When I think about it, it almost concerns me that I do not feel much, if any sorrow at all that this deer (which looks young) had its life cut short at the hands of a human driving a metallic monster.
This apathy towards death is not something foreign to me, nor is it something that is isolated to dead animals. It extends towards humans, too.
Every time I hear or see something about a death on the news I think about how unfortunate it is, but rarely do I feel emotionally stirred by it. Even when the mass murders at Virginia Tech occurred, though I felt shock, horror, and sorrow, it was all a bit muted because of my distance from the events...not just physical distance, but emotional and relational distance from the massacre.
Yes, even on 9/11 I only felt this muted sense of sorrow, despite living less than 1.5 miles from ground zero.
Of course, the matter takes on a different form when a death that is near to me occurs. I thank God that I have not had to mourn a close family member's death yet, but when my dog died I genuinely felt true sorrow. For a while after his death I really did mourn and felt such a precise and stunning pain, but even then I could not embrace the mourning and sorrow as much as I wanted to. I don't really know how to explain it, but when I mourned I wanted to be completely consumed by it, even if it would just be for a day or two, but preferably for much longer. I felt that was the only way I could really agonize. But I was never wholly consumed...very nearly, but not completely.
In fact, when tragic events do occur, I think that I feel just as much frustration as sorrow because I find that I can never fully allow myself to be consumed...as strange as it is to type that, I think it's true.
If I allow myself the license to let my thoughts wander a bit, I think that this separation from sorrow, this dullness to it, is the result of the fall. When sin entered the world through the fall, "I" became the most important person to each of us. A hateful stake was driven in between not only man and God, but between man and his fellow earthly companions, and that division means that we become effectually separated from each other..mentally, spiritually, and emotionally. This, I think, is the reason why our mourning, sympathy, and empathy for others' sorrows will never be whole and all-consuming while we are on this earth. It will always be the slightest bit dulled. We will never be able to perfectly empathize with someone's pains (and even their joys) because we are still "I." So long as "I" remains intact, sorrows can never take a genuine hold on us.
And this is why I think I feel such frustration at not being able to sufficiently mourn with my fellow humans when they experience pain, loss, and death. We are all born of the same flesh, yet we are always being driven further and further apart because of sIn.
No matter how much I can try, try, try to be consumed by another's sorrow and their condition, I cannot.
Thank God that he did not only try to be consumed, but actually allowed himself to be wholly consumed by our condition, sorrow, and even death for us, so that we would only be wholly consumed by joy.
And because of that, I believe that heaven will be a place where those dividing stakes will be plucked from our midsts (can you see it happening already?), and we will return to being one body that perfectly feels (for) each other. Since "sorrow and sighing will flee away," we won't even have to worry about sufficiently experiencing each other's pains, but only each other's joys, and since all of our joys will be realized and met in Jesus Christ, we will be experiencing our Lord and Savior fully and perfectly, forever. Imagine that...experiencing infinite and eternal joy...
What a beautiful future we have!
We were made for God. Only by being in some respect like Him, only by being a manifestation of His beauty, lovingkindness, wisdom or goodness, has any earthly Beloved excited our love. It is not that we have loved them too much, but that we did not quite understand what we were loving. It is not that we shall be asked to turn from them, so dearly familiar, to a Stranger. When we see the face of God we shall know that we have always known it. He has been a party to, has made, sustained and moved moment by moment within, all our earthly experiences of innocent love. All that was true love in them was, even on earth, far more His than ours, and ours only because His. In Heaven there will be no anguish and no duty of turning away from our earthly Beloveds. First, because we shall have turned already; from the portraits to the Original, from the rivulets to the Fountain, from the creatures He made lovable to Love Himself. But secondly, because we shall find them all in Him. By loving Him more than them we shall love them more than we now do. - C.S. Lewis
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