Emphasis Preaching Journal

Czeslaw Milosz, U. S. winner of the 1980 Nobel Prize for Literature, wrote in a published letter, "It is a different matter when, as today, new ideas are being born -- for example, the idea of the mass extermination of people, akin to the extermination of bedbugs or flies. A certain 'insectivity' of life and death, as I'd like to call it, is created. I suspect that we are beginning to look at man partly as a living piece of meat with tufts of hair on his head, partly as an amusing toy that speaks, moves -- but all one has to do is raise one's hand and squeeze the trigger and an ordinary object is lying in the same place, as inert as wood and stone. Who knows, perhaps this is the path to absolute indifference, including indifference to one's own death. It may happen that with good training and appropriate schooling people will die easily, from a lack of desire; they will treat dying as almost an everyday activity, between two shots of vodka and a cigarette that they won't get to smoke."

The trial, suffering, and crucifixion of Jesus Christ were perhaps routine to the callused Romans and the vengeful crowd, but to Jesus, God's Son, this was the conclusion of all that he came on earth to accomplish for our salvation. While people today may be insensitive and unimpressed by Jesus' suffering and death, for all who believe, it is the source of forgiveness and eternal life.