgical scalpel slice into dead flesh, heard the power saw cut through skulls, and spent time with medical examiners, profilers and police officers; I have seen the effect that brutality has on those who immerse themselves in it. Normally my mystery reading does not fall into the gruesome or graphic category, but every so often I pick up novels that have some of these qualities and I am reminded of the depths of human depravity and the brevity of human life, including my own.
Memento Mori. Remember, you must die.
During the middle ages, when real death was more visible than it is today, Hans Holbein, Albrecht Durer and others designed woodcuts that are known as The Dance of Death. These works show people of every rank, age and trade, well, Dancing With Death. The purpose of these works was to portray death as the great equalizer, and to remind the living that their day would come. One of the reasons to hold this thought was because of the certainty of judgment by God after death, and one could never be sure when that would occur. Although these images are not frightening or grisly by our modern standards, they are a sobering reminder of that most dreaded of human experiences. More modern artists as well, especially Kathe Kollwitz, have created works that being forth in stark reality of the horror of death and also the grief of those left among the living
Memento Mori in some form, it seems, will always be with us. The theatres and bookstores today are full of graphic murder depictions and cold blooded cruelty. We are faced on every side with manufactured death, while actual death is hidden in hospitals, nursing homes and the like. We feed ourselves on the kind violent death that breeds desensitization and avoid the kind of death or suffering which breeds compassion. We see this stuff so much that we can sometimes no longer tell the difference between fiction and reality. I watch virtually ZERO violent films, and yet when I saw the footage of people jumping out of the World Trade Center, I could not believe that what I was watching was real.
The Memento Mori of the past was not sensational, electric with the excitement of the chase. It never portayed death as something to laugh about, but as a serious reminder of the human condition and the consequences of human action. It brought out the reality of pain and grief, and the necessity of being reconciled to God. Today's Memento Mori too often sees violence as a joke and people as utterly disposable...instead of creating a sober respect for death, it glorifies it.
I have struggled with whether I, as a Christian, should sometimes read these novels depicting ugly violence. I know that I am called to focus on those things that are true, beautiful, of good report, etc. However, occasionally looking these things in the face helps me to remember what is in the human heart, and not to fall prey to the common modern platitude that people are basically good. In other words, I am reminded of the need for salvation, and the truth of the old saying "There but for the grace of God go I". For all the hatreds within the breasts of "pretty good people" are murders in miniature, different only in degree, not in kind.
I have also noticed how fittingly the Scripture speaks of today's obsession with death, and not only that which is fictional; the rise in murder, rape, suicide, abortion and euthanasia fills the news. The first three are rightly called tragedies, the second two are more and more often encouraged. Looking at our our current landscape, God's Word that "...he who sins against Me wrongs his own soul; All those who hate Me love death" (Proverbs 8:36), is made manifest.
