Torture

Today at lunch, my father in law posed the question of whether or not torture is a legitimate last recourse in the defense of national security. My immediate response was that torture is pragmatic and wrong. However, I needed to figure out why I believed it was wrong. As I considered this issue, these were my thoughts.

Torture is pragmatic. It rationalizes, "Yes, this is not just. Yes, it is not consistent with God's ways as revealed in His word...but." It is precisely that "but" that makes torture so morally wrong. That "but" is an innocuous way of denying the power of the Sovereign Lord. That "but" says, "Yes, I will hold fast to God's commands and ways...until He seems to fail me, and then I guess I will have to do whatever it takes to protect myself."

Isn't that what Abraham felt as he walked up Moriah wanting to vomit with horror at what was about to happen? He wanted to protect and defend Isaac. Isn't that what Job felt when all was lost and God seemed to have failed him? Abraham could so easily have said," God, up to this point I believed in you and your commands and you ways, but now, well, I just can not go there." Job could have cursed God. But neither Abraham nor Job lost hope. Abraham believed God could raise Isaac from the grave, and Job proclaimed that he knew his Redeemer lived. They cried out in faith to the Sovereign Lord believing that despite all circumstances He was faithful, and that He would act.

Pragmatism is the only recourse of a nation which does not acknowledge the Sovereign Ruler of the nations. It is the natural response of a people who do not believe in a God who directs the history of nations according to the Sovereign purposes of His perfect will. It is the rational response of those who exalt themselves against the Lord and His Anointed.

So, once again....an idea gives birth to a consequence. If there is no Supreme Law Giver, no Ruler of the Nations, then absolutely....torture is a justifiable, even necessary evil. However, if Christ is presently Lord over the nations, working out the pleasure of His eternal decrees in space and time, then torture is a unjust, cowardly lack of faith. It is disbelief at its ugliest.

Those who hope in the Sovereign Lord cry out:

" Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death
I will fear no evil, because you are with me."
"But you, O God, do see trouble and grief;
you consider it to take it in hand.
The victim commits himself to you." (Psalm 23:4)(Psalm 10:14)

Again, I concur

"The student is half afraid to meet one of the great philosophers face to face. He feels himself inadequate and thinks he will not understand him. But if he only knew, the great man, just because of his greatness, is much more intelligible than his modern commentator. The simplest student will be able to understand, if not all, yet a very great deal of what Plato said; but hardly anyone can understand some modern books on Platonism."

- C.S. Lewis, On the Reading of Old Books

I concur

"Now, 75 years later in an abundant society where people have laptops, cell phones, iPods and minds like empty rooms, I still plod along with books."

-Harper Lee