Concluding Thoughts

It is the end of the semester so I just wanted to share some concluding thoughts. The main thing that I learned this semester is that sacrifice does not just happen in religion. This semester we discussed sacrifice in warfare and in capital punishment, as well as in religion. In warfare the kinds of sacrifice are self-sacrifice and the killing of the enemy. The nation or ideology in warfare serves as a kind of god, who is being fought for and defended. The enemy serves as a kind of rival god, who is also battling for control and worship. Capital punishment is also responsible for sacrifice. The criminal serves as a sacrifice, who is given for the state, to keep the state in peace or collective harmony. In religion, we see sacrifice in the sacrifice of humans to the gods, as in the Aztec religion, and we also see sacrifice in the Crusades, where both sides were sacrificing themselves for god. In all these topics, violence is present. We learned in A Terrible Love of War, that violence has always been used and probably, always will. If this is the case, then sacrifice is here to stay.

Vengeance in A Time To Kill

I watched the movie, A Time to Kill, on TV the other night. The movie is about a man named Carl Lee Haily, played by Samuel L. Jackson, who guns down two white men that had raped his 10 year-old daughter. Jackson's character believed that they might be found not-guilty for the rape because of the deep seated racism in Mississippi, so he kills them. Subsequently, his defense attorney is able to sway the jury to find Haily not-guilty, even though he killed the two men in the courthouse with dozens of witnesses. It was interesting to me how the film made you side with Jackson's character and the whole time you wanted him to get away with murder. (The two rapists that he killed were also involved with the Klu Klux Klan, which didn't help their cause either.) This is an example of the vengeance that most of us want, when we see cases like this. The two men deserved to die and justice was done. I am against the killing of people for their crimes but sometimes I sway on this issue. What if Hailey didn't murder the two men and they were found not-guilty of rape and set free. Where's the justice there? I can't promise that I wouldn't do the same thing if that happened to my daughter. Films like these teach us that there is a sort ambivalence towards the death penalty and/or vengeance. Its seems illogical to be for it but because we are emotional beings, sometimes our logic is less important.