Culture of Death

"A culture of death seeks to impose itself on our desire to live and live to the full. There are those who reject the light of life, preferring the fruitless works of darkness. Their harvest is injustice, discrimination, exploitation, deceit, violence. In every age, a measure of their apparent success is the death of innocents. In our own century, as at no other time in history, the culture of death has assumed a social and institutional form of legality to justify the most horrible crimes against humanity: Genocide, "final solutions," "ethnic cleansings," and the massive taking of lives of human beings before they are born or before they reach the natural point of death."
---Pope John Paul II

Added to the social and institutional form of legality are phenomena such as "premptive srikes," "fight against terrorists,"either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists." Shamefully, there are so many others we could add from the paradigm of our current culture that one can only conclude that the culture of death is not seeking to impose itself. Rather,it is THE culture, our culture. As such, a culture which seeks to destroy quite naturally it too will be destroyed in the process. One need not do anything to bring it on as it does so on its own. The only hope is that room will be made for a culture of life, of light, of love via the natural possibility that something new and completely different often arise out of chaotic states. Those of us who deplore the culture of death, must find a way to be ready when this possiblity arise. Only then can one become a part of the future of life and light and love. Such a future does not entail waiting to be raptured, or having a great leader provide all the solutions to our problems. It is learning to be objective and see our current culture for what it is-a culture of slavery and death. It is rejecting all the ways in which we contribute to the culture of death beginning with refusal to believe the lies.