I've been studying the Cold War this week and much like the Civil War (or any kind of war, for that matter), I see things played out in my mind on a chess board. Interesting picture considering the fact that I don't play chess. My husband and boys do, though, and watching them sit at a board quietly contemplating what next move might be their last is a unique form of entertainment. Tensions are always high until finally somebody wins and somebody loses. Then they laugh and slap each other on the back and promise revenge the next round.
That's how I see the Cold War. The two players are the US and the USSR, and their game pieces on the board are their various allies. They jockey them around trying to show each other who's the boss and at the end of the game, they shake hands while secretly plotting revenge. Meanwhile, kids like me grow up watching movies about nuclear destruction (The Day After, Wargames, even Red Dawn with its Communist invasion of the US) and wonder if our end might come with a giant mushroom cloud and an incinerating heat blast or the slow, flesh-rotting effects of fallout.
I'm laughing at myself at this point considering the many stern looks I've given my middle child over his zombie fascination. Wonder where he gets that from?
At any rate, it is rather sobering to consider the devastation that man can bring about simply at the thrill of winning a game. I suppose that is the core of my fascination with history. You see that game played out so many times throughout the centuries... the only thing that evolves is the methods used to destroy. The hope is not in the game itself or even the main players, for that matter. The hope is in a people that look to a God watching a different sort of game being played out.
And that's a whole other story in itself.
Surely I am coming quickly. (Revelation 22:20)
1 comment:
This is totally beside your point, but you got me thinking about the WW I museum in Kansas City. Cliff and I went once, and we need to go again. We didn't see half the stuff.
I remember all the scary stuff during the cold war. We even had conelrad on the radio so if there was an attack by a foreign power, you could turn to one of two stations and get instructions on what to do and where to go.
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