Caleb's Rejects

Sheer Torture

I have recently had an epiphany concerning one of the most troubling things going on in the world today. I still don’t know what to make of it. Last week, while home sick with the first of the nasty little flu bugs for this season, I watched television as it actually dealt with important issues. This shocked me! Television hasn’t done this for quite some time. What’s next? Reporting on newsworthy events? Allowing broadcasts that aren’t dictated by the government or the conservative war-profiteering corporations that own our media? What is the world coming to?

Sorry about that. It’s easy to go off on a rant these days. Whether you’re a hard-core progressive, reactionary fascist, or somewhere in between, there is something going on somewhere for you to be upset about. We live in that kind of world these days. Anyhow, one of the topics that seems to be creeping steadily back onto our radar screens these days is that the U.S. Government apparently sanctions torture. The good news is that we’re trying to get away from it. In October, the U.S. senate voted 90-9 on a law seeking to outlaw the use of torture by the United States. The bad news is that we’re not all trying to get away from it, as the President has threatened veto of this legislation and criticized it as “tying our hands” and he and his Vice President are now seeking to change the language in order to allow some government officials to stay outside the law on this issue. If that's not enough, we recently have discovered that those same officials are running secret “detention camps” in Soviet-era foreign countries where God only knows what is happening to the prisoners.

I have always been amazed that there is any debate whatsoever on this. In my naiveté, I always assumed that most Americans, and certainly everyone who wishes to publicly refer to him or her self as “Christian” would reject the use of torture out of hand, without question. Evidently, I was wrong. I understand that, for most of us, the closest we ever get to torture is a Brittney Spears concert or an episode of “Ed, Ed n Eddy,” and I realize that that can make us kind of blasé about the whole thing. Inconvenient pictures that the press quickly brushes aside notwithstanding, it’s totally outside our experience and therefore easier to accept as an abstract concept. On the other hand, I’ve never murdered anyone, nor seen it done in my presence, but I still believe that it’s immoral.

This brings me back to television. Doesn't everything? Since it's in the time slot before my favorite show, I have been watching Commander in Chief, and this issue was raised a couple of weeks ago. In this episode, a terror suspect was apprehended entering the United States with bomb materials and plans to attack an elementary school on Halloween. Realizing that the man was a part of a terrorist group that always schedules attacks in groups, the president ordered their training base in Lebanon raided to see if there are clues as to the other schools that they planned to attack. While doing so, she informed her cabinet that she “did not want to hear about any-one being tortured.” The upshot of the episode was that the raid on the camp eventually produced documents that identified the other agents, led to their capture, and prevented the schools from being attacked. In the process, however, one of the cabinet members also allowed the torture of the captured terrorist in hopes of getting the same information. When confronted by the president over this, the perpetrator reminded the president that she said she did not want to hear about torture. She was immediately fired, but before she left, she reminded the president that, in essence, torturing the terrorist may have been the only thing that could have saved the children, and that any parent in America would have ordered it if it would have saved their child.

I had to admit that she had a point there. If you knew that someone was out to kill your child and that torturing someone who intended to kill children was the only way to prevent that, wouldn't you allow it? When faced with that as a very personal choice, it's hard to say that we would not stand for torture. Moreover, in some cases, where someone has committed a heinous crime, as opposed to when we want information, it's hard not to feel that torture might be appropriately used as punishment. That said, as a matter of government policy, torturing people to preserve a country and way of life may, in a democracy, also be seen as a way to destroy everything that country stands for.

I was still pondering this later in the week while watching the History Channel, when they showed a movie (I didn't catch the name) that documented John McCain's capture, confinement, and torture during the Vietnam War. While I'm sure that they couldn't show everything that happened in a movie on television, and they obviously took some liberties with the story, I couldn't help but admire the character in the movie for what he survived. After watching that, I feel that I better understand (now Senator) McCain's outrage over the idea that the United States tortures prisoners. While I might not generally support many of the things he stands for, I clearly understand how he has come to break with the current administration and instead represent the majority of people of the United States in seeking to outlaw torture.

Wen you look at the history it conveys, the Bible contains a lot of gory nasty things. One of the worst, in many people's view is the way Jesus was tortured. Mark 15:16-32 and Matthew 27:27-50 detail how Jesus was beaten, scourged, mocked, and crucified, and the details of that torture. To the Romans who inflicted torture upon him, Jesus was a political figure who was guilty of “disturbing the piece,” potentially the worst crime on the books in the Roman Empire. As evidenced by the further trials of the apostles in Acts, torture was a common punishment in those days, and Christians have, over the years been subjected to, and subjecting, torture in a wide variety of settings. As the History Channel shows programming about the Crusades this week, we may have our noses rubbed in the fact that we have done a number of things for which we're not too proud. In the modern day, many of those who watched The Passion of the Christ were horrified at the tortures that Jesus suffered in that movie. These days, I read Matthew 25:40 and feel horrified all over again.

Bible Passages:

Mark 15:16-32, Matthew 27:27-50, Matthew 25:40

Discussion Questions:

What aspect of the debate over torture most bothers you and why?

Under what circumstances might torture not be such a bad thing?

How do we reconcile the existence of torture with Christian teachings?

Other than Jesus’ torture at the hands of the Romans, what is the most vivid image of torture that you remember from the Bible?

How does the fact that Christians have tortured and been tortured by others affect the way you view the subject?

In what ways do you feel the Church should respond to the practice of torture?