Sleepers

Sleepers is a dark movie with an all star cast (including Kevin Bacon, Robert De Niro, Dustin Hoffman, Jason Patric, Brad Pitt) that deals with circumstances around a group of boys who are sentenced together to a boys facility to serve time for a crime they committed - another movie that just tears at the heart. One particular scene that never leaves my mind, even after many years, is the crime, itself. They, as a general habit, used to harrass a hotdog vendor by giving him a hard time and stealing his goods to eat for themselves. On this occasion they caused him to fall down a flight of stairs, his cumbersome, heavy metal cart careening after him. The man dies. They are shocked and horrified about what has transpired, but there is no turning back the hands of time. One of them says, I believe during their trial, something along the lines of "I never thought of him as a man before". They had caused the death of a man who supported his wife and children by selling hot dogs, a man who had a life.

UPDATE 10/9/2006:
Story Line Correction! I watched the movie last night - the boys teasing the vendor held his cart teetering over a flight of stairs. When they couldn't hold onto it, it careened down the stairs killing a man below who happens to step out into the way. They knew that the one man died because of what they were doing to the vendor. The quote wasn't at the trial, but shortly after the incident.

I was reminded of this scene Sunday when I happened to be watching a 60 Minutes segment on the current craze teenagers call "bum-hunting" of torturing, at times to death, the homeless. What kind of mind/soul does such a thing?!? Obviously these boys who thrill to do such a thing do not see their victim as a person with a life, even such as it is. What is that saying told to bullies -"why don't you pick on somebody your own size?" Well come to find out that this concept was most likely made popular by a show called BumFights, the maker of which has made a lot of money and professed no responsibilty for the fallout or collateral damage from his program. This is all truly, truly horrifying.

While I would never do anything even remotely like this, I was again reminded of the movie last night. The husband, being a former planning commissioner, and I (spouse) were asked to have dinner and with the developer of a nearby commercial shopping center. We want to have a nice caliber sit-down restaurant there (none exist near by) which was part of their agreement. His company felt they might not be able to do that. Okay, so I was all prepared to fight for my restaurant - had the game face on and wasn't going to like him one bit. Only to leave Juanchos, a smaller place to dine in the self-same center, having met a person with like faith, a nice family, who has gone to great lengths to get a such a restaurant in there and hadn't given up - but given the dynamics of the demographics, didn't expect to be successful.

He became a person; a person to discuss an issue with - not the issue itself. I didn't have it in perspective. How often do we put on our proverbial sunglasses armed to dim the glare of what we choose not to see. It was such a small thing, but sounds to me like hardening the heart. I can't imagine the hardening and whatever other process that makes teenagers like those above. If it is not a person we interface with, our witness is diminished.

For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the world's rulers, of the darkness of this age, against spiritual wickedness in high places. Eph 6:12

Lord help me to trust your protection and see things as they are and act according to your will rather than sleep-walk through life according to this world.