quote: “If you are going to call yourself a Christian...then you have to ask yourself a fundamental question, and that is, whom would Jesus torture? Whom would Jesus drag around on a dog leash? How can Christians tolerate it? It is unconscionable.”
I found the whole essay very persuasive, myself, as a lapsed Christian, but I am curious what active Christians and people of other faiths think their faith says about torture and when, if ever, it is permissible?
Posts: 13123 | Registered: Feb 2002
| IP: Logged |
posted
I'm not a person of faith, but I don't advocate torture either. I don't think it's ever acceptable, and I don't know of any rational persons who have recently suggested that it is.
Posts: 1814 | Registered: Jul 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
I'm sorry I don't have time to read the sermon you linked, but I know my answer anyway. There is never a time torture is tolerated. What would the purpose be? To torture, you are trying to test or persuade. Testing means you are judging, and to persuade with pain, or fear of pain is evil. Who would the servant of man lead on a leash? No one. Who am I to judge when there is evil in my heart as well. We are to love, not force. We are to thank the creator of all for everything, even our enemies and those who think differently.
Posts: 36 | Registered: Nov 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
I don't understand your question. Do you think any Christian approves of torturing another human being?
Posts: 14428 | Registered: Aug 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
I don't understand what about my question is confusing.
To answer your question, I would *guess* that some people who call themselves Christians would and do approve of torture. However, I freely admit that I don't know for sure. That's kind of why I'm asking the question. In any case, I think many Christians for sure support some 'just' wars--the present war being one example. What about war makes it more ethically (edit: or, staying within the thread context, religiously) defensible than torture?
posted
There's a Christian on the board who I believe is still posting (my memory grows dim) who advocates not just torture but absolutely any means necessary in war (including the most extreme, demeaning, and violent forms of torture).
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
If you feel like you are defending your home, your family, and your freedom, then war is pretty justifiable. To many Christians, I am sure, this war was justifiable--and violence was necessary because that is what happens in war.
Torture would, however, go beyond most Christians' idea of necessary and justifiable, even in the middle of a war.
Posts: 5957 | Registered: Oct 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
I can concieve of a theoretical situation in which I would be "OK" with torture, but that's kind of like I can concieve of the forces involved with birth of the universe, it's physically possible but I'm not going to ever be there.
posted
I don't think torture for the sake of suffering is ever permissible. And I'd like to say that I can't think of a situation where torture would ever be needed. But theoretically, if someone came to me and said "I know a man who is planning to destroy Washington DC with a nuclear bomb" I'd probably be compelled to do whatever it took to get him to cough up the details of the attack. I guess that's a question of personal morality. The biggest problem I see is what you do when you find out the person you just tortured is innocent.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
You have to think at the very extremes: a person has presented credible evidence of a nuclear bomb in NYC. It is set to go off in 1 hour, so no evacuation is possible. You have captured the person making the threat (he's admitted he's the one - no doubt at all), and need to know where the bomb is located.
Is is it permissible to use drugs to extract the information? Torture?
I don't know, but you have to be willing to face the millions who will die otherwise and tell them why you couldn't attempt to get the information.
Moral decisions where the suffering of one choice is your own are easier to make (although often harder to carry out) than choices involving the suffering of others.
posted
I don't think anyone is in hell. I think as God exactly like He is pictured in "L'enchanteur" de Barjavel, for those who did read it. Dagonee, I understand your point. But if we admit one exception, where, exactly is the limit ? That's my problem with it.
[ January 06, 2005, 10:27 AM: Message edited by: Anna ]
Posts: 3526 | Registered: Oct 2001
| IP: Logged |
quote:Dagonee, I understand your point. But if we admit one exception, where, exactly is the limit ? That's my problem with it.
That's my problem with it as well, but such distinctions must be made all the time. When is it OK to kill another? When is it OK to take someone's property from them?
Torture is such a serious thing that we must consider it carefully. As I said, I haven't decided what would be right in that situtation. But it is the situation that must be considered.
posted
Even if I thought that there was a situation dire enough that torture might be an option to consider, I’d have serious doubts about the reliability of any information gained. If you manage to break someone’s will enough that they’re willing to do what you want, who’s to say they won’t just tell you what they think you want to hear? And if they don’t have the information you want, eventually they’re going to make something up to stop the torture.
The situation where you know that the prisoner knows the exact information you need and you have a way to confirm the validity of their answers but you have no other possible way of getting the information except torture seems, to me, pretty unlikely.
Posts: 9866 | Registered: Apr 2002
| IP: Logged |
quote:The situation where you know that the prisoner knows the exact information you need and you have a way to confirm the validity of their answers but you have no other possible way of getting the information except torture seems, to me, pretty unlikely.
Of course it is. I brought my example up as an extreme hypothetical designed to answet the question, "Is torture ever morally OK?" I included each of those factors consciously, because I think they are all important. If we answer "no" to its use in this situation, we're pretty close to answering the general question. If we answer "yes" in this situation, then we can look at the situation to extract factors, as you did, and begin to determing the importance of each factor. In this way we can define the limits of acceptability.
Edit: The limits might be so close to such an example that we can say with some confidence, "this is unlikely to ever happen."
quote: You have to think at the very extremes: a person has presented credible evidence of a nuclear bomb in NYC. It is set to go off in 1 hour, so no evacuation is possible. You have captured the person making the threat (he's admitted he's the one - no doubt at all), and need to know where the bomb is located.
Just turn him/her over to Jack. He can save us!
Posts: 2445 | Registered: Oct 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
I know it's a hypothetical situation, but torture still might not work. The terrorist would know that he only has to hold out for an hour. Less, actually, since there would have to be enough time left to use the information.
Posts: 4625 | Registered: Jul 2002
| IP: Logged |
quote: “If you are going to call yourself a Christian...then you have to ask yourself a fundamental question, and that is, whom would Jesus torture? Whom would Jesus drag around on a dog leash? How can Christians tolerate it? It is unconscionable.”
First off, I would like to state I like the preacher’s sermon. Christians who stand up for the greater good have a special place in my heart. Although I am agnostic, I am reading "It Is Not About Me" by Max Lucado, and I am intrigued by his thoughts.
This is not a Christian bash.
The problem I have with the quote is it assumes we all know what it means to be Christian.
We can take Christianity and get the KKK, the crusades, the Spanish Inquisitions, torture, burning people at the stake, et cetera et cetera.
It is very easy to see a Christian take the bible and use it to justify horrible things. It is good for the preacher to guide Christianity in a more Christ-Like manner, but it is surprising that anyone could be flabbergasted that Christians could be able to justify torture with the Bible.
I suspect the problem of a religious person condoning torture (Muslim or Christian) starts when a flawed person tries to use temporal methods to advance spiritual goals.
Eternity and afterlife rewards/punishments can be used to justify a lot of stuff.
"The black man will corrupt our ways. If our children get corrupt then they spend eternity separated from God. If I scare the black man with burning crosses and hangings, I will protect salvation for many people. God will Bless me."
"The great Satan is spreading Her influence. If I strap a bomb on myself and give my life in the pursuit of disrupting Satan’s power, I will be rewarded with virgins."
**I am not sure the GIs who used torture and sexual humiliation to mistreat Iraqi prisoners were using Christianity to justify their actions. If they were "God Fearing" people, then they could certainly justify their actions. Religion is based on faith and faith is an emotional reaction.
The two ingredients of religious people who "do bad things (which in itself is morally subjective)" I see are:
1: Justification using the greater good or children.
2: Faithlessness that the results are really in God's hands.
I believe in God so I need to wipe them out so His will can be done for the greater good.
vs.
I believe in God and he will sustain me.
EDIT: changed "speech and pontifications" to "sermon."
posted
Speaking as a preacher – the liniked text is not an essay, or a speech, or pontification. It’s a SERMON. And a good one. How come people are willing to use the word sermon for crappy harangues, but not for an excellent example of the homiletical art?
Posts: 9866 | Registered: Apr 2002
| IP: Logged |
Just part of my ongoing campaign to rescue the words “preaching” and “sermon.” My own little windmill-tilting.
Posts: 9866 | Registered: Apr 2002
| IP: Logged |
quote:I know it's a hypothetical situation, but torture still might not work. The terrorist would know that he only has to hold out for an hour. Less, actually, since there would have to be enough time left to use the information.
True. Is the chance of success something to be factored into the acceptability of torture? Only if one acknowledges that it might be acceptable to achieve certain ends, such as a non-craterous Manhatten.
posted
My daughter had her tooth pulled last week. This was diffucult for me to watch. If it hadn't been necessary, it would qualify as torture. Torture is in the intent.
I actually think that Muslims who have been deceived as to their own doctrine, who have been failed by their government's duty to provide them literacy, aren't torturing anyone. But only deep in their hearts could they know, if they really wanted to.
The victim can't really know. Children or animals who must undergo medical procedures would certainly deem it torture. Maybe the intent of the inflictor of pain comes through to the victim. I don't know.
In that sense, if someone undertakes torture of a prisoner with the sincere intent to do good and pitying the person they have to hurt, a person could do such a thing and still consider herself a Christian. I think what is unconscionable is torturing either for enjoyment- which is what troubled us about the gleeful faces of the Abu Ghraib jailers- or out of obedience/fear of a superior. It is my belief that people are naturally inclined to enjoy power over each other.
The question for me is more whether a Christian is obligated to forgive a torturer, and the answer of course is "yes." It is dangerous to place a crime outside the circle of Christianity. Christianity doesn't mean being perfect. Christianity means being at one with Christ, who is willing to be at one with anyone who comes to him.
Posts: 666 | Registered: Dec 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
I can't see Christ torturing anyone or working to destroy their humanity. Even when rebuking demons, he only cast them out, he didn't parade them around on a dog leash first.
As a Christian, I know that torture is wrong. Sadly, as a weak human who feels insignificant so often, it is easy to fall into the reasoning that says torture is okay in certain circumstances and under certain threats. But really, it never is okay, no matter the circumstances.
"Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."
Posts: 472 | Registered: Aug 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
" I think what is unconscionable is torturing either for enjoyment- which is what troubled us about the gleeful faces of the Abu Ghraib jailers- or out of obedience/fear of a superior."
The problem is this: once any practice becomes a job, there will always be someone who'll find a way to enjoy it. An exceptional practice, difficult to justify, becomes just another way of getting information once you institutionalize it.
Terry Pratchett, in Small Gods, riffs for about a paragraph on what it must be like to be a torturer -- to come to work, carrying your "World's Greatest Dad!" mug and your small briefcase, to greet all your coworkers and hang around the watercooler until it's time to go do your thing, and then inflict terrible, excruciating, unconscionable agony on someone else until it's quitting time (at which point you rush home to your kids and scoop them up in your arms and, presumably, tell them all about what daddy did at work today.) The evil, Pratchett says, is not so much in the torture as it is in the acceptance of torture by the institution.
posted
Christianity isn't about doing everything Christ did and not doing anything he wouldn't do. That's what's so great about being a woman. Leaving aside the idea of Christ doing it, leading around someone on a leash is a highly context driven event. I don't know for sure, but it is not inconceivable that there are people who would like that.
So let's look at the basic idea of torture as doing to someone something they don't like.
Or there is a quote from C.S. Lewis where he says something to the effect that "Christ does not want to torture the natural self. He wants to kill it."
I know this will raise an old argument Tom has with my flavor of Christianity, that humans are in their natural and uneducated state un-Christlike.
P.S. Hi Tom! We posted at the same time, I guess. I included torture for obedience's sake for that very reason. There are enough people who, if they have to do something, feel they might as well enjoy it. Plus what I also said, that humans enjoy having power over one another. Even little kids.
[ January 06, 2005, 02:51 PM: Message edited by: Trisha the Severe Hottie ]
Posts: 666 | Registered: Dec 2003
| IP: Logged |
quote:Terry Pratchett, in Small Gods, riffs for about a paragraph on what it must be like to be a torturer -- to come to work, carrying your "World's Greatest Dad!" mug and your small briefcase, to greet all your coworkers and hang around the watercooler until it's time to go do your thing, and then inflict terrible, excruciating, unconscionable agony on someone else until it's quitting time (at which point you rush home to your kids and scoop them up in your arms and, presumably, tell them all about what daddy did at work today.) The evil, Pratchett says, is not so much in the torture as it is in the acceptance of torture by the institution.
Gene Wolfe explores similar issues in one of his series. (Starts with Shadow of the Torturer, maybe?)
Printer-friendly view of this topic
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
In any case, I think many Christians for sure support some 'just' wars--the present war being one example. What about war makes it more ethically (edit: or, staying within the thread context, religiously) defensible than torture?![[Wink]](wink.gif)
![[Eek!]](eek.gif)
