Film Friday At one point in this cinematic spectacle, one of the British challenges Napoleon with this comment, ‘You fight for money, we fight for honour.’ To which Napoleon replies, ‘We each fight for what do not have!’
Whatever Napoleon is fighting for, life is cheap to him. When a large group of royalists campaign in the streets for the return of the monarchy he simply brings out the big guns and opens fire on them. In his Russian campaign he sacrificed 460,000 lives, most of them to starvation and the cold. His ambition in this movie seems to have vastly superseded his care for humanity.
In his book Everything Is Spiritual Rob Bell writes about General Montgomery, and how, later in life he called on a friend, because he was tormented by the number of men he had lost in the battle for El Alamein in World War Two. He won that battle and he was careful to look after his men, but he still felt the weight of each one of those lives lost.
Everyone matters to God; we see this in Psalm 8 when the writer looks up at the vastness of the sky and is reminded how precious we humans are to our Creator. (Not so much fighting for honour but receiving it as a gift from God.) Throughout the Bible You can find long lists of people, many of them unknown to us, but all are known to God. When Cain invented homicide God told him that his lost brother’s blood was crying out to him from the ground. When Elizabeth confirmed to Mary, in Luke 1, that she was carrying God’s baby, Mary sang about God’s mercy and his care for those in need. That is the heart of Christmas. God caring for us, and the precious nature of our lives.
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