Vulture Culture

Ewww...I was just out for a run a few minutes ago and encountered a vulture who was eating dinner at the Road Kill Cafe.

He was picking at his food--some indescribable mass of rotting animal flesh--and reluctantly abandoned his meal as I approached. He then took to flight and ominously sat on a telephone pole, waiting for me to pass.

I heard the term "Vulture Culture" from the People of the Second Chance website. Spiritually, it a condition where an individual, a group, or a society, derives a sense of satisfaction and glee in the failure and humiliation of others. There is a joyful feast in destruction and death, a sustenance of feeling better because we can make others feel worse.

The Pharisees in Jesus' time expected righteousness to be deposited in their accounts as a dividend from their judgement of the unrighteousness of others. Not so, said Jesus. For you all are bankrupt in soul.

We become more like Jesus when we take no joy in the misery of others. The bill for immorality will come due, both in this life and the life to come. It just had not better have our name on it as the sending address.

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