Christians serve a Lord who was beaten, marred, and crucified by a power that routinely tortured and killed those it considered its enemies. The crosses of the Roman imperial order were ominous realities and nefarious practices of a republic that had lost its way and long ago yielded to the temptations of power. Torture of any human being, (if by this we mean the inflicting of excruciating pain on someone) including those who are considered the most heinous criminals, diminishes our common humanity. People of different faiths, humanists, and atheists throughout history have warned of the scars that torture leaves not only on the body but on the soul, psyche, and conscience of the tortured, the torturer, and the society that condones these practices.
I must confess that the temptation is great to yield to violence when I feel threatened (some threats are genuine others are perceived). I also confess that the temptation to yield to violence is great when those I love are threatened. (If I am honest I am not sure I have always overcome this temptation be it in word or deed). Nevertheless, I believe that God's call to humankind is to resist this temptation to act violently towards the other.
The reason the discipline of ethics is necessary is because of the falleness or imperfection of humans. I am well aware of the arguments concerning torturing individuals in order to gather information that may save many lives. One form of this argument is something like this,
"In a fallen and sinful world we are forced to chose between torturing an individual or running the risk of the deaths of thousands of people." Still others have incorrectly appealed to St. Thomas Aquinas' doctrine (principal) of double effect. Namely, "nothing hinders one act from having two effects ( a good and a bad one)..." Still, any appeal to Aquinas stems from an incomplete understanding of this principle. What Aquinas made clear was that the other negative/evil/bad effect had to be well-intentioned or unintentional. In the case of torture neither of these criteria is satified. Moreover, in the case of torture much of the research shows the lack of reliability of any information given under these conditions.
In one of my ethics courses at seminary the foundational understanding of Christian ethics was defined by a colleague as, "Christian ethics is the study of who we ought to be and how we ought to live in light of our faith in Jesus Christ." In short, the call of Jesus is to move beyond any misinformed "teleological suspension of the ethical" to a higher ethic. Torture is beneath our calling and a dangerous, ugly temptation that must be resisted for the sake of our humanity.
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