KILLING CARNIVALS

What kind of a society was it in the days of the Apostles and early church in the first century AD? What did the Romans enjoy for their entertainment?

When Emperor Titus opened the Roman Colosseum in 80 AD, he held 100 days of activities in which according to one historian, over 9,000 animals were killed, 5,000 in a single day. Approximately 2,000 human beings died for the enjoyment of the 50,000-80,000 fans who were there free of charge in a structure that could be filled or emptied in 15 minutes because of its 76 entrances/exits.  Over the course of the life of the Colosseum, over a million animals and nearly half a million people soaked its sand with their blood. It housed a killing carnival.

Bloodthirsty fans who wanted to see that blood and experience the thrill of the kill watched as human beings were forced on the sands of the Colosseum to face fierce animals who would pop out of nowhere from 36 trap doors embedded in the floor of the arena.

There was a killing schedule to the carnival: In the morning, there were animal shows. sometimes only a parade.  Or, there may have been animal hunts in which whole stage sets would be used to reproduce a hunting environment. Emperors sometimes took part in the hunts, shooting at animals with a bow and arrow from the safety of their seats. Part of the animal games featured gladiators trained to fight the wild animals, sometimes with that background scenery.


 And, as part of the morning schedule, sometimes condemned criminals fought the animals, with nothing to use to attack the starving beasts or to protect themselves. Tame animals were released to wander around the arena, as musicians played a melody in the background - until a hungry bear with no appreciation of music was released from a trapdoor and tore out the man's insides.

Another hapless criminal might be dressed as the famous inventor Daedalus, supplied with feathered wings (as in the famous myth of Icarus) and strung over the arena on a wire - which then snapped, dropping him into an enclosure filled with starving bears. The thousands would roar.

During these games, the animals did not always die, although they did more often than not. Lions, tigers, wolves, bears, leopards, wild boars, elephants, hyenas, buffalos, hippopotami, crocodiles, and giraffes were all seen in the Colosseum at some point.

At noon, there were executions, sometimes using torture, sometimes using wild animals to attack a tied up prisoner. But in the late afternoon, the most "interesting" and important part of the day's schedule was the gladiator fights. In some cases, battles were re-enacted, in others, it was a fight to the death, man to man.

Or to further delight the thousands, even women got their death-due, as the 50,000-80,000 especially enjoyed seeing women fight dwarfs.

So, the apostles and the early church lived their everyday lives against the backdrop of a society in which human life was cheap in the first century AD. It was a society characterized by the song, “Any Thing Goes.” Without a moral compass, anything goes.

When they consider the twilight years of America, historians will write the same thing: Amerca became a society in which anything goes; everything was tolerated. They will continue to write, "Beginning in 1973, America began holding its own killing carnival with over 62,000,000 killed by abortion.

Increasingly the people heard and read of multiple shootings every weekend in Chicago, Baltimore, Houston, Philadelphia New York, and Atlanta. People were killing people over a parking spot. People were killing people over a jacket or a pair of Nike shoes. People were killing people over a perceived insult. People were killing people over a disagreement about a football team.

The historians will continue to write, "Without a moral compass, anything and everything was tolerated. For an American to say, 'This or that is wrong,' would bring scorn and a stern denouncing when the high tech lynch mob went on the march with the end result of ruining a person's life.

Human life is cheap in a society that's lost its moral compass.