Why Do the Nations Rage?
A question rising out of Psalm 2 and the music of Thomas Tallis
Every moment of war has made its mark on the land as nations never find peace desirable, but instead choose violence and defend this as a God-given right. But God has had nothing to do with it. The landscape the world over shows the ravages of those hungry for power and indifferent to the deaths of any who block their way.
When it is our own nation, we justify this as often or more often than we rail against it. But ours is a hollow stance. In the 20th century over 231 million people died as a direct consequence of nations raging against other nations. None of those dead are likely to have said in their last breath, if there was anyone to hear, that they understood this outcome.
We only “understand” death when it is not our own. When it is at a distance. Even five minutes reading the news, filled as it is with violence, is evidence of our ability to yet say “it has nothing to do with me.”
Yet we keep on in this mad way. Eckhart Tolle has said most of the world is insane. He may be right. It would explain the killing all through history. Surely if we were a sane planet we never would have chosen such a path, would we? Nor choose it still?
