Discussing
Die Hard and our appetite for destruction

I like this question you're asking, Josh, about the reason for our appetite for destruction. I'm not sure it is as nefarious as you imply. Before I get to why, I think I need to attempt a necessary delineation.

I feel like people often lump wanton destruction (of the kind in all the Die Hard movies) in with ideas of violence. Is blowing up a building the same as shooting someone? I don't think so.

A flower is of very different quality than a furnace, and equating the two disparages the former more than it honors the latter, granting license to treat the flower as no better than the furnace.

I'm not suggesting you are making this comparison, Josh. I just want to separate the two, because I think if we can see the difference, we can allow ourselves to enjoy the destruction of "man-made wastelands" like Chernobyl with glee.

The Bible has a lot to say about destruction actually, and especially when it comes to human-made structures like buildings and cities. Think of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah (for inhospitality), Jericho (for rising against God's people), Jerusalem (for unfaithfulness), and Babylon (for ravaging the world). Then there's Jesus' oppression upending overturning of the money changers' tables and his unconcerned assertion that the temple itself would be torn down until not one of its stone's are still stacked. Finally, there's my favorite, Hebrews 12, which promises that all that's set up by human hands and not by God's, all that isn't meant for eternity, will be shaken "until only what is unshakeable remains."

God seems almost eager to destroy the things we build when they enable our wickedness. Destruction is practically a holy thing when the things being destroyed are the things that are destroying life.

So maybe when we revel in cars crashing into one another and buildings exploding in movies, or when we gleefully watch tenements and old power plants being imploded, our smiles reflect God's, not because of any of the death that might accompany those demolitions, but because the implements of death themselves are being destroyed. Maybe we're enacting a little of the shaking of all temporary things that ends with only the eternal things remaining.

Thanks for making me feel better about liking A Good Day to Die Hard, Elijah! Actually, the distinction you make here between destruction and personal violence is one that seems, at times, to also be made by the movie. An early scene involves an explosive attack on a courtroom; though the room is full of people at the start of the sequence, it's conspicuously empty (of innocent victims) when the walls start tumbling down. Similarly, no one appears to be harmed much in the car chase I reference. Now, this may be something of a cop-out on the filmmakers' part (an attempt to soften the violence so as to not offend anyone) and there are certainly instances of "bad guys" suffering personal violence elsewhere in the film, but I also think it's related to the distinction you're making.