In the so-called “Post-9/11 world,” torture has become a hot-button issue, with Christians lining up on both sides of the debate. A recent poll found that “a majority of Southern evangelicals” support torture – at least until they are reminded of the Golden Rule! A Pew Forum research survey, published in 2005, found that more than 50% of Catholics and white Protestants believe the use of torture against suspected terrorists is at least sometimes, if not often, justifiable.
On the other side of the issue, the National Religious Campaign Against Torture (NRCAT), which claims membership from “Roman Catholic, evangelical Christian, mainline Protestant, Unitarian, Quaker, Orthodox Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu and Sikh communities,” began calling for the President to issue an executive order banning torture. They issued a “declaration of principles” they believe provides compelling reasons for the ban. Early in ‘07, the National Association of Evangelicals published a statement clearly and unequivocally condemning torture in any form. They even called for the ban to extend to the intelligence organizations, which John McCain, who has led the charge in the Senate against the pro-torture policies of the Bush administration, has (so far) been unwilling to do.
Here’s my concern: Even those evangelicals opposing torture are failing to do so on solid theological ground. The first principle cited by the “declaration” is the Golden Rule; “We will not authorize or use any methods of interrogation that we would not find acceptable if used against Americans, be they civilians or soldiers.” Surely this is better than what we have now, and it is apparently effective in swaying opinion. But is it Christian?
The NAE’s statement, needed as it was, argues from the assumption that all “life is sacred.” But this, too, is only quasi-Christian, at best. Hauerwas has it exactly right:
As a matter of fact, Christians do not believe that life is sacred. I often remind my right-to-life friends that Christians took their children with them to martyrdom rather than have them raised pagan. Christians believe there is much worth dying for. We do not believe that human life is an absolute good in and of itself. Of course our desire to protect human life is part of our seeing each human being as God’s creature. But that does not mean that we believe that life is an overriding good…
To say that life is an overriding good is to underwrite the modern sentimentality that there is absolutely nothing in this world worthy dying for.
The problem is, as Richard Hays says so clearly, “On the question of violence, the church [in the U.S.] is deeply compromised and committed to nationalism, violence, and idolatry.” By comparison, he insists, “our problems with sexual sin are trivial.” 21st century Evangelicalism, like the liberal Christianity of the mid-20th century, is an “establishment Christianity” that “plays chaplain to the military-industrial complex” (Hays, The Moral Vision of the NT, 343.)
We are suffering from a theological crisis. The Faith in Public Life and Mercer University poll mentioned above found that almost half of white Evangelicals rely upon personal experience and “common sense” to determine their views on torture. Fewer than 3 in 10 rely upon Christian teachings. The fact is a majority – I would bet it is a significant majority – of white Evangelicals are reasoning from half-Christian, if not out-and-out anti-Christian presuppositions. This is evidenced by Evangelicals on both sides of the debate.
In the end, appeals to the Golden Rule and the sanctity of life simply will not work. I’m not saying they won’t be effective; they very well may work in that sense. But they will fail to convey our distinctively Christian values, and so will irreperably compromise our witness to the state and our work in the world. If we’re going to be Christian, we’re going to have to - love our enemies. And, perhaps more importantly, we’re going to have define “our” along creaturely and not national lines! It isn’t enough not to do to “them” what “we” wouldn’t want done to “us”! We have to do for them what God in Christ has done for us! Otherwise, we fail in our vocation altogether.
But what do you think?
Wherever and whenever the identification of an individual or a multiplicity of individuals becomes “They” “Them” or “Those” the temptation of the Identifiers (“Us” “We” “Our”) toward violence- myriad in form and consequence- proves subtle in its infecting and epidemic in its deadliness. What starts out as off-color jest and caricatured representation smoothly moves toward overgeneralization, stereotype, and scapegoating. In the particular instance you poignantly express-the leap made from laws to lawlessness, belief to bewilderment, faith to fear is easily bridged by the paranoia of threat and terror. Especially when the identification of that paranoia is so powerfully symbolized. “9-11” hangs in the hallway of human history as the rally and cry of one Nation and the reckoning and avenging of another. It is celebrated not as memorial but as an encapsulation of fear. Much the same way a child experiences “boogey man” or our parent’s parents experienced the “Russian Bear.” Fear is loves antithesis. Jesus tells us to love our enemies not in contrast to a hatred, but to a fear of them. But when the collective notion of being “..backed into the corner” is the common posturing then “doing whatever we must to get out” is a permissible ethic. And the cyclical effect of fear begetting fear spreads as a wildfire. The more obvious “there is no corner” doesn’t seem an “effective” inoculate, when the instinct to counterpunch and jab kicks against our insides so strong. Love your enemies is the way of Jesus because no other can lay claim to performing it. Truly we must, and only in Him we can.
PS. Such a haunting and disarming picture you used. I do not think it at all ironic that those reponsible for the posturing of the victim (perhaps unwittingly) reflect the cross.
Furthermore.
In regards to the formulation of the ethic of our vocation. Identifying “Do unto others…” and “All life is sacred” as a basis for constructing a theological response to “enemy” is the preverbal “going around the ankle to get to the elbow”. Especially when Jesus is indirect, aloof, cryptic, allegorical, indifferent, or silent in regards to the matter.
I think, in part, the Us/Them thinking comes from our westernized, watered down concept of love. We tend to think of it as feeling favorably toward someone first and foremost, as a commitment to a person and their well-being second. Our society teaches us to make the commitment toward a person after we have had the favorable feelings. It is easy to love someone you like. But as Christians we are told to love even those we don’t like. We are to commit ourselves to the well-being of others, even the “other,” our enemy. Jesus’ command has nothing to do with feeling favorably about these people (probably why they are enemies in the first place). I would go so far as to say that there were many people Jesus loved about whom he didn’t feel favorably (his crucifiers, for instance). Whether we (christians) feel favorably toward members of the Taliban, Iraqi soldiers, or any other, we are not permitted to treat them as less than human. It is not just a value of life, it is a value of humanity. I know this is underdeveloped, but it’s a start.
That should have been:
Especially when Jesus (is not) indirect, aloof, cryptic, allegorical, indifferent, or silent in regards to the matter.
That should have read:
Especially when Jesus is not indirect, aloof, cryptic, allegorical, indifferent, or silent in regards to the matter.
In this discussion a living metaphor illustrating the myriad nature of the sort of linear thinking resulting in such linear conclusions may prove useful. But this you will have to decide. The particular event demonstrated itself in a conversation I observed today between our beloved Elder Hanscom and a named yet here unnamed sentient being of a named yet here unnamed organization.
As Elder Hanscom perused the bookshelf of aforementioned composition of flesh and bone, soul and spirt, dream and fear, he noted in his typical syllabic Tennessian comedic tone:
Hanscom: “I see you group your books according to subject!” -chuckle-chuckle-laugh-laugh.
Unnamed Other: “I do.”
Hanscom: “So what? You don’t put your books on ethics with theology either!” laugh-laugh-chuckle-chuckle- “I’m so clever smile”
Teal,
I know the tone and the smirk, believe me. I wonder if your tale will bring the Tennessean out of his sequestration? He’s strangely silent these days. I suppose he’s above all of this.
Jill,
Some points of (quasi-)contention:
(1) I don’t know if we should say Jesus calls us to love “even our enemies.” Perhaps we should say “especially”?
(2) And it isn’t easy – for me, at least – to love people I like. The love to which we’re called is never easy, I don’t believe. Or, perhaps I should say, it doesn’t really matter if it is easy or hard. That’s entirely beside the point.
(3) Whatever we do, I don’t believe we are to do it for “humanity” or for “life.” As Christians, we don’t deal in abstractions, or ideals, or issues. We deal with specific persons, people with ensouled skin, with faces and names and histories. Ahmed and Alvin and Alicia and Ivan and Rachel and Kim, et. al.
About US/THEM
I think History demonstrates this is not a unique cultural apparatus. Western Culture does not get to lay claim to its developing nor its mastery. The phenomenon has existed every since man stepped blindly out of the garden felt around in the darkness bumping into “the others”. To limit it to enculturation is to miss an opportunity to see the fragmented “fallen” self from whence it comes. The dualism is represented in many forms, but in almost every form it comes with a “versus”. This state of “against” is that same state that traces its origin back to the chief of the fallen angels and becomes the predisposition of man’s interaction with God, others, and himself until that New Man reOrients us toward God and toward one another. As Paul so richly put it, “You who were once at enmity with God,” are no longer through Jesus. To begin answering the question of an ethic is not conjuring an appropriate affection or efforting thinking rightly or to attempt a particular action over or against another in relation to our “enemy”. We must be in Jesus. Not to be overly simplistic or dismissive of a grander conceptualization of the matter, but only those who are in Jesus can love as Jesus loves. “Those that love me keep my commandments.” This isn’t a call to keep the commandments, but the truth stated. We are not called to be masters of disciplines and edicts, or to be imitators of a vagabond lifestyle or a kind of social reform, we are called to undergo a reCreation, a remaking, a retrofitting, that begins evidencing our surgery in even our simplest gestures. Jesus said of his disciples, “They are the ones who give a cup of water to drink in my name.” We can explore it on a macro scale and imagine its success in us when it is done if we want, but we should also see it in the tiniest redefinitions of our life. Loving our enemy isn’t the instant, immediate, response we lay claim to as a basis for our action, but a comes, now is, and will be when we will. We will because this is the great hope of Jesus in us. He will make us people who for eternity will choose Love always and forever, an eternity of infinite another
Chris,
I think what you are saying in your (quasi-)contention point three is a great point. I’ve heard you say it before and I totally agree. I should have ended my statement by saying “It is not just a value of life, it is a value of a human.” It is what I meant.
Hello, hello! I am sorry for my absence.
Let me say that I think that it is difficult for us to love neighbor and enemy as Jesus commanded because we can’t accept the fact that there isn’t an escape clause attached to his command. However, we try to create alternate realities that release us from our obligations to obedience. Not only do we play God when we assert our power over others we play God when we create rules, policies and beliefs that undermine God. Loving neighbor and enemy is a reality that we can’t hide behind with abstract positional statements. We must do for all people what God has done for us. Difficult or hard is meaningless in light of being obedient.
The life of Christ teaches us that we are not to torture neighbor or enemy but we are to become the tortured or better yet become the tortured for the sake of enemy and neighbor.
When I spoke the other night I was very uncomfortable using terms like “us” and “them” because they seem so out of place.
I hope this made sense it’s late, I’m tired and out of town.
Teal,
I’m glad you appreciated my living metaphor.
Stephen,
Even when you’re late and out of town, you say it so well!