Our Land

Several years ago I saw this movie called "Hero" which was about the Chinese empire in its embryonic stages as an empire.  For many centuries, China had existed as a loosely allied collection of city-states and the emperor did not actually have that much power outside of his immediate area.  But about 2000 or 2500 years ago, that began to change.  Unification was beginning to take place and the Han ethnic group was beginning to become the dominant force in that part of the world.

In this movie, there were some opponents of the emperor who did not like the idea of someone having absolute power over what seemed like the entire civilized world.  Those people on the fringes of the Chinese territory were not considered civilized and most Chinese were not aware of any people living further beyond their barbarian neighbors.  As far as the Chinese were concerned, a full unification of all the Chinese territories would give the emperor almost god-like power.  For some, that was a good thing, for others not so much.

John 11: 45-56

SPOILER ALERT!
DO NOT READ FURTHER IF YOU INTEND TO SEE THE MOVIE.  BESIDES, YOU SHOULD GO AND WATCH THE MOVIE INSTEAD OF READING THIS BLOG ANYWAY.

Some very powerful opponents had some very good opportunities to kill the emperor of this burgeoning empire while it was not yet really an empire.  But for one reason or another, someone who had the opportunity to make the kill would back off.  One man had a point-blank opportunity but chose instead to show the emperor that he could have killed him but chose not to.  In spite of sparing the emperor, he did not win any brownie points.  After all, the emperor did not get to his position of power by being kind and gentle.

When the other two chief opponents of the emperor realized that their colleague did not carry out his mission and got executed instead, the one who backed off of a previous opportunity to kill the emperor turned his knife on the other one.  As he killed his former ally, he said "this is OUR LAND," referring to the soon-to-be-unified Chinese empire.  The other opponent never warmed up to the idea of unification.  The remaining former opponent loved his vanquished colleague dearly and it hurt him to have to do this.  But ultimately he realized that this was for the greater good.  These opponents of the emperor, each one individually was very powerful and capable of getting to the emperor and killing him.  Having one around that was still against the idea of unification could destroy it while it's still in such an embryonic stage.

Although this former opponent who was still standing was initially a trifle uncomfortable with one man, the emperor, having a seemingly obscene amount of power, he was also aware that life would be better and safer if China were one people instead of a people divided.  He also felt that it was simply China's destiny to be a great nation rather than a scattered patchwork.  So a few were sacrificed for the good of many.