Wednesday, May 4, 2011

Point to Ponder (Reprint)

This first appeared in my blog on November 9, 2007.

It is January, 1829. The place is Georgia, in the Russian Empire. A three-week old infant, Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili, dies in his mother's arms. Question: Is this a tragedy or not?

He didn't really die. He grew up as a horribly abused child with an alcoholic father. He survived smallpox, which he suffered at age 7, but with a permanently and badly scarred face. He lived until 1953. You know him as Josef Stalin, whose atrocities made Hitler look like a choir boy. (That's an ironic comparison, as Stalin actually WAS at one time a choir boy!)

Would it have been a tragedy if he had died in infancy?

How about if Osama Bin Laden had? Would the death of that 3-week-old have been a tragedy?

2 comments:

priest's wife - S.T./ Anne Boyd said...

unfortunately....if they had died in infancy, there might have been someone else to fill the 'evil vacuum'-

LORD have MERCY!

Chris Jones said...

Is this a tragedy or not?

Yes, of course it is a tragedy. Death is always a tragedy, always an outrage. It is because death is always a tragedy and always an evil that our Saviour came to defeat death by His very own death.

"Christ is risen, and there is not one dead left in the tombs" -- not even Osama. Because even Osama's death is the enemy that Christ came to defeat, and over which He is the Victor. To Him be glory and dominion throughout all ages.