The Skunk and Tiger

"Ignorance breeds monsters to fill up the vacancies of the soul that are unoccupied by the verities of knowledge."-Horace Mann

Monday, June 19, 2006

Sky Burial

I have a fascination with extremism and fundamentalism, so I often tune into religious radio or television. Recently TBN aired an episode of a show called Travel the Road. It is basically a "reality" show, and I use the word reality very loosely, involving two young missionaries traveling to various countries. Their names are Tim and Will and from what I can gather they wander around underdeveloped and war torn countries with little to no understanding of the people they are encountering. They rarely speak the native language and usually have no grasp of the culture they are immersed in. The speak very condescendingly too and about the locals and often get lost.
I was disturbed by a recent airing of a mission trip to Tibet. Tim and Will enter an area where Sky Burials take place. The Sky Burial is a ritual common in Tibet were the corpses of the recently dead are taken to the top of a mountain, dismembered, and fed to vultures, and left to decompose naturally. Tim and Will, arrive (uninvited I assume) and begin filming a burial. The local Buddhists pay them little attention as the Missionaries ramble through discarded bones and hatchets. Neither Tim or Will explain that in Tibet the ground is too cold for burial and firewood is scarce for cremation. They do however, show extreme close up shots of vultures eating flesh and mumble about how evil this ritual must be. With no translator, they walk up to locals, point up to the sky and say "Jesus" and draw crosses in the snow. I am sure Paul would be proud.

3 Comments:

At June 25, 2006, Blogger Fatima said...

Quite interesting. Good that you pointed out the frozen ground in Tibet, I would not have thought of that factor.

 
At June 25, 2006, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Thank you, thank you, thank you! I saw this program and was stunned at the ignorance of these missionaries to what was going on. Shame on them. It's shallow propaganda like this that keeps people in fear and starts unjustifiable hatred and superiority.

 
At September 27, 2006, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I saw this episode too.

I guess this must be evil because the Tibetans don't pump their corpses full of chemicals, seal them in a metal box and then put that box in a concrete vault in the ground the way God intended?

Hey, makes sense to me.

 

Post a Comment

<< Home