'It is the Daftest of Times...

January 2023: "It is the daftest of times, it is the worst of times, it is the age of irrationalism, it is the age of foolishness, it is the epoch of beliefism, it is the epoch of incredulity,
it is the season of moral decay,

it is the season of darkness, it is the spring of delusion, it is the winter of despair,

most drown in disinformation before us, most swallow huge lies all around us, we are all going direct to disorder,we are all going to hades on earth...

--in short, the present period of the 21st century is so far like the previous centuries of 'humanUnkind' that all of its noisiest extremists insist on its being promoted..."

Charles Lykins, A Tale of 2 Hyped Nations--America and Russia

What are 10 nonfiction books that have had a major impact on your life-stance?

Ones that are the best you’ve read in your life?


GAMES PEOPLE PLAY
Basis for the keen insights of human behavior in T.A. psychology by Dr. Eric Berne

THE WHYS OF A PHILOSOPHICAL SCRIVENER
Amazing life-stance views by famous philosopher and thinker Martin Gardner

SOPHIE’S WORLD
Humorous, suspenseful intellectual travel through the history of human thought by Norwegian writer and educator Jostein Gaarder

ALIBION’S SEED,
Social-cultural history of America, how 4 British life-stances impacted most of us by historian David Hackett Fischer

HOW IT BEGAN
An amazing time-space journey from the beginning at the Big Bang to the Present by famous astronomer Chris Impey

THE TRUE BELIEVER
Explanations why multimillions of smart educated humans, in history and at present can so easily be misled, even to commit immoral and unjust
actions by the working-class thinker Eric Hoffer

NIGHT
Memoir of writer's Elie Wiesel’s tragic life in the Nazi Concentration Camps, including Aushwitz

THE ARTIST WAY
Best how-to create book by artist Julie Cameron

MORAL MAN AND IMMORAL SOCIETY
Why are human societies so guilty of slaughter, injustice, abuse, etc. when individual humans are often kind and considerate of others by Reinhold Niebuhr

FRIENDS FOR 300 YEARS
Powerful history and commentary on the Society of Friends by Howard Brinton, that emphasizes 4 centering ways of truthful living: mystical, evangelical, rational, and social.

CONTEMPLATIVE PRAYER
Deep, introspective understandings of what it means to pray, not for things, but for truth by Thomas Merton

THE COST OF DISCIPLESHIP
Deep insights into what it means follow Jesus by the German thinker Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Note: I couldn’t get it down to 10. And, of course, there are many other deep nonfiction books that have had great influence on my life. But here’s the ones I came up with today:-)
Some I’ve read 2-7 times!


In the LIGHT of the GOOD, the TRUE,

Dan Wilcox

Are Those Opposing Us Corrupt, Vicious, even Vile?

Intensely Popular at present in American politics (as unwell as elsewhere) is the demeaning and name-calling of individuals on the other side. Each side makes extremely negative statements against the character and worth of persons of the opposition, those blanketyblanks----fill in the blanks from the daily news.

For instance, President Trump gives negative names to his opponents, "Crooked Hilary," Wacky and Deranged,” “a crazed, crying lowlife” and comparing another to a “dog.”

And individuals on the other side return the disfavor: Trump is "dumb, "an idiot surrounded by clowns," and so forth. Just read the daily news accounts.

Hmm...I doubt that most leaders on either side of the current huge chasm in American politics between Republicans versus Democrats (or Christians versus Atheists, or of whatever other stripes) are themselves bad individuals, nefarious, destructive, etc.

But here's a few snippets from the media:
Against Trump: "...corrupt politicians deserve no love. They inflict greater harm, death and destruction than any one person calling them a ________[twisted obscenity] will do to them.
Civility is for those who live in a fairy tale dream that somehow you can hope the tyrannical evil will suddenly grow some empathy. It won’t work.
Call him a _________. He deserves worse but will likely get less.
Jesus can love him all he wants. The rest of us can energize righteous anger and use it to oust him and any other mad tyrants who think they can trample on the constitution and the people it’s written to protect."

Against Democrats:
"You don't hand matches to an arsonist, and you don't give power to an angry left-wing mob. Democrats have become too EXTREME and TOO DANGEROUS to govern," Trump tweeted, "Republicans believe in the rule of law - not the rule of the mob. VOTE REPUBLICAN!"

BUT, what we need to do instead is condemn actions, NOT attack the worth or intent of humans in opposition to what we think is true, good, and right.

Most humans of the historic past--creedal Christians including the ones who slaughtered millions in the Great War (First W.I) the U.S. and British Civil Wars, the 30 Years War, French and German Religious Wars, etc., most orthodox Muslim jihadists in the past and now, many doctrinaire communists, most Napoleonic soldiers, etc. weren't corrupt, vicious, or vile.

On the contrary, most true believers of whatever religion or ideology tend to be almost exactly like all of us! As I recall that was one of the central points of Eric Hoffer's famous book on the true believer.

When I stayed with a Muslim family in Nablus, Palestine, they were very generous, kind, and considerate.
Ditto for the Jewish people on the kibbutz where I worked,
and ditto for the Christian Baptist leader from Jerusalem with whom I spoke,
YET they all were involved in the intentional slaughter of each other because of their religion.

Even some Jewish secularists and Palestinian secularists were in favor of intentionally killing civilians.

Most humans aren't vile. It's their dedication to nation and ideology or religion that is.

Yes, there are sociopaths. When I worked in a mental hospital, I worked with at least one.

But generally most of the evil in history and now comes about because normal, somewhat civilized, humans go to war for their evil beliefs, and abuse, oppress, and slaughter millions in the process.

The most evil in American history (and German, and British, and Russian, etc.), for instance, came from conscientious, dutiful, honorable humans doing their best to serve their nation.:-(

Look at the horror in Syria, where all sorts of ideologies are battling each other--secular Arabs, orthodox Muslims, Shia, Sunni, Russian, American, Turkish, Kurdish, Iranian, Saudi, Gulf States, Israeli (secular Jews and orthodox Jews), etc.
have caused the death of 1/2 million people, the wounding of millions more, and the displacement/refugee status of many millions.

As wrong and destructive as Calvinism, Roman Catholicism, Islam, Marxism, Hinduism, Atheism, etc. are I doubt that the actual individuals who grow up in those horrific religions and ideologies are they themselves vile, evil in intent. Many of them really believe they are doing what is good and right.

One of the most fanatical creedal Christians I ever met was a very mild, courteous, kind individual who was an airplane steward. If he hadn't happily consigned billions of us other humans to eternal torture--without any sense of guilt or sadness--
I would have never guessed that he would hurt a mosquito.

Vile ideas, not usually vile people.

At least that is my experience and my view.

Remember the essential words of Martin Luther King:
"Nonviolence means avoiding not only external physical violence but also internal violence of spirit. You not only refuse to shoot a man, but you refuse to hate him." Martin Luther King, Jr.

Martin Luther King, Thich Nhat Hanh (the Vietnamese Buddhist nominated for the Nobel Prize), Bayard Rustin, and many other moral leaders point out what leads to harm, division, and destruction among humans is the claim of each side to be the good, dutiful, patriotic, honorable side.

But when one side claims to their enemies that they are are the only ones who are tyrannical, corrupt, and they deserve no compassion, no civility, then they have become like those enemies that they condemn.

I saw this when I lived in Palestine-Israel (where both sides demean, harm, and attack the others). And one can read of this lack of civility in American history and world history.

There are many tragic examples from American and world history where both sides held to be righteous and treated the opposite side as not deserving civility, kindness, hope because they were so bad.

However as the Russian great writer wrote, good and evil aren't on opposite sides, but both run through every human heart.

It appears that President Donald Trump bullies, constantly lies, intentionally harms millions, defends a murderous regime, the Saudis, etc.

But it is probably that Trump honestly thinks he is doing what is best, what is good. At least about 80% of Evangelical Christians think he is God's man for this troubled hour!!

Attacking the President personally, calling him bad names, etc. isn't the answer to this time of crisis.

Instead, our moral answer needs to be a very detailed documentation of all immoral and unjust actions. We need to work to bring good change based in human rights, not curse others.

One of the first rules of debate is that no matter how unfair, unjust, even evil the other side's views are, speakers should never attack the opposing speakers' inherent human worth. To do so is a denial of human rights.

In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox

Part 2: Soldier War Versus Mass Slaughter of Civilians

Despite the horrific and tragic news which assaults us humans every day and long into the despairing night, we need to keep in mind great statements of ethical leaders such as this:
"...refuse to accept despair as the final response to the ambiguities of history.
...refuse to accept the idea that the "isness" of man's present nature makes him morally incapable of reaching up for the eternal "oughtness" that forever confronts him."

For Christian, Muslim, and secular leaders are blaring out real threats (and spending multi-trillions of dollars on weapons). Their volatile statements sound like this:
We intentionally plan to torture and murder millions to assure "peace."

The Great War, the 30 Years War, the Crusades, ad nauseum, show that planning and building for war eventually leads to horrific wars mostly fought by dutiful individuals of differing countries.

And that soldiers fighting, tragically, eventually leads to the murder of many civilians.

AGAIN, a central maxim: Not only is the action of intentionally killing civilians horrifically immoral, EVEN THE INTENT to destroy, torture, slaughter, steal, abuse is evil.

For instance, imagine a neighbor who has been threatened by another neighbor. Then the threatened man stockpiles his house with bombs and other weapons and overtly threatens to kill his bad neighbor and all of the latter's family and all of their extended relatives, and everyone near them!

Does this sound like an ethical policy?

Nuclear weapons are the very real threat--terrorism to the max--for the purpose of mass slaughter. A threat is only a threat if it is real and probable.

If a nation threatens to rape all the children of another nation, its threat has to be real, or it won't be threatening.

Since the U.S. has already dropped nukes on hundreds of thousands of civilians, including over an elementary school, wiping about 200,000 civilians,
and since many, probably most, Americans still think the U.S. is always right,
and they still think that America is "blessed" to have many thousands of nuclear weapons,
it seems to me, that eventually the U.S.
if it ever gets desperate will, again, slaughter hundreds of thousands of civilians.

The ONLY reason the U.S. condemns HAMAS and other "terrorist" groups for their terrorism is because we disagree with their aims, and because we are strong enough that we don't think we need small acts of terrorism ourselves.

Remember the keen slogan: A "terrorist" setting off a bomb is a soldier of a nation that doesn't have an air force.

Nations slaughter far more when they bomb than any walking or driving Islamic jihadist ever has.

If a new situation came up, where the U.S. was an underdog, it appears likely that the U.S. would again justify the slaughter of untold civilians. Some U.S. leaders have already threatened to do so to Iran!

See, it's like torture. The U.S. tortures BUT it doesn't call it torture, because it's only "torture" when the enemy does it;
when we do such actions,
it's justice.

Good grief.

When our enemies kill civilians they are terrorists, but when we kill civilians we are are heroic leaders defending our country.

As a follower of of Martin Luther King, Thich Nhat Hanh, etc., I oppose all wars, but I still do recognize that we humans, for whatever reason, no matter how cultured and how educated still,
in every generation, do descend into wars, always justifying them...

And that we think the wars are always the enemy's fault, never ours...

SO I do recognize that given the extreme selfish, hypocritical nature of nations (group egotism),
there will, probably, always be a national DEFENSE.

But that OUGHT to be soldier-against-soldier, NOT the intentional killing of civilians.

If Muslim-Christian soldiers aim their guns at Jewish soldiers, then Jewish soldiers have the right to defend themselves and their nation. And vice versa.

That is entirely different from weapons of mass destruction, which are primarily for threatening and executing of millions.

Hopefully, WMD will never be used again. But I guess I am pessimistic, especially now that another arms race appears to be starting.

Humans almost always use the weapons they have created because they think that they are the "good guys," ALWAYS.
Especially if they are the underdog.

Stand against this coming unethical darkness,

Daniel Wilcox

OBSESSION with a Border Wall

REGARDING the current OBSESSION with building a BORDER WALL and evicting law-abiding undocumented workers, and shouting "America First!" (How self-centered:-(:
What is needed ISN'T a border wall. 3 months ago, I drove a long the border of the Southern U.S. for hundreds of miles.
Already in many areas, a wall already a exists and where there are roads, border posts control entry.
And there are lots of Border Patrol vehicles patrolling areas up to 100 miles inland from the border!!

Because of criminals, terrorists, etc., I do agree that the borders of a country
such as the U.S. ought to be protected, in a similar sense that the borders of our homes
are protected. In urban areas, most people lock their doors.

BUT we don't lock our doors and build high walls to keep out most others such as foreign students, neighbors, diligent workers, courteous strangers, etc.

On the contrary, we--if we are caring individuals--welcome others, of all shades, colors, and nationalities.

What is needed is openness, compassion, the realization that all humans are equal, that every person is of inherent worth.

If foreigners who come to America, reject Islamic Sharia and accept freedom of speech and religion, our Bill of Rights, then
I think we ought to admit at least as many such refugees as Germany, 1 million.

As for the millions of Americans who are pushing for exclusion, for more border walls, and putting themselves "first":

My response is that we obviously have very different life experiences. And very different ethical values.
One of the best students in my years of teaching was an undocumented alien.

(Many of the very worst non-working students were native-born whites. Ought we to send them over our borders;-) Just a satirical comment. Probably, they had received poor nurture as children.)

Most of the years of teaching, I spent helping minorities in learning to study. We even had a joke in the classroom, since I was often the only non-minority, that I was the "token honky";-)

Plus, my area of expertise is American literature-history. Read of other tragic periods in American history when these anti- movements against the Chinese, the Filipino, the Mexican, the Irish, etc. flourished.

No thanks.

Nationalism is almost as bad as racism. In actual historical situations it is usually worse.
American nationalism caused far more slaughter, harm, and abuse than even slavery, as inherently evil as that unjust, immoral institution is.
Say NO to self-centered "America First!"

--
Photo: "Detainees sleep in a holding cell at a U.S. Customs and Border Protection processing facility, on June 18, 2014, in Brownsville,Texas. Brownsville and Nogales, Ariz. have been central to processing thousands of unaccompanied children who have entered the country illegally. Photo by Eric Gay-Pool/Getty Images


In the LIGHT,

Daniel Wilcox

Who, When, Why--10 Times the Bible Says Torture is OK by Valerie Tarico

This is a guest article by psychologist Valerie Tarico. A very troubling article. It could be considered part 2 of Unholy Night, my last blog post. Originally, I scheduled to finish the year with a hopeful message bringing in the New Year. After all the blog title is "Infinite Ocean of Light..."!

So why the drastic change?

Because again this week another Christian leader has written a news article defending the use of torture, based on the Bible! Don't forget many Christian leaders are declaring that the Jewish Holocaust and all manner of evil are God's will and that such horrendous events happen for God's glory and pleasure! Whew...
Even some Jewish leaders are claiming God created evil!

But then we shouldn't be surprised if we only remember that many, if not most, Christian leaders also have defended the killing of over half a million unarmed civilians in the last 70 years:-( "So it goes." (Vonnegut)

So it seems very important to repost this new article, a powerful, lucid explanation by Valerie Tarico. (I strongly disagree with a few of her points, but many of her key insights show why so many Christians now--and in the past--have supported horrendously evil actions such as torture.)

Please read Tarico's article carefully and respond at her site (or in the comment section below).
--

Who, When, Why –10 Times the Bible Says Torture is OK

by Valerie Tarico

"When conservative Christians claim that the Bible God condones torture, they’re not making it up. A close look at the good book reveals why so many Christians past and present have adopted an Iron Age attitude toward brutality.

The first half of December 2014 was painful to many moderate American Christians who see their God as a God of love: A Senate inquiry revealed that the CIA tortured men, some innocent, to the point of unconsciousness and even death; evidence suggested that this torture extracted no lifesaving information. A majority of Americans responded by giving torture the thumbs up, with the strongest approval coming from Christians, both Catholic and Protestant. Faced with moral outrage, including from within their own ranks, Christian torture apologists took to the airwaves and internet, weaving righteous justifications for the practice of inflicting pain on incapacitated enemies.

As morally repugnant as this may be, anyone familiar with either past survey data or Christian history shouldn’t find it surprising. One of the CIA’s favored leave-no-marks torture techniques, waterboarding, was refined by Inquisition authorities during the interrogation of heathens and heretics.

There’s a reason that devout Christians past and present can turn to torture when it suits their ends and then blithely maintain that they are on the side of God and goodness. The Bible itself—Old Testament and New—endorses torture regularly, through stories, laws, prophesies and sermons; including from the mouth of Jesus himself.

Don’t take it from me. The following passages are a sample of those available, but I encourage you to pick up the Bible yourself, starting at the book of Genesis. Here, so you know what to look for, is Wikipedia’s definition of torture:

The act of deliberately inflicting severe physical or psychological pain and possibly injury on a person (or animal), usually one who is physically restrained or otherwise under the torturer’s control or custody and unable to defend against what is being done to them.

I include in this category the act of deliberately inflicting prolonged and intense suffering in the process of killing a person or animal, when the killer has the option to end the life quickly and painlessly. Merriam-Webster adds that the torturer’s goal is “to punish, coerce, or afford sadistic pleasure.”

Torture as Punishment: Eve’s Curse –Intense and prolonged pain meted out as punishment appears almost immediately in the pages of the Bible, inflicted by God himself, who curses Eve because she has eaten from the Tree of Knowledge. “To the woman He said, ‘I will greatly multiply your pain in childbirth. In pain you shall bring forth children; yet your desire shall be for your husband and he shall rule over you’” (Genesis 2:16).

As understood by the ancient Hebrews, physical pain would have been just part of Eve’s curse. In generations past, an estimated 1 in 10 women eventually died of childbearing, as they do today in places like rural Afghanistan where modern contraceptives and medicines are unavailable and men “rule over” women. The psychological element of the curse was repeated cycles of fear and uncertainty for a woman who might labor, give birth and then bleed out; or who (in the absence of caesarean section) might labor for days, unable to deliver, until her body gave up and she died. Leading church fathers saw maternal suffering and death as right and proper, because of Eve’s sin and the role God had prescribed for women.

Torture as a Test of Loyalty: Job –In the book of Job, torture isn’t a punishment but rather a test of loyalty. Job, a righteous man becomes the subject of a divine wager between God and Satan, who claims that Job is faithful only because he is blessed with health and wealth. Bets are laid, and over time Job is subjected to first psychological and then physical anguish. His crops fail. A house collapses, crushing all of his children during a family gathering. He is rejected by neighbors and ends up a beggar, covered in painful boils.

After Job passes the test, God restores his health and wealth, and replaces his dead children. Christians to this day frequently perceive inexplicable and unmerited suffering as a “test of faith.”

Torture for Self-Gratification and Gain: The Midianite Virgins—torture - sex slaveIn wars, victors often rape conquered females as a means of further humiliating male enemies. In the story of the Midianite virgins, though, the motivation is more instrumental. God’s command, (“Kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known man intimately. But all the girls who have not known man intimately, spare for yourselves.” Numbers 31: 17-18) The girls are taken as booty of war, tallied along with livestock and gold, and the purpose of their sexual slavery is to provide pleasure and progeny for the men who have slaughtered their families.

While this story may not count as sadist torture in the classic psycho-sexual sense, it does illustrate the Bible God’s approval of inflicting intense and repeated suffering on a helpless victim for the purposes of sexual gratification and/or personal gain.

Torture as a Show of Strength: The Egyptians. The story of Moses leading his people out of Egypt is a cornerstone of Jewish identity, the basis for the Passover holiday. It is also a cat and mouse story, the tale of a supernatural being toying with mortals because he can, inflicting round after round of terror and suffering with the self-admitted goal of displaying his power.

Yahweh speaks to Moses from a burning bush, telling him to go to Pharaoh and demand freedom for Israelite slaves. He promises that the Israelites will be free. But instead of making things easy, Yahweh does the opposite: “I will harden Pharaoh’s heart that I may multiply My signs and My wonders in the land of Egypt” (Exodus 7:3).

He then methodically terrorizes the Egyptian populace. He turns their drinking water to blood, then fouls the land with a plague of frogs, then sends clouds of gnats to torment man and beast, then fills fields and homes with locusts, then kills their livestock, then infects them with boils and sores, then rains down hail to destroy their remaining crops . . . . The torments go on for pages. After each round, Yahweh again “hardens Pharaoh’s heart.” The awfulness crescendos until we reach the climax—the death of each firstborn male, no matter how young or helpless, including the firstborn of the cattle.

This story endorses not only torture, but vicarious torture. Suffering is inflicted on children and animals to maximize the distress of their adult guardians and owners, producing abject learned helplessness in the face of Yahweh’s overwhelming power.

Torture as Correction: The Law and Proverbs. When it comes time for the Israelite people to devise their own government, torture—as punishment and crime deterrence—gets built into legal codes. A man can beat his male or female slave bloody as long as the slave doesn't die within 2 days of the beating (Exodus 21:20-21). A judge can condemn a criminal to receive a similar beating after forcing him to lie down (Deuteronomy 25:2). Adulterers are to be stoned—a slow painful death that adds the extra humiliation of broad public participation (Deuteronomy 17:2-7).

The same approach is recommended for parenting. Parents are exhorted to beat their children, who otherwise will grow up foolish, and to ignore their crying (Proverbs 13:24; Proverbs 19:18; Proverbs 22:15). If you don’t think these constitute torture, I would suggest that you read some of the accounts of children who have lived for years in terror and pain because earnest Christian parents decided that godly parenting required breaking their will.

Torture as Vengeance: Elisha’s Curse. torture - Some Bible references to righteous torture appear to simply satisfy the human drive for vengeance. For example, the Law of Moses contains this bizarre prescription: “If an ox gores a man or woman to death, the ox shall surely be stoned” (Exodus 21:28). Consider: The Iron Age Israelites were herdsmen and hunters. They knew how to kill animals swiftly, with minimal pain and tissue damage. In fact, rules for ritual slaughter demanded that they do so. Stoning a large, dumb, horned animal to death, by contrast, was a mob process that might take hours.

In the book of 2 Kings, an equally awful, protracted death befalls 42 youth who taunt God’s prophet, Elisha. He curses them and God sends two bears, who kill the boys by tearing them apart. Remember, if you will, that this is a God who can swiftly and silently strike people dead and sometimes does. Remember too, if you’re willing, the audio recording that the subject of the movie Grizzly Man unwittingly made of his own slow death—the interminable grinding and moaning that followed the bear attack. The moral of the Elisha story isn't just that those who disrespect God’s messengers will die; it is that they may die gruesome, excruciating deaths.

Threats of Torture as Persuasion: In the New Testament, threats of torture appear regularly as tools of persuasion—the stick half of a carrot and stick approach used by writers who warn repeatedly of torments that will befall those who don’t repent or convert.

The book of Matthew puts these words into the mouth of Jesus: “If your hand or your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life maimed or crippled than to have two hands or two feet and be thrown into eternal fire. And if your eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into the fire of hell” (Matthew 18:8-9).

Later, Jesus tells the story of an unforgiving servant to illustrate how God will treat unforgiving people:

Then the master called the servant in. ‘You wicked servant,’ he said, ‘I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn't you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?’ In anger his master handed him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed. This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart (Matthew 18:32-33).

Grudge holders and bankers beware.

Torture as Redemption: Jesus. The crucifixion story elevates torment to a whole new level, giving torture-unto-death the power to redeem a broken world.

The notion that sacrificial killings can please or appease gods long predates the Bible, and it evolved over the centuries in which the Bible texts were written: from residual human sacrifice in the early Hebrew religion, to animal sacrifice during the temple era, to (in Christianity) the final sacrifice of the perfect lamb without blemish, Jesus himself.

Without the shedding of blood there can be no remission of sin. It’s an old concept, but in the Jesus story, the Hebrew concept of sacrifice morphs into death-by-torture. Perhaps a three-day death follow by glorious resurrection struck early Christians as cheap grace. Perhaps the followers of one Yeshua ben Yosef needed some way to explain the horrible death of their movement founder at the hands of Rome. Perhaps weary people in need of hope found a template for a suffering messiah in an ancient text. Whatever the reason, mythological or historical, torture became a defining feature of the orthodox Christian salvation narrative.

In this version of the story, Jesus doesn't merely die for our sins, side slit or heart stopped.torture - Mel-Gibson-Jim-Caviezel He is also tortured for our sins, as centuries of bloody iconography, passion plays, imitative self-flagellation, sermons, alter calls, and now movies like Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ attest.

Modern preachers sometimes wax eloquent on this point, elaborating the tortures in graphic Hollywood detail, but the notion of redemptive suffering goes back to a time before Jesus worship: “Who his own self bore our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live to righteousness: by whose stripes you were healed,” says the author of 1 Peter. His words repurpose a passage from the Hebrew Song of the Suffering Servant: “He was wounded for our transgressions . . . By his stripes we are healed.”

To this day, Catholic ethicists propose that ill people who are suffering unto death, for example because of terminal cancer, should be offered not aid in dying but rather a Christian understanding of the value of redemptive suffering. Mother Teresa exhorted one terminal patient to think of his pain as “the kiss of Jesus.”

Torture as the Shape of Eternity: The torture most taught by modern Evangelicals is neither redemptive nor terminal; it is infinite. Perdition, hades, Gehenna, the lake of fire, outer darkness, eternal torment—hell represents the most intense and most prolonged torture the Iron Age mind could conceive and the Medieval mind could elaborate.

The concept of eternal torture crystalized between the time the Hebrew Bible and New Testament were written, and early Christian writers elaborated this concept in their efforts to woo converts.

In some of these texts, torture is the fate of fallen angels. Have you come to torture us before the appointed time?, demons ask Jesus when he casts them out of men and into a herd of swine. (Matthew 8:28-31)

It is the fate of the wicked and the wealthy:

The rich man also died, and was buried; And in hell he lift up his eyes, being in torments, and seeth Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom. And he cried and said, Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame. Luke 16:22-24

It is the fate of those who serve the Beast (aka the Roman Empire) when apocalypse arrives:torture - hell

And to them it was given that they should not kill them, but that they should be tormented five months: and their torment was as the torment of a scorpion, when he striketh a man. And in those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it; and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them. (Revelation 9:5-6)

And lest we think that days or weeks or months or years of torture are excessive, we are assured that God himself disagrees:

The same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture into the cup of his indignation; and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb. And the smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever. (Revelation 14:10-11)

By some accounts, witnessing the much-deserved torments of the damned will be one of the perks of heaven.

——————

Good is what God does. “Be ye holy for I am holy” God says in the book of Leviticus. The author of 1 Peter echoes him: “Be ye perfect as your father in heaven is perfect.” For many American Christians, as recent polls show, this model of perfection includes torture, as long as it is committed by and for God’s chosen people.

Religious believers often claim that without a god everything is permissible. I tend to think that the opposite is true. Without gods we are guided, however imperfectly, by empathy, fairness, and truth seeking—impulses that are built into us by our evolution as social information specialists. These impulses are enforced by moral emotions like shame and guilt and by moral reasoning capabilities that emerge during childhood. Humanity’s shared moral core can be glimpsed in every one of our wisdom traditions, religious or secular. It is the reason that our wisdom traditions tend to converge on the Golden Rule. Do unto others doesn’t offer a neat answer in every situation, but it does offer a coherent objective.

By contrast, religious morality, dictated from on high, can be as contradictory or cruel as the god doing the dictation, or the culture that created that god. When god is the supernatural version of an Iron Age warlord, that’s when everything becomes possible—including torture. And God said, let there be torture. And there was torture. And it was good.

———

Valerie Tarico is a psychologist and writer in Seattle, Washington. She is the author of Trusting Doubt: A Former Evangelical Looks at Old Beliefs in a New Light and Deas and Other Imaginings, and the founder of www.WisdomCommons.org. Her articles about religion, reproductive health, and the role of women in society have been featured at sites including AlterNet, Salon, the Huffington Post, Grist, and Jezebel.
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http://valerietarico.com/2014/12/30/who-when-why-10-times-the-bible-says-torture-is-ok/

The Bad of Boasting

Check out Hannity's America where the TV news commentator Sean Hannity claims "the U.S. is the greatest, best country God has ever given man on the face of the Earth.

President Barack Obama claims,
"The entire world is watching. So let's seize this moment to show why the United States of America is still the greatest nation on Earth."

And Mitt Romney, the Republican candidate for president, claims American is “the greatest nation in the history of the earth.”

Huh? What happened to moderation, humility, unselfishness, and focusing on others?

Group egotism is the worst form of pride, the very worst form of boasting, and all too often the most destructive.

Nationalism is rotten to the core.

What about focusing on asking God to bless others, to bless the needy, the impoverished, the persecuted, the lonely?

May God bless everyone!

A cautionary note: There is a huge difference between nationalism--"America is the best, the greatest...God bless US!
versus
genuine patriotism, moderate love of one's country.

Sometimes when a leader claims his country is great, he means 'I love my country in a widened extension of love for my ken, my family and my spouse.'

In its best expression, love of country is like love of one's wife, a husband loves his wife like no other human.

He means he and his sweetheart's love is special, but he isn't claiming that his wife is better than all other women in history! He's not claiming that she is better than other men's sweethearts. Each guy loves his beloved for herself, not because he compares her to others!

See how obnoxious and absurdly arrogant that sounds, if he claimed the latter. No, he is speaking of being a loving couple. When we see such love the result is uplifting and a blessing.

I felt such love for the United States when as a young teen I earned my God and Country Award for Boy Scouts. The award wasn't a negative comparison award where I was vaunting my country over all other countries, but a genuine love of our people and our government.

Our love of our country can be genuine while we are still fully aware that multi-millions of other people elsewhere love their countries, too.

Tragically, most human political speech usually means the opposite--that my country is 'better' than all other people's countries.

Senator Mark Hatfield of Oregon (one of the only two senators to vote at the start against the Vietnam War) warned against such boasting. He wrote two books about his time in American government, and in each one he warned against the insidious temptations of American politics (Crisis and Conscience and Between a Rock and Hard Place).

According to Senator Hatfield it is nigh impossible to escape from the pride which inhabits all political involvement in our government in Washington D.C.

Notice how Hannity, Obama, and many other political and religious leaders are continuing this tendency for human group pride. They claim the United States is better than all other nations, even all other nations in history!

This is an arrogant-spirited American IDOL, in the worst sense of the wor, where only one nation gets to claim its top dog--or is it 'top god?' (sarcasm intended!).

Of course, Americans aren't the only humans to get sucked into this virulent boasting. Try reading a few statements by the British leadership for more than two hundred years when the sun never sat on the British Empire, which was far larger and had a much greater control of the world than the U.S. ever has.

And don't forget the late 19th-early 20th century German belief that their nation, Deutschland, was uniquely called and indwelt by the World Spirit, called to lead the world.

Or consider the vast French claims during the Napoleonic Era, the Russian Empire, the Muslim Conquest, or the Roman Empire, the Persian...blah, blah...

There is seemingly no doubt that pride (boasting) is the worst human evil. What is baffling and tragic is how many modern Christians of a variety of stripes still seem to obsess on this temptation, to exalt THEIR nation as being better than all other people's nations.

And the true historic tragedy is that while individual pride constantly hurts a few humans, national pride and boasting has killed literally millions of people, and is the worst of worst when it comes to human evil.

Nationalistic boasting is the worst part of the ocean of darkness.

Let the OCEAN OF LIGHT overwhelm our tendency to pride.

In the Light

Daniel Wilcox