How do you kill a man?
No, how do you kill a near perfect man. A stand-up individual, whom everyone enjoys not because he is good at being social, but because he embodies good-ness. He's a shining beacon, a city on a hill. The lighthouse. So, respecting the forces of poetry and justice, how does this man need to die.
It has to be sudden. Unexpected. Goodness can't suffer. If goodness were to suffer, someone, somewhere, with just enough virtue in their sin-ridden heart would try to relieve that suffering and take his place. Someone would stop it. So it has to be quick and unforeseen.
Should it be a murder? Do you really allow one individual, one person to single handedly wipe righteousness from Earth? Despite the best attempts of the most evil men, no one person can carry that load. So a typical, not-so-uniquely-unrighteous could never kill virtue.
Besides, can mankind ultimately be responsible for destroying Good?
So then it has to be natural, something out of man's hands. Something, beyond human control. Beyond... human... natural. ? If it is nature that controls the destiny of goodness, who is controlling the natural? Ah. The supernatural.
No. God would not kill virtue.
An accident, then. Fortune can disrupt and de-rail any measure of integrity! Sometimes the breaks just don't go your way. But do you really want to cop-out? No one to blame but Fortune, no-one but bad luck?
Isn't that just saying that Fate had it in for Virtue? Isn't that the same as saying nature...or God... would destroy goodness.
No. It has to be human. We plucked the fruit. We're all Sons of Cain.
That's it!
We're all Sons of Cain! For all have fallen short...We're all responsible.
We killed Virtue.
Yes. YES.
ReplyDeleteBy our own negligence! We believe that virtue is "all well and good," but forget its value when we are so easily distracted by the carnival of the world with all its side-shows and attractions and confectionery...the superficial and artificial that please us so.
But the pleasure goes without consequence for only so long. Someday it is taken into excess. Our sins consume us. First our minds. Then our bodies. Then our hearts. Then our souls. And so virtue dies from neglect. Virtue is left unprotected, undervalued, and alone. How can it defend itself when it alone is the defender for everyone else?
"But how!? We didn't see it coming! We didn't intend to take virtue and our dependence on it for granted! How could this have happened??"
That's the whole problem of neglect. We "get caught up in life" and swept away by the rushing water.
Purity can only hold out so long. It cannot quietly compete with the over-amplified temptations that advertise themselves as sufficient substitutes.
When God is forgotten by the guardians, how can virtue stand on its own?