Tell Me, What Do You Do With Witches?

There are certain things I tell myself to avoid if I don't want to spend more time shaking my fist at the sky yelling, "I try to believe in you and now this?!"
So when a friend told me Chuck Colson wrote a tossed-off apology for torture I thought I would avoid it. But the wind blows wherever it pleases and I was led right to it. Here it is:

Justified Under Some Circumstances
"Centuries of Christian ethical reflection would lead to the answer 'no.' Inflicting bodily or psychological harm on a helpless captive would be inconsistent with the Christian understanding of human dignity. But as with all moral obligations, there may be circumstances for exception.

It is well understood in Christian tradition that while we are supposed to obey the law, there may be times when there is a higher obligation (see Aquinas, Augustine, and Martin Luther King). To rescue a drowning person, a Christian would be justified in disobeying a 'no trespassing' sign.

So it is with torture; if a competent authority honestly believed that this was the only way to get information that might save the lives of thousands, I believe he would be justified. That is not moral relativism. It is making a difficult decision when human life and dignity will be affected either way. The Greeks called it prudence."

Tossed-off indeed.

This isn't the intro to it. This isn't a reference to a more thorough explanation elsewhere. This is it.

Centuries of reflection would lead one way. Four sentences later, we have something else. You have heard it said, "Blah blah blah," but I say to you, "Torturing someone is like rescuing a drowning person."

Accept for a moment that not torturing someone is based on some general Christian understanding of human dignity over anything else. Accept also that moral obligations can be understood like signposts we sometimes follow and other times disregard. Accept the premise that Christians are supposed to obey something called "the law." Get over any objection to the idea that someone who would torture someone is doing something akin to what Martin Luther King Jr. did. Accept too that a "competent" (let alone legitimate) authority could possibly believe that a tortured person would reveal anything useful. Never mind that this is a complete misunderstanding of the virtue of prudence. Disregard every deadly thing that is swimming in this stinking and dripping necrotic sore and just accept it as it is.

See that it is.

There was a time when some were saying that it could not possibly be true- that we would never torture anyone. (wink) Then some said, maybe some people were tortured, but if they were it was by a few bad apples, and it certainly is not likely to happen again. Later, we had to say that some harsh and ugly things are inevitable in harsh and ugly times, but we are not as bad as the worst and we certainly don't think what we do could be called torture. Then we find ourselves at a point where we say, "It looks like a duck, smells, tastes, acts, quacks, and everything else like a duck- but I would not call this duck torture." And before you knew it, we're saying, "Yes, we torture, and it is good."

You get that, don't you? That's what this is. This is a Christian, a Christian you may look up to- certainly a Christian that someone in your congregation looks up to- saying, however thoughtlessly, "Torture is good. It is noble. It is something that the truly prudent would do." He is not saying, "The world, in its worldliness, has people that will torture others." He is saying, "The truly wise and judicious Christian knows they do good by torturing."

-Sigh-

We suck our teeth at those backwards Dominicans who strung up every Jew and Muslim in sight. With every high school production of the Crucible, we wag our heads and thank God we live in better times now. We're happy knowing that we're not the kind of Christians who would try to sanctify slavery. We look at the Christians of fifty years ago and ask how they could have ever justified segregation with a straight face and how others could stand by and watch. Whatever the embarrassment, we say it was in the past and now we know better.

But here we are, choosing the wrong side of history. And fifty years from now others will look back at us and see that we chose sides. They'll laugh at how absurd we were and wonder how we could not see as plainly as anything else this was not where we should want to be.

It was bad enough when we simply held theologies that said this isn't something we needed to care about. Looking at boobies, lying, stealing- those rise to the level of worry. This? Torture? M'eh, it's not really something we need to worry about.

It looks like somebody's been worrying about it, and this is what they came up with.

We are the Body of Christ and this is not a problem. We are the Body of Christ and we're saying this is consistent with what that could mean.

Okay. I guess. Though I feel like I should be sitting in a fireplace right now.

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Low Light- Pearl Jam
Light and Day/Reach For The Sun- The Polyphonic Spree
Baby You're A Rich Man- The Beatles
Shoplifters of The World Unite- The Smiths
The Trial- Pink Floyd
Days Like This Keep Me Warm- The Polyphonic Spree
Master of Puppets- Metallica
Super Bad- James Brown
Ego Tripping At The Gates of Hell- The Flaming Lips
Shrink- Dead Kennedys
Happiness Is a Warm Gun- The Beatles
La Vie En Rose- Edith Piaf