Blood Diamond

... it's hard to go back and sip lattes and talk about interest rates...
female journalist to diamond smuggler in "Blood Diamond"

This movie ranks up there with "Hotel Rwanda" and "Schlinder's List" as difficult to watch for all of the brutality and blood. However, as with the other two, this is a good film. Good in the sense that it shakes you out of your comfort zone and causes you to "be there" if but for two short hours. While some have been anesthetized to brutality and killing from their gratuitous use in many other "non-real" films and media (video games), this is (in my opinion and as I have heard from others who have been there) a close representation of the sort of life that many in Africa and other third world countries live. Their reality is that death is imminent whether by rebel guns or by starvation or by disease. It is hard to imagine that the Western desire for diamonds would fuel war of this kind a world away. What about oil, coffee, and other natural resources and consumer goods that we use? What are the global effects of our use, of my use? Does a man somewhere need to work in absolute fear of his life in conditions that we would never allow our house pets to live in order for me to have what I want?

These are hard questions for me. I have no answers. I only know that I am aware of these things at an increasing rate.

I know that I serve a loving God, who alone can make sense out of the senseless. I am accountable before Him to love and to serve others. God help me.