How can it be that Christians support torture?
A couple weeks ago there was a report that stated that, the more often one attends religious services, the more likely one is to say that the use of torture against suspected terrorists is at least sometimes justified. To say that this is a stunning, horrible, no-good bit of news is too little of an understatement. The irony is almost incomprehensible: After all it is Christians who claim to worship a God whose flesh was itself tortured for political reasons. How can
Christians be anything but militant against the use of torture?
The answer, I think, can be found in the Christian notion of atonement. The thinking goes something like this: We human beings have pissed God off, and in God's anger there will be hell to pay. God needs revenge. But Jesus is God's good boy who calms the angry daddy down. Jesus the good boy makes a deal with angry daddy. He takes the punishment intended for us. So angry daddy kills him through torture and is somehow calmed down and OK after that.
This morbid picture of Christian perversion was all the rage a couple years back in Mel Gibson's movie, "The Passion of the Christ." The theology concludes with the affirmation that we human beings can be assured of God's good favor if we just say the magic words, "Come into my heart, Lord Jesus."
The older I get, the more abhorrent I find the Christian obsession with the crucifixion of Jesus. Rather than see that Jesus was a political prisoner slaughtered by empire, Christians jump up into the spiritual realm and pretend that the assault on Jesus was somehow God's plan of renewal. The notion that God needs human sacrifice, the spilling of blood, before acting mercifully and with compassion, ought to cause every Christian to renounce his faith. I know scores of people, both Christian and non-, who have far greater depth of moral capacity. Why bother giving honor to such idiocy and vengeance? Why can't Christians see that their theories reinforce the rule of empire's reign of death?
God's violence against Jesus is at the root of Western civilization's embrace of the myth of redeemer nations, full of benevolence invading other countries for their own good. This notion of sacred violence is at the root of Christianity's historic violence against the Jews, and in our own country, the Indian people. Sacred violence leads inevitably to a theology that justifies torture for a greater good.
The true basis of Christian hope is not the crucifixion of Jesus. Rather it is the empty tomb. It's emptiness signals that God's nonviolent persistent quest for justice and compassion will ultimately transform the horror of both empire and torture. Something new enters history. If only Christians would trust and embody the truth of that newness.