There is a violin playing softly in the background. If I listen I can still hear it. It’s during an interlude in a song on some album I have. During the quiet, a little boy’s voice comes on, reciting his line slowing, one phrase at a time. “Until you have found something worth dying for, you are not really living.”
I watched The Last Samurai tonight, and that statement is all I could think of. Why were these people living? What are they accomplishing by dying? Was there another way to get their point across?
In their case I do not know. It was interesting to watch the cultures and how they were portrayed; how the people of the samurai believe that the only honorable thing to do when shamed was to take their own life.
Sad. Sad that so many die without knowing that they can live. Sad that so many die not being sure of why they lived. There is nothing wrong with dying, but to die for a lie?
That is not just a thing of the past. People die for lies that they believe are true all the time. Even worse, people kill themselves on behalf of a lie; yesterday afternoon there was one in Baghdad that made the news doing just that.
The disciples of Jesus died too. They were killed on account of their belief; a belief in Jesus Christ as the risen Lord. The fact that they were willing to die for what they believed does not make it true, but it’s intesting to think about the opportunity they had. The opportunity to walk with Jesus, day in and day out. To walk with him along the road, to listen to Him teach. To be there when he was killed. To see Him again when he was alive. Think about it — these guys were there, and if anybody had an opportunity to know that Jesus was a hoax it was these guys. If anybody would have known that he wasn’t alive, that he didn’t actually conquor death, it was them.
All but one of the twelve that walked with Jesus were separately killed for their belief in what they had seen. As I saw tonight in The Last Samurai, people will die for something they believe is true. Will people die for something they know is false?
And have I found something worth dying for? I believe I have, and it’s Jesus Christ. I believe that I live so that His Kingdom will become known here on earth, and yes, I believe I will die for that. Now, the question is how do I live for that?
