A parable: The Good Palestinian

An American Jewish man who had immigrated to Israel from Brooklyn was going up to Jerusalem with his wife and small child, but HAMAS operatives rammed his Honda Civic killing his little girl. Then they shot him and his wife leaving them for dead.

31 Now by chance a Jewish orthodox man was going up that highway, but when he saw the stripped nude woman he passed by on the other side.

32 So likewise a Fatah Palestinian who when he saw the murder said, "All praise to Allah and to the martyrs who got justice against these Zionists!"

33 But then a Palestinian farmer, as he journeyed by foot, came upon the horrific killing scene. Even though last month Jewish settlers had hacked down 300 hundred of his family's olive trees and the Israeli army was planning to confiscate their farm which had been in his family for over a hundred years, even though suffering from those injustices, the Palestinian stopped and administered first aid when he realized the wife was still breathing. He took off his own clothes to cover her and covered up the dead father and the crushed infant.

Then he set the woman over his shoulders (he couldn't put her in his car or on his donkey because both had been destroyed by Jewish settlers from Brooklyn). He brought the Jewish woman to a Middle Eastern Motel 6 inn and took care of her, even though he got severe looks from Palestinians he passed. And one jihadist shouted, "Why are you helping that Zionist whore?"

35 And the next day the Palestinian farmer took out 800 Israeli shekels and gave them to the motel manager, saying, ‘Take care of her, and whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back.’

36 Which of these many humans, do you think, proved to be a neighbor to the family who fell among the terrorists?”

37 The modern Israeli said, “The one who showed her mercy.”

And Jesus said to him, “You go, and do likewise to every Palestinian.”

Luke 10: 29-37



In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox

Perception in Late Night Amidst the Glitter and Vacant, Away from All Hope

I work the graveyard shift in ‘67
Stock shelves of “Marlboro Country”
For California slickers, tubes of
Ultra Brite “sex appeal”
Brushed by grim oldsters,
And Olympia, “it’s the water”
For partying young adults;

Shallow worded images

I close the flashy cooler,
Pick up the empty card boxes,
Crumple and dump them in the trash bin;
Across the street a Texaco filling station
Slogans forth rusted, “Trust your car to the man
Who wears the star,” but its “vacant for lease” sign
Came from the only auto to ford

Shallow worded perception

I lean on a metal stool behind
The counter, no customers; it's past
The midnight hour; so I
Close my tired eyes,
Rub my warm forehead,
The feel of bone so arched like a vault,
My skull under skin
Almost Neanderthal,

Shallow image wordedness

And my sense of self in that inner cave
Of stored memories, procedures and ads;
What will be left in the finite end?

Suddenly like a lighted tidal wave
Overwhelming self and night,
Wide a w a r e n e s s
Oceans deep—

Infinite vivid reception—awash

In-G-immersed-O-in-D



In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox

First published in Word Catalyst Magazine,
also in poetry collection, Psalms, Yawps, and Howls

The Negativity of Non-Theism

Here's why it is highly improbably I would ever become a non-theist, why it seems the term is a negation not worthy for anyone to identify with, even those who do sincerely think the universe is purposeless.

#1 What counts in life is to define oneself by clear positive statements, not primarily by negative assertions of what one is not. The astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson has a good example of this. In a lecture he explains why he doesn't call himself a non-theist:

“I don't play golf. Is there a word for non-golf players? Do non-golf players gather and strategize? Do non-skiers have a word and come together and talk about the fact that they don't ski. I don't--I can't do that. I can't gather around and talk about how much everybody in the room doesn't believe in God.” (http://www.haveabit.com/neil-degrasse-tyson/92001)

Such a good example of whimsical satire by Tyson! I used to play basketball every day, but eventually quit. Do I focus on the quitting, belong to ex-basketball.org;-)?

Seriously, while it is true, that there are life views and actions which are destructive that need to be opposed, we humans shouldn't define ourselves by our negatives—by not being or not doing.

Islam has slaughtered hundreds of thousands of innocent people in recent years, but do I strongly categorize myself, define who I am by saying, “I’m a Non-Muslim?” No.

So even though much of religion, theism, is delusionary and destructive why emphasize to others the negative, your whole identity as “not theist”?

Huh?


Stand, instead, for what you are, for what is true.

#2 Speaking of “what is true…”: Ethics, aesthetics and seeking the ultimate meaning and purpose of existence is vastly important to me. In contrast, in the last 150 years nearly all of the non-theists, instead, have emphasized there are no standard ethics or universal aesthetics or object truth outside of the necessity (or chance) of natural selection, which they state is "without purpose or meaning."

According to biologist Richard Dawkins, altruism is likely a “misfiring of evolution.” (http://www.philosophicalinvestigations.co.uk/index.php/ethics/41-natural-law/452-extract-richard-dawkins-on-the-lust-to-be-nice?start=1)

In contrast, I’m intellectually convinced that ethics are as objective and real as math. Let’s say the human species is wiped out by a huge catastrophe. Would mathematics cease to be real in the cosmos? Would the natural regularities of nature such as gravity cease? No.

If there was an alien species on some distant planet on the far side of the Milky Way who was also conscious and rational and purposeful like humans, that species would have the same ethical standards—commitment to equality, honesty, fidelity, courage, compassion, justice, mercy, etc. and would oppose intolerance, persecution, rape, rapine, slaughter, and cruelty.

At least I sure hope so.

#3 Not only does such a view negate all universal ethics and aesthetics, many non-theists are so demeaning of what the human species is about.

For instance, the non-theist Sam Harris says human beings are “puppets,” that even each person’s sense of “I” is an illusion. He and two other non-theists commentators claim it’s “tumors all the way down,” meaning every human being has no more choice than a criminal who murders because a tumor is pressing down on his brain. (The Very Bad Wizards Interview #1: Episode 59 Tumors All the Way Down, samharris.org)

Other non-theists have characterized the human species as "bags of chemicals," "meat puppets," etc. Then there's Francis Crick's infamous description of the human species:
[Science has shown you that] "'you,' your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behaviour of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules. as Lewis Carroll's Alice might have phrased it: 'You're nothing but a pack of neurons.'" (http://www.todayinsci.com/C/Crick_Francis/CrickFrancis-Quotations.htm)

Caution! This is not a denial that Harris’ (or Dawkins' or Crick's) hypotheses could be correct. I’m only pointing out that unless overwhelming evidence is found that humans are “puppets,” that our sense of “I” is an illusion, and that ethics are only evolutionary adaptions of a purposeless regularity in nature, then I will continue to hold the human species as valuable and creative and purposeful.

#4 Generally, nontheists are too sure there is no ultimate meaning to existence, adamantly sure. For this reason, Albert Einstein said he wasn't a non-theist.
He wrote, “I’m not an atheist…there are the fanatical atheists whose intolerance is the same as that of the religious fanatic, and it springs from the same source…They are creatures who can’t hear the music of the spheres.” (The Expanded Quotable Einstein, Princeton University Press, 200, p. 214)

#5 Furthermore, so many public nontheists are strident “in your face,” “know-it-all” arrogant, dismissive of anyone who disagrees with them, even rude, vulgar, and intolerant. Sounds pretty much like what non-theists accuse theists of being doesn't it?
(CAUTION: There’s no reason non-theists couldn't be more open and attentive. In fact, some fine non-theists are measured and considerate.)

In contrast, our goal in life could instead be-- to be courteous, tentative, open, tolerant, attentive, a good listener, decent, etc.

To sum up:
Theism (from Greek “theos” god) is “…the existence of one God viewed as the creative source of the human race and the world who transcends yet is immanent in the world.” (Merriam-Webster Dictionary)

Non-theism (from Latin “non” not) means “not” or “no” god.

That means in order for me to become a non-theist, I would have to agree there are no objective values (beyond,transcendent of the human brain and natural selection), no true universal ethics, no objective aesthetics, no ultimately real meaning and purpose for the cosmos. There would be no objective basis for equality and human rights, because there is no “equality” in the nature. Because in non-theism, of course, “human rights” are only a social construct, or worse are only an illusion/delusion caused by the determinism of the cosmos.

Since I am convinced by reason, experience, and emotion down to my inner marrow that equality, fidelity, honesty, and compassion are objectively true, and that slaughter and rape and torture and dishonesty are truly and universally wrong and that they cause untold suffering and pain and death, it would take a herculean change of my whole worldview for me to embrace the outlook that so many non-theists hold overtly.

NO.


Good and evil aren't relative.





Honesty or compassion are as real as 2+2=4 or the Theory of Gravity.

In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox

Prayer Doesn't Change Things...

When I was growing up years ago, we constantly heard and trusted in the slogan, motto, faith statement, “Prayer Changes Things.” It was one of the central mantras of Christianity, repeatedly emphasized and practiced. Even when things didn't change, everyone was sermonized to pray harder, to wait patiently longer, and repeatedly promised that change would come eventually and dramatically.

“Is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray. Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing praise. 14Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. 15And the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up.

“And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven. 16 Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working. 17 Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed fervently that it might not rain, and for three years and six months it did not rain on the earth. 18 Then he prayed again, and heaven gave rain, and the earth bore its fruit.” James 5:13-18 ESV

But 60 years later, and nothing has changed. No answers have come. No miracles. Not once in 60 years of my limited life—and not once for many other Christians, (or Jews, Muslims, Baha'i, etc. for that matter). Disappointed, even devastated, Christians earnestly believing—yet never once did prayer ever change anything.

No miracles, no dramatic solutions, no answers to sincerely sought needs, desperate hurts, with death hungry at the door. Of course, there are plenty of Christian leaders who claim differently--they tout millions of miracles, healings, and supernatural answers--but when these assertions are researched and studied by Christian scholars these “claims” turn out to be placebos, false diagnoses,'urban legends,' lots of hearsay, and even fraud and deception.

But Christianity's answer to this is always, pray more. If your prayers weren't answered, it wasn't God’s timing or you prayed wrongly, or there was something else wrong with your prayers or with you. Yes, probably you...

Even though your central prayers were for others, often for people you hardly knew, so many in need, often at death's door.

It wasn't like you were praying to be rich or even for your own health.

But now fairly decisive scientific studies have been completed and the answer comes out the same—prayers didn't change anything. Prayer doesn't change things.

In fact, in one study (organized by a respectable Christian organization), those prayed for fared worse than those not prayed for at all.

How could this be?!

So where’s the beef (belief)?

--
Scientific Studies:
“Are there demonstrable effects of distant intercessory prayer? A meta-analytic review.
Masters KS1, Spielmans GI, Goodson JT.
Author information
Abstract
BACKGROUND:
The use of alternative treatments for illness is common in the United States. Practitioners of these interventions find them compatible with personal philosophies. Consequently, distant intercessory prayer (IP) for healing is one of the most commonly practiced alternative interventions and has recently become the topic of scientific scrutiny.
PURPOSE:
This study was designed to provide a current meta-analytic review of the effects of IP and to assess the impact of potential moderator variables.
METHODS:
A random effects model was adopted. Outcomes across dependent measures within each study were pooled to arrive at one omnibus effect size. These were combined to generate the overall effect size. A test of homogeneity and examination of several potential moderator variables was conducted.
RESULTS:
Fourteen studies were included in the meta-analysis yielding an overall effect size of g = .100 that did not differ from zero. When one controversial study was removed, the effect size reduced to g = .012. No moderator variables significantly influenced results.
CONCLUSIONS:
There is no scientifically discernible effect for IP as assessed in controlled studies. Given that the IP literature lacks a theoretical or theological base and has failed to produce significant findings in controlled trials, we recommend that further resources not be allocated to this line of research.”
Annals of Behavioral Medicine August 2006
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16827626
--
Largest Study of Third-Party Prayer Suggests Such Prayer
Not Effective In Reducing Complications Following Heart Surgery

“STEP investigators enrolled 1,802 bypass surgery patients from six hospitals and
randomly assigned each to one of three groups: 604 patients received intercessory prayer after being informed they may or may not receive prayers (Group 1); 597 patients did not receive prayer after being informed they may or may not receive prayer (Group 2); and 601 patients received intercessory prayer after being informed they would receive it
(Group 3).
Caregivers and independent auditors comparing case reports to medical records were unaware of the patients’ assignments throughout the study. The study enlisted members of three Christian groups, two Catholic and one Protestant, to provide prayer throughout the multi-year study. The researchers approached other denominations, but none were able to make the time commitments that the study required.

Some patients were told they may or may not receive intercessory prayer:
complications occurred in 52 percent of those who received prayer (Group 1) versus
51 percent of those who did not receive prayer (Group 2). Complications occurred in
59 percent of patients who were told they would receive prayer (Group 3) versus
52 percent, who also received prayer, but were uncertain of receiving it (Group 1).
Major complications and thirty-day mortality were similar across the three groups.”
http://www.templeton.org/pdfs/press_releases/060407STEP.pdf
--

What can we conclude from this shocker, from all the heart-ached traumas over a life time of devout prayers for others not answered?

After the disillusionment settles, one thought does come to mind:

Maybe prayer doesn't change things, but prayer does change people who can change things ( a new motto I heard some time back but haven’t been able to locate its source or authorship).

I can vouch for such a different angle on prayer. And there are verified cases taking place in current events and in history. But that is for next post…

In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox

The Storied Mask

The Storied Mask


The vast kaleidoscoped cosmos
On black velvet background
Galactic star swirls,
One great masked Chagall

We turn our stained-glass faces…

Above us in infinite light years,
Visioning vivid rose and royal blue,
So covered the costumed earth,
Weeping colors of bowed rain,

We turn our stained-glass faces…

In this troubled world's lastness,
From the very beforeness,
Out from the mummering
Great cosmic Blast,

We turn our stained-glass faces…

A hooded violet trope
That hurtled us across time
Into the endless question
Before the troubled asking;

We turn our stained-glass faces…

Our distraught disguises
Cascading down,
Away from the pierced harshness
Of wintered survival rage
To stare at the flaming sun,

We turn our stained-glass faces…

Gleaming through, unmerry
Makers, not mindfully blind
But behind metaphor's
Vivid translucent veil,

We turn our stained-glass faces…

Seeing the One True Face,
Stained with the sorrow
Of ever-becoming visually real,
Ruby, emerald, and sapphire,

Yes, we turn our stained-glass faces

To one finally white endless strobe,
Encompassing all despaired weeping
In the brightness of transcendent becoming,
Unlimited strophe of the cosmic Masque
Of all Dancing.

by Daniel Wilcox


First published in different form in Mad Swirl;
later in the poetry collection, selah river

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/

Oh Unholy Night versus the Truth

When one observes the tragic events dominating the news and the way humans constantly argue, distort, violate...it does seem one long unholy night...an ocean of darkness.

But there is another way--

Three Sons Fight

Disking the rock strewn
Objected earth near Bet Shean,
Underneath the Middle Eastern sky
Rows of mean earth riven by the blades,
We cut away our anger, hate, and pride,
Stopping to drink, not from the liquor
Of fanatic corruption but from
The precious water welling up,
Our oasis of Jacob'd sharing,
In this Hanukkah season
Of Christ's mass after
Ramadan.

Allah

We three sons of Abraham,
Muslim, Jew, and Christian,
Fight the true battle
Not each other but
To be found worthy
In compassion
Giving,
And purity--
The true
Submission
To God
Over
All.

Selah



First published in
outwardlink.net,
Knot Middle Eastern Magazine,
and the poetry collection of
selah river


In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox