The Gift of Killing
This is guest-post by my friend Matt.
A comment in the director’s commentary of the movie The Mission got me thinking about the gift of killing. I don’t mean gift in the spiritual gift kind of way, but rather in the ability or talent kind of way. I wonder if this talent could in part be God-given.
Let me describe enough of the movie to elaborate. I don’t think what I share will spoil the power of the film, but if you hate movie spoilers, please go away. The movie is set around the year 1750 during the Portuguese and Spanish colonization of Argentina. We meet Mendoza (Robert De Niro), who hunts the natives for slave-trading. In a fit of jealousy he kills his own brother and in grief sequesters himself in a cell in a Jesuit monastery. Months later he is introduced to Father Gabriel (Jeremy Irons), who heads a remote mission in the interior of the territory. Because of the determined penance that Mendoza has already shown, Father Gabriel sees in him a man whose repentance is within reach. Eventually Mendoza takes the vows of a Jesuit priest and labors in the mission, living with and helping the same tribe of natives that he once hunted.
Conflict occurs when sovereignty changes hands and the missions must be abandoned. Everyone knows that this means the natives who live within the missions will be hunted as slaves once again. Mendoza renounces his Jesuit vows and leads some of the residents of his mission to fight. One night he and a small party are sneaking in the camp of the enemy. One of the sleeping soldiers awakes and is about to alert the entire camp. Without hesitation Mendoza kills the soldier with the very knife he used to kill his brother. The scene freezes as Mendoza’s face shows that he realizes what he has done. Has he given up his salvation? Have all his previous sins returned? At what cost to himself is he attempting to save the mission?
The director’s comment that got me thinking was something like (and I paraphrase heavily), “What is it inside some people that makes them capable of killing another human being? Earlier his killing was an obvious act of evil. Now he is killing again yet trying to be a savior.”
If the ability to kill is a gift, I certainly don’t have it. The first non-insect that I intentionally killed was a lizard, and that nearly brought me to tears as an 8-year-old. Even in the proverbial family-under-attack scenario I waffle a bit on both what I think I should do and what I would in actuality do. I honestly think something in my psyche would break if I deliberately killed someone, even if the act were justified.
I’m not usually one to say the ends justify the means. I also don’t like the idea of killing out of necessity at all, yet I reluctantly realize its occasional validity. I also can’t get away from the fact that God has required killing in order to achieve His purposes.
If there are situations where killing is not offensive to God, it seems reasonable to assume that God would want me to able to do it in those situations. Given my pansy nature, however, perhaps God would never expect me to kill because He knows it would break me. Or is this an ability that I should strive to obtain? Talk about playing with fire.
For those who possess this talent, it certainly seems like one that should not be magnified, but rather controlled. Heavily. Perhaps there is no better profession for someone with the gift of killing than the armed forces. Since I do not have this gift I am particularly grateful for those who use their talent for my safety. I work with a man who used to teach knife fighting in the marines. I don’t know if the description of his technique or the matter-of-fact manner in which he talks is more disturbing, but he’s still a very nice and apparently normal person. I’d like to think that people like him don’t mind having their profession so that people like me don’t have to try to kill.
Of course, there is an entire world of difference between a controlled, God-given ability to kill and the carnal desire to kill. Open for debate is whether the ability to kill is God-given at all, or is simply a devilish urge that God has learned to use to further His plan.
A few final thoughts.
If anyone out there has had an experience related to justified killing and feels comfortable discussing it, I’d be grateful for any insight you can give.
If the ability to kill could be a gift from God, what about other transgressions that are occasionally broken at God’s direction? In addition to having our own unique spiritual gifts and talents, could we also have unique transgression reactions or tolerances? The Anti-Nephi-Lehis contrasted with Teancum certainly suggest that we might.
Finally, since I brought it up, I would ask that any mention of the military be made in general terms. I do not want to expend resources engaging in political battles about current military campaigns.
I purposefully stomped on a mouse once.
Comment by Kim Siever — 11/9/2005 @ 5:39 pm
This is a challenging post. I tend to think that we are very much products of our environment and so in our modern Occident one would suspect that most of us would lack the capacity to kill. I also think how one kills is important. Knife fighting, as you mentioned, is horribly repulsive to me; however, I can imagine pressing a button.
Also, from an evolutionary perspective, it would seem that killing is part of that animalism that lurks in the recess of our “natural man”
…Kim’s comment was also a funny segway from a serious topic.
Comment by J. Stapley — 11/9/2005 @ 6:04 pm
I believe you mean “segue”, J. Segway is a scooter. 🙂
Comment by Kim Siever — 11/9/2005 @ 6:13 pm
On a more serious note, I am not so sure the ability to kill something is a gift from God, or at least not anymore so than the ability to start a fire or dig up edible roots are gifts. I believe that the ability to kill is something that has been learned (I am not familiar enough with anthropology and the like to say that it is inherited) as our species has evolved.
After all, as J. indicated, other animals kill, and I wold not be quick to say they have been gifted with that ability.
Comment by Kim Siever — 11/9/2005 @ 6:17 pm
A History of Violence, the new(ish) Cronenberg movie, deals with this issue, with varying levels of success.
Comment by Ronan — 11/9/2005 @ 6:33 pm
Look at Moroni (both of them). I think they illustrate the point.
Comment by Clark Goble — 11/9/2005 @ 11:14 pm
I could kill someone in defense of my children or my loved ones. I know they’ll be resurrected and that’s with God.
although I accidentally injured a lizard once, and I still feel bad about it. That was in 1976.
Comment by annegb — 11/10/2005 @ 3:42 am
Indeed, Clark. One of my favorite aspects of the book of Alma is the swirling dynamic around the notion of killing. You’ve got the Ammonites who refuse to fight out of fear of damnation, and the Nephites seem to be happy to protect them, even forbidding them from breaking their oath. You’ve got the Ammonite children who become the ultimate mercenaries of freedom, in large part because of what their mothers taught them (mothers who had lost husbands to the evils of war). Moroni seemed eager to capture enemies instead of fight them. He even let the enemy Lamanites go based on nothing more than their word to stop fighting. But he certainly had no patience with the king-men and other traitors, as well as some who simply refused to fight. Seems like everyone can find a hero in there somewhere.
Comment by Matt Jacobsen — 11/10/2005 @ 3:55 am
Kim, perhaps I should qualify the ‘gift of killing’ as not so much the pure ability to kill someone, but instead the ability to perform a justified killing without becoming bloodthirsty or broken in some way. Just because one is justified in killing doesn’t mean that there aren’t serious risks to one’s spiritual and psychological health. Seems like God may have given us varying levels of protection against this potential damage.
Comment by Matt Jacobsen — 11/10/2005 @ 3:58 am
I was walking to meetings on a Sunday Morning. In my path was a wounded shore bird — it could barely move, and its wing was essentially dislocated and twisted around. It was obvious there was no hope for recovering, only that it would lie and suffer for who knows how long. The ants had already started to gather. I grabbed a good sized rock and inwardly prayed/hoped for strength to kill it quickly. One swift blow and it was done.
Looking back, I think I felt glad to have put the bird out of its misery and to have it finished quickly, but still felt sadness and regret that it had to be done. The violence was real and palpable. But it differed from the violence I experienced much younger when a group of us boys killed a small skunk simply because it crossed our path. With the latter I felt accused by my conscience and had to repent. (I actually prayed once that God could somehow let the skunk know I was sorry.) With the injured bird, I felt something like reverence mixed with somberness for a necessary action.
Comment by Keith — 11/10/2005 @ 5:27 am
A year ago I gathered for a late dinner with a half dozen old high school friends. Something reminded me of an item that I had read in the paper a year before. One of us, Brian, a cop for eleven years, had shot and mildly injured a man who had threatened suicide, fired guns in the air, and lowered his weapon in the direction of another cop. When this memory had been jogged, I asked Brian about it.
His response, in the cynical, slightly sad tone he usually employed, was, “Yeah, I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die,” and that was all he had to say about it. My reading was that he wasn’t ashamed of what he had done, but not proud of it either, and he wasn’t going to relive it just to satisfy my voyeuristic curiousity.
Comment by John Mansfield — 11/10/2005 @ 8:33 am
…but instead the ability to perform a justified killing without becoming bloodthirsty or broken in some way.
I think this has to be a gift from God.
Comment by J. Stapley — 11/10/2005 @ 9:47 am
I agree with J. Stapley #12: not only a gift from God, but a rare one.
Comment by RoastedTomatoes — 11/10/2005 @ 11:25 am
I sort of agree with J. Stapley, but I’m not so sure it is the act of killing that is the gift, but the ability to ward of the temptation to become bloodthirsty or the ability to not become broken.
Comment by Kim Siever — 11/10/2005 @ 11:36 am
I find myself with mixed feelings. I don’t know that I could kill a person, and some animals. Growing up my brother and I had racing pigeons, many of the babies had to be disposed of (not good enough pedigrees) by breaking their necks, usually by just pulling their heads off. I could never do that….my brother could easily.
But I have no problems at all shooting the pesky rabbits that get in my garden and the squirrels who steal my wallnuts. I almost delight in being able to pick them off from my kitchen window at 50 yards. I guess I feel justified.
Comment by Don — 11/10/2005 @ 1:34 pm
“I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die”
— Johnny Cash, first gangsta singer
Comment by Matt Jacobsen — 11/11/2005 @ 8:44 pm
Well, this could be interesting. I never know what I am going to write and I end up mispelling a lot.
I am an LDS Vietnam Vet. People say I had lost some of my innocence by the time I returned. I am now trying to do what I can to make it up by gaining wisdom through “engagment in the mode of goodness”
I was raised protestant and remained so till three years after I returnd. (my parents tried to link my loss of innocenece to my becoming LDS)
When I was in Vietnam, the belief system I was raised with taught me that the “bible” says that if you kill a budhist or an athiest, he or she, (regardless of age) will go to hell for ever and ever. My experience in Vietnam taught me do doubt this. Nevertheless, a major part of my “Vietnam syndrome” had, and still probably still has to do with the fact that I saw so many Americans who were raised to belive this way could still kill needlessly, or in the name of “capitalism”.
So if any of you find my comments “over analitical” it may be in part to this part of my life.
Now to me, one of the most interesting themes in the book of Mormon has to do with Ammon, who slays to protect the flocks of King Lamoni. Yet when all is said and done, he praises the Lamanite converts for being more willing to die instead of kill in self defence.
Yet Ammon’s slaying of the Lamanite bandits was not exactly self defence.
This calls to mind that it is said of Ammon and his brethren, that “the very thought that one should suffer eternal tormen filled their souls with inexpressible horror; and thus did the Spirit of God work on them”
But that account of Ammons, highly “proactive” strategy for missionary work brings a depth of serenity to my reflection about Vietnam. One has occasion to see the hand of God at work in war situations. (I would not be alive except for that), and yet it takes an account written by inspired military strategist to aquire a more serene view.
The Vedic record of a dialoge between Arjune and Krishna also seems to bring me the same kind of understanding of the wisdom of the Almighty. The Book of Mormon begins with Lehi fretting about the impending destruction of his fellow citisens and yet after he has a vision he can only say things like.”Great and marvelous are thy works…”
A patriach has instructed me to write an accont of when I was about to make a “proactive move” in war (the one which would have cost me my life) but was guided by a voice to do something quite simple, yet, extraordinarily different. The amount of “collateral damage” was greatly reduced by divine intervention but the most remarkable thing to me was what I learned about the character of God from the incident.My life and the life of others do not seem to count for much in comparison to His goodness. Which King David, a great man of war, wrote about extensively in the Psalms.
So if there was a “gift” to talk about, I believe it would like in the direction of an understanding of the Divine nature which we can aquire through acts of kindness and the kind of repect for the agency of others like Ammon showed to king Lamoni.
I am anxios to know if anyone visits the radio station.
http://www.utahkrishnas.com/main/home.asp
It brings me the same kind of peace reading the Book of Momon did when I tried to learn
I once asked Caru Das, if he had heard of a man in the LDS church by the name of Hugh Nibley and he smiled really big and said “He likes us!”
A also once asked his wife if it was not against their belief to spray poison to kill flies in the temple. She said, “I can’t but you can” and handed me the spray bottle.
So, if you are near Spanish Fork on a Sunday Night you can hear a lecture about rules of for warfare and have a vegiterian meal afterwards. The BYU professor of world religions used to send his students there (maybe he still does) and I have great memories of some of the conversations which took place there.
It seems to me every time I reflect on this that much of what I prize about Vietmanese culture must have vedic roots. I wish U.S. forighn policy makers at the time of the U.S. envolvement in Vietnam had know more about the political power potential of vedic influence.
I believe that our lack of understanding of those things cost many human lives and I feel that knowledge of the Book of Mormon can help open door of understanding which can be explored much more deeply looking into vedic teaching.
I think the Beatles, who wrote “Bungalo Bill” must have had their eyes opened this way.
Words like “He’s an all american bullet headed saxon mothers son” seem to hit it right on the head. But it takes wisdom and a much more reverent study of history to learn to correct the shallow minded trends which waste our potential to do good as a people and as nation. Remeber that all it takes for evil to triumph is for good men leave the difficult issues in the hands of the ingnorant and the unprincipled.
Well, I could write a lot more, but I am anxios to hear another opinion on the significance of the Bahadvad Gita. I think a study of ancient records can add a great deal of greatly needed depth.
Comment by Richard E. — 11/11/2005 @ 9:25 pm