Loss of Innocence

My dad took me to watch Whipper Billy Watson, Hardboiled Haggarty, and Chief Thunderbird "wrestle" when I was about ten. My mother wasn't at home then, or she would have never let me go. My dad met up with his friends, so I sat and watched these large men punch and kick one another endlessly in what seemed to me like a life or death struggle.I still remember the feeling walking home in the dark, on that winters night in Kindersley, on the glittering hard packed snowy road with a newly found sense of dread! I thought of this when I watched Wendy Mesley yesterday on CBC interviewing two "experts" who have studied evil and the media's compulsion to cover it. The experts concluded that the extensive coverage and all the abundant crime shows, serve a "useful" purpose to inform the naive that evil is around and protection is needed! Bosh! We all have a shade, including yours truly, that is compelled to watch, however dreadful,the sad,the sick, the evil that is around us. The fear it arouses has a titillating presence. It doesn't take a psychologist to note that we all have a shade. To say the portrayal of evil is "useful" panders to this need. Unfortunately as a human being we can't fully embrace Philippians 4:8. The other day I saw some writing on the wall. I went up and read it. Do you know what it said? It said, "This is the writing on the wall!"