Innocence is Terminal




According to historian Todd Gitlin, "The educated young felt [Kennedy''s] call, projected their ideals onto him. His murder was felt as the implosion of plenitude, the tragedy of innocence. From the zeitgeist fantasy that everything was possible, it wasn''t hard to flip over and conclude that nothing was."
As the 50th annual remembrance of JFK’s assignation slips behind us I am fascinated by what was said On that day and OF that day. As one newscaster relayed the heartbreaking news he paused and then said “Let us pray…” That’s all they played of the 50 year old recording but I thought what a contrast that was to today’s “Politically Correct” reporting.
I was five years old when JFK was shot. I don’t remember it. I remember Bobby Kennedy and MLK; and the multiple attempts on Ford and the shooting of Ronald Reagan and the shots fired at the Pope…and John Lennon. But they say it was JFK that took our innocence. I think innocence was lost long before that.
I think innocence was lost with a war that spanned the globe being brought to our living rooms via the air waves. Innocence was lost in movie theaters across the country when social issues and family matters became tried and tested in the world of make believe. When fantasy left the pages of books and became a visual encounter. When history was written and re-written to tell its story to an increasingly UN-innocent generation.
When taboo things left the sleazy hotel and the back room of the saloon to provoke the lust of every young boy who could get his hands on the latest issue of some magazine, trash followed the tolerance of it. Innocence was lost when what we could block out of our minds could no longer be blocked from our sight. When the stuff of our imaginations became indelibly etched on the visual receptors of our minds the world became too real – more real than parables and faith.
When people of the Bible were still just artist renderings News Reels brought us face to face with the people who declared them unessential, ancient, and inapplicable to this modern world of ours. The day Darwin’s theory was foisted upon us in the form of pictures of old bones and fossils. When modern philosophers scoffed at scripture and Atheist world leaders took a face and a humanist mantra to our living rooms the “faith of a child” was all but devoured by it.
Innocence did not die with JFK and it is not dead today, but it is ailing and terminal and disappearing with the “last Generation”, who ever that may be.
The day wonder got its fill, innocence was lost. When nakedness went coast to coast without shame…when knowledge spread beyond its use…when evil became good and good became evil…when innocence became the victim of a medical procedure great tragedies lost their meaning and the tempter rejoiced and the family was torn asunder, disemboweled, un-defined.
We did not lose our innocence in tragedy we lost it in abundance as self gratification took its place in the hearts of men. Who needed innocence when we lost our souls?
If JFK had held the hope of the free world the day he died it’s simply because God no longer did. If JFK made us think anything was possible it’s because God no longer did. Mark 10:27
Faith holds innocence by the hand and guides her blindly through the debris praying continuously while innocence gasps for each breath and God provides life support.